Huawei is making significant moves in the Chinese AI market with the introduction of its next-generation Ascend 920 chip, presenting a formidable challenge to NVIDIA. Traditionally a market leader in AI hardware, NVIDIA seems to be facing increasing competition from companies like Huawei, especially after recent export restrictions on NVIDIA’s H20 AI accelerator to China. This situation has opened doors for Huawei to enhance its AI capabilities and solidify its presence in the industry.
The Ascend 920, Huawei’s latest chip, is generating a buzz as a direct rival to NVIDIA’s H20. Details are scarce, but it’s clear that Huawei has focused on controlling its supply chain by keeping everything “in-house.” This chip is reportedly built on SMIC’s advanced 6nm process, improving upon the previous Ascend 910C, which used a 7nm process. The chip boasts impressive specifications, including 900 TFLOPS of processing power, a memory bandwidth of 4,000 GB/s, and a similar chiplet design to its predecessor.
Preliminary claims suggest that the Ascend 920 offers a performance boost of 30%-40% over the previous generation, which potentially surpasses NVIDIA’s H20. However, these performance metrics await validation from independent testing to confirm their accuracy. Interestingly, Huawei’s announcement comes shortly after NVIDIA faced new export restrictions, highlighting Huawei’s commitment to becoming a dominant hardware provider in China.
Beyond individual chip advancements, Huawei is making notable progress in the AI cluster space. Its CloudMatrix 384 system, developed from the Ascend 910C chips, reportedly outperforms NVIDIA’s latest GB200 NVL72 system. This progress underscores Huawei’s determination to expand its AI footprint, while NVIDIA navigates the challenges posed by export limitations and works to maintain its standing in the Chinese market.
