Following the tightening of US export restrictions for Nvidia & Co, China is looking for alternatives. Huawei's 910C chip is set to hit the market in May.
The Chinese technology group Huawei is planning to start mass deliveries of its advanced AI chip 910C to Chinese customers as early as next month. This was reported exclusively by the news agency Reuters on Monday, citing two people familiar with the matter. According to the report, some deliveries have already been made.
The Reuters sources also reported that Huawei's 910C chip is "more of an architectural advancement than a technological breakthrough". The 910C graphics processor combines two 910B processors in a single package using advanced integration techniques. It achieves a performance comparable to that of Nvidia's H100 chip, it says. This means that it has twice the computing power and memory capacity of the 910B. There are also other advances, such as improved support for various AI workload data. When asked by Reuters, Huawei declined to comment on the delivery plans for the 910C chip and its capabilities.
USA tightens export restrictions
The issue is particularly explosive because the US government of President Donald Trump has tightened export restrictions on AI chips for China. From now on, it will require licenses for the export of AI chips to China, as was announced last week. Among the products affected by the export licenses are the H20 chips from US company Nvidia.
In an effort to restrict China's technological development, Washington has been trying for years to cut China off from Nvidia's most advanced AI products, including the flagship B200 chip. The H100 chip, for example, was banned from China by the US government in 2022 before it even hit the market. Since 2022, Nvidia and other manufacturers have only been allowed to sell slow GPU accelerators to China.
After Nvidia initially used a loophole to export slimmed-down versions of its AI accelerators to China, the US government under Joe Biden also banned these AI accelerators, known as A800 and H800, for China in 2023. The H20 chip, on the other hand, is based on the same chip architecture, but was specially adapted to the US export restrictions. The new US export controls for AI chips are likely to cost Nvidia several billion US dollars; Intel is also affected.
Independence in chip manufacturing
In view of these developments, China is trying to become independent in chip manufacturing - and is well on the way to doing so. Huawei and the chip contract manufacturer SMIC in particular are investing heavily in local chip production. SMIC can produce chips with 7-nanometer structures, but faces the problem of procuring modern lithography systems. Dutch global market leader ASML, for example, is not allowed to sell machines with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) exposure technology to China. Meanwhile, Huawei is decoupling itself from Google's Android world with its HarmonyOS smartphone software. At the end of last year, the chip installed in Huawei's new Android-free smartphone series "Mate 70" caused a stir - a sign that Chinese companies are making rapid progress in this area.
The US Department of Commerce's recent export restrictions on Nvidia's H20 "mean that Huawei's Ascend 910C GPU will now be the hardware of choice for (Chinese) AI model developers and for deploying inference capabilities," said Paul Triolo, an expert from the Albright Stonebridge Group consultancy, who was interviewed by Reuters on the subject.
As reported by Reuters, Huawei sent samples of its 910C processor to several tech companies at the end of last year and began accepting orders. However, the news agency was unable to find out which companies will mainly manufacture the 910C. An anonymous source pointed out that at least some of Huawei's 910C processors use semiconductors manufactured by Taiwan's TSMC for the Chinese company Sophgo. However, when asked by Reuters, Huawei emphasized that it has not used any Sophgo chips manufactured by TSMC. TSMC also stated that it complies with regulatory requirements and has not supplied Huawei since mid-September 2020.
(akn)
