According to Reuters , by the end of October, Huawei had delivered more than 60% of orders, equivalent to 1,000 Ascend 910B chips, to Baidu . The remainder will be completed by the end of the year. The total value of the contract is about 450 million yuan (61.83 million USD).
Experts assess that 1,600 chips is not a large order compared to the amount of GPUs that Nvidia supplies to the Chinese market. However, this is a signal that the US no longer holds a monopoly in the semiconductor industry. Previously, Nvidia was a long-time partner of Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba, but now Huawei is starting to conquer these technology giants.
Baidu logo at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China on July 6. Photo: Reuters
Huawei first mentioned the Ascend 910 chip in 2018 and officially launched it a year later as part of its strategy to build a comprehensive AI ecosystem. At that time, Huawei announced that its chip was the most powerful AI processor in the world. According to Chinese media, Ascend 910 is manufactured on a 7 nanometer process.
Huawei says the chip can deliver 256 teraflops (trillion operations per second) for complex and highly accurate calculations and efficient power consumption. However, Ascend 910 is not enough to overshadow Nvidia’s shining stars, the A100 and H100 , launched in 2020 and 2022, respectively. These two models currently hold an overwhelming market share of AI chips globally as the AI wave creates explosive birth .
Ascend 910B is an upgraded version of Ascend 910 but has not been publicly announced by Huawei. In August, iFlyTek President Liu Qingfeng praised Huawei’s latest chip as “as powerful as Nvidia’s A100”. Reuters also discovered that documents related to Ascend 910B, such as driver and firmware upgrade instructions, began appearing on Huawei’s website in August.
According to experts, the Ascend 910B is still far behind the Nvidia chip in terms of performance, but is still the best domestic choice of major technology companies in China, in the context of the US embargo. “Large companies have ordered 910B to prepare for the scenario of no longer being able to buy from Nvidia,” the source told Reuters .
Baidu, Huawei and Nvidia did not comment.
On its website, Huawei said it has cooperated with Baidu since 2020 to build hardware for the AI platform. In August, the two companies announced increased compatibility between the Ernie AI chatbot model and the Ascend chip.
According to analysts, the US ban is Huawei’s opportunity to conquer the 7 billion USD market in its home country. In August, the company surprised the global technology world when it introduced the Mate 60 Pro – a high-end smartphone produced by itself. In September, Reuters said it began delivering new microprocessors for surveillance cameras to domestic customers.
In September, Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou said it wanted to build a computing base for China and give the world a “second choice”, breaking US dominance in the semiconductor market . If they cannot buy Nvidia chips, Chinese AI companies have to rely on domestic products like Huawei’s, even though the quality may be lower. With government support and the AI fever in businesses, analysts predict it is only a matter of time before Huawei gains a certain position in the AI chip market.
Khuong Nha (according to Reuters )
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