Huawei has provided samples of its Ascend 910C processors to major Chinese server companies for hardware testing and configuration, two people briefed on the matter said. One of the sources, a Huawei AI chip distributor, said the chip is an upgraded version of the 910B and is being supplied to major Chinese internet companies, which are also Nvidia’s main customers.
Huawei did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
Huawei is leaving behind Nvidia after the U.S. government banned the California-based chip designer from shipping its most powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) to China. They are competing to fill the void. The Ascend 910B chip, which Huawei claims is on par with NVIDIA’s popular A100 chip, has become a top alternative in several industries in the country. Huawei said its Ascend solution was used to train about half of China’s more than 70 top large-scale language models as of last year.
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Huawei’s tri-fold smartphone “Mate XT” sparks enthusiasm and resale prices soar
Huawei’s tri-fold smartphone “Mate XT” sparks enthusiasm and resale prices soar
While China’s tech giants are closely monitoring chip advances, it’s clear that Huawei is building a support system for the domestic AI industry. Huawei Rotating Chairman Eric Xu Zhijun said a week ago that Huawei has built two computing businesses in the past five years to create another option to meet enterprises’ AI infrastructure needs.
