Huawei’s 910C AI Chips Are Ready for Mass Distribution. A Wake up Call for the US
Key Takeaways
- Mass shipment of Huawei's 910C GPUs is expected to start by the end of this month.
- The 910C uses two 910B processors and is reportedly as fast as Nvidia's H100.
- The company is also testing its latest Ascend 910D chips.
Huawei's 910C GPU may start mass shipments by the end of May. The 910C chip can be described as more of an architectural breakthrough than a technological victory. It combines two 910B processors to achieve double its predecessor's computing power and memory capacity.
More interestingly, and something that should be concerning for the US, is that the 910C claims to achieve the same level of performance as Nvidia's H100, which came out in 2022.
The US has now, for years, been trying to restrict the access of AI-ready chips to China through various restrictions. The H100 is also banned from export to China. However, it has taken China just three years to catch up with Nvidia.
You can argue that China is still three years behind the US. However, it's important to understand that the difference is closing down rather rapidly, and China is not too far behind. The US's bans have only boosted domestic production of AI chips in China, with companies like Huawei, Moore Threads, and Iluvatar CoreX at the forefront of innovation.
What's more, China is already testing the new Ascend 910D chip, which will reportedly be more powerful than the H100. So, America's plan to cut China off from the AI race doesn't look like it's working. If anything, it's motivating Chinese firms to accelerate growth in the semiconductor industry.
The US May Have Dug Itself a HoleThe Biden-sanctioned AI diffusion rule is set to come into force on May 15. This will restrict the export of advanced AI chips to countries around the world by dividing them into various tiers.
Where the US and its allies can have exclusive access to the latest AI tech, countries like China have been banned from importing these semiconductors. Other countries in tier 2 will only be able to import these chips up to a certain limit. This has been done so that China cannot get its hands on US-made AI chips. However, in doing so, the US may have dug itself a big hole.
Apart from directly restricting China, the rule also places caps on other countries that the US suspects may export these chips to China, thereby placing an indirect export restriction. However, it's not difficult to see that this may turn out to be counterproductive.
As mentioned earlier, China can now produce Nvidia-comparable AI chips. So, countries needing them will import them from China instead of the US. Not only has this killed the huge Chinese market for US companies, but it has also sabotaged other global markets for them.
Imagine a scenario where no such restrictions were placed and the entire global market could freely choose between advanced chips from Nvidia, AMD, and those from Chinese companies. Buyers who preferred a higher-quality chip would've chosen Nvidia, while those a bit budget-conscious may have gone with AMD.
However, now that there are strict restrictions on who can get what, these countries will have no choice but to go for Huawei (or other Chinese manufacturers' chips), which opens a whole new market for China.
China's AI growth could have been restricted with fair competition as well, given that the US tech giants are ahead regarding technology access and innovation.
Chinese Cars and DeepSeekYou don't have to look too far behind to see what China is capable of. It has grown tremendously in the automatic cars segment in the last 5 years. For instance, the BYD Seal is often compared to the Tesla Model 3 and can go from 0 to 100 km/h in just 3.8 seconds.
Similarly, the NIO ET7/ET5 models are comparable to the Tesla Model S (ET7) and Tesla Model 3 (ET5), respectively, with a range of up to 1,000 km and autonomous driving features. DeepSeek is another fabulous example. China built an AI model as good as ChatGPT and Gemini at an astonishingly low price. Simply put, China isn't one to procrastinate on innovation.
The question, therefore, is whether the US can really afford' to cut China off in the AI-tech race. Everything we mentioned above suggests otherwise.
It's just a matter of time before China develops its own version of Nvidia's Blackwell architecture and its B100 and B200 AI chips. And unlike the US, China won't close down its markets for the world. This essentially means that the country can become the next powerhouse of AI chips, which is something that would hurt the US big time.
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