Chinese technological giant Huawei e ASCEND 910C chip, which can be compared in performance with the popular NVIDIA H100. The release of a new graphic processor is expected this year.
Ascent 910C will become the successor to the ASCEND 910B model, which debuted in 2022 and is not inferior in speed by the 2020 NVIDIA A100 year. The new chip promises a significant leap in power, which will allow developers to compete with market leaders.
The largest Chinese technological companies are already showing interest in Ascend 910C. Among the potential buyers are Baidu, China Mobile and BYTEDANCE, the owner of the popular Tiktok application. According to anonymous sources, Huawei has already received orders for 70,000 chips with a total cost of about two billion dollars.
However, the development of a new GPU has faced serious obstacles due to US sanctions. Huawei cannot use advanced technological processes, purchase equipment for the production of chips from companies such as ASML, as well as legally import high-speed memory (HBM), critical for graphic processors in the data centers.
In order to overcome these difficulties, Huawei is taking a number of strategic steps. The company is building a complex in China for the development and production of equipment for the manufacture of chips. In addition, it is reported to create an alliance with other Chinese semiconductor companies that plan to establish the production of HBM-chips inside the country.
Nevertheless, current problems can lead to an ASCEND 910C release delay. The release was originally planned for October may be postponed, and the characteristics of the chip can be revised towards the decrease.
The main competitor of Ascent 910c in the Chinese market will be nvidia h20 , released at the beginning of this year as a replacement of the H800, which fell under the ban of the US government. H20 is inferior to H100 in characteristics, having 96 GB of memory HBM3 and the capacity of 4 TB/s. NVIDIA also develops a B20 chip at the Blackwell architecture, and Intel offers Gaudi 3 processors specially created for the Chinese market.
If the Ascent 910c can really be caught with H100 in terms of characteristics, Huawei will receive a significant advantage in the field of graphic calculations. In combination with a large HBM memory, the new processor will become an ideal tool for the development of artificial intelligence and the processing of large language models. Nevertheless, already now NVIDIA has difficulties with competition in the Chinese market, and forced to reduce prices for H20.