Huawei to Begin Mass Shipments of New AI Chip as China Seeks Nvidia Alternatives

Huawei Technologies is preparing to begin mass shipments of its advanced 910C artificial intelligence chip to Chinese customers as early as next month, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Credit: Angel Garcia/Bloomberg

Some shipments of the 910C chip have already been made, the sources said.

The move comes as Chinese AI firms seek domestic alternatives to Nvidia’s H20 chip, which recently became subject to new U.S. export restrictions.

Earlier this month, the U.S. government informed Nvidia that sales of the H20 chip to China would now require an export licence.

Huawei’s 910C chip, a graphics processing unit, is not a technological breakthrough but an architectural evolution, according to one of the sources and a third person familiar with the design.

The chip achieves performance comparable to Nvidia’s H100 by combining two 910B processors into a single package using advanced integration techniques.

This design gives the 910C double the computing power and memory capacity of the 910B, along with improved support for diverse AI workload data.

The U.S. has banned the sale of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips, including the H100 and B200, to China in efforts to limit the country’s technological and military development.

The H100 chip was banned in 2022 before it was even launched.

These restrictions have opened opportunities for Huawei and other Chinese GPU startups such as Moore Threads and Iluvatar CoreX to compete in a market previously dominated by Nvidia.

Paul Triolo, a partner at consulting firm Albright Stonebridge Group, said the latest U.S. export curbs on Nvidia’s H20 chip will likely make Huawei’s Ascend 910C GPU the preferred hardware for Chinese AI model developers and inference deployment.

Huawei began distributing samples of the 910C chip to technology firms late last year and started accepting orders, sources said.

It remains unclear which companies are primarily producing the 910C chip.

China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) is producing some of the chip’s main components using its N+2 7nm process technology, though yield rates are reportedly low.

At least some 910C chips use semiconductors made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) for China-based Sophgo, according to one source and a fourth person.

The U.S. Commerce Department is investigating TSMC’s work for Sophgo after a TSMC-made chip was found in a 910B processor.

TSMC reportedly produced nearly three million chips in recent years matching Sophgo’s design, according to Lennart Heim, a researcher at RAND’s Technology and Security and Policy Center.

Huawei has denied using TSMC-made Sophgo chips.

TSMC stated it complies with regulatory requirements and has not supplied Huawei since mid-Sept. 2020.

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• Huawei to begin mass shipments of 910C AI chip as early as next month

• Chip offers performance comparable to Nvidia’s H100 using dual 910B processors

• U.S. export curbs on Nvidia chips drive demand for domestic alternatives

Source: REUTERS