Huawei Challenges NVIDIA's GPU Dominance in China with New AI Chip

Chipping away at NVIDIA's monopoly: How will China's GPU catch-up play out?

Huawei's recent release of its latest GPU (graphics processing unit) has been the talk of the town inside China, with its impact rippling across the global tech landscape. The South China Morning Post reported that several large Chinese companies and internet firms have received samples of Huawei's Ascend 910C chip for testing. This new chip, an upgraded version of the 910B, showcases the Chinese powerhouse's intensified push into the GPU market. Along with other emerging domestic chipmakers, Huawei is making bold attempts to challenge NVIDIA, which currently holds some 88 percent of the global GPU market. Within China, AI chipmaking is critical to the country's high-stakes maneuvers to break free from a US-led chip "chokehold." At the heart of this struggle is GPUs' growing importance, mainly supplied by a few companies like NVIDIA and AMD. Their products have become the backbone of AI, supercomputing, robotics, and autonomous driving, among other technologies. NVIDIA's GPUs have been a huge accelerator of the global AI race, thanks to their features that enable massive parallel-computing tasks.

Huawei is shipping its Ascend 910C AI Accelerator to NVIDIA customers in China

The AI chip market, led by NVIDIA, is crucial to the push toward generative AI and the age of AI PCs and AI-powered smart devices. However, with US trade restrictions on AI hardware, China and its tech giants are finding it increasingly challenging to source NVIDIA chips like the H100. This includes companies like ByteDance, Alibaba, and Baidu. With NVIDIA no longer able to ship its flagship gaming GPU, the GeForce RTX 4090, to the region, there's room for a company like Huawei to step up and develop new AI hardware specifically for the Chinese market. The tech giant has hit the ground running, and its latest AI chip - the Ascend 910C - is currently being tested. According to a new South China Morning Post report, Huawei is seeding its new Ascend 910C chip to local AI giants currently using NVIDIA's H100 AI GPU. The Ascend 910C is apparently comparable to the H100 regarding raw performance, so it's positioned as an alternative chip for China's AI market. Of course, there's a lot more to AI than raw performance. One reason NVIDIA's GPU tech is leading the AI charge is software, CUDA, optimizations, and tools built primarily for hardware like the H100. Another hurdle for Huawei is production; the 910C's predecessor, the Ascend 910B, saw its production affected by US sanctions on critical hardware and tools chipmakers use - including access to HBM chips. Huawei's solution is to develop and manufacture everything in-house, so it will be interesting to see if it can replace NVIDIA as the go-to hardware maker for China's tech giants. NVIDIA won't be sitting on the sidelines, either. The company is working on a new sanction-compliant B20 chip based on its Blackwell architecture for the Chinese market. However, the US government has expressed concerns about chipmakers like NVIDIA and Intel creating bespoke AI chips for the Chinese market, so there's a chance that the guidelines and restrictions will change in the coming year.

Huawei guns for Nvidia market share in China -- Ascend 910C GPU customer sampling begins

Huawei is sampling its latest GPU for AI to customers in China according to reporting by the South China Morning Post. Citing sources familiar with the matter, the report says "large Chinese server companies... and internet firms" have received samples of the Ascend 910C. Although this new GPU is described as an upgraded Ascend 910B, it's been unclear what exactly the chip is made of, ever since a report in August revealed its existence. Interestingly, the 910C may be able to outperform Nvidia's upcoming Blackwell-based B20 according to a prediction made by SemiAnalysis's Dylan Patel. US export restrictions have prevented Nvidia's best GPUs from legally reaching China and thus have significantly slowed down the country's progress on AI, leaving Huawei to fill the void. One of the company's rotating chairmen, Erix Xu Zhijun, is quoted in the report as saying that the GPU embargo is "unlikely to be lifted anytime soon," which gives Huawei the chance to step into the cloud computing market. The H20, Nvidia's fastest GPU it can legally sell in China, is projected to sell around a million units worth a dozen billion dollars according to the report. It's substantially more than the 70,000 Ascend 910C chips worth roughly $2 billion dollars altogether, according to the August report. However, much of the gap is down to the fact that the H20 arrived at the start of the year while the 910C is expected to launch in October, meaning Huawei's competing chip will only be around for Q4. Assuming Nvidia does make around $12 billion with the H20 in China, the average quarterly revenue would be $3 billion, which puts the 910C's expected revenue in the same neighborhood. Huawei can also profit from getting Chinese companies into the Ascend 910C hardware-software ecosystem, according to one of the report's sources, an employee of a server company. "If we buy Huawei's AI chips, then we have to buy other things from Huawei, such as its network solutions and storage solutions, which makes some hesitate," the source reportedly claimed. Given that the H20 and some other Nvidia GPUs are still available in China, Huawei will undoubtedly have to contend with Nvidia's influential CUDA ecosystem, something that has been an obstacle for AMD and Intel's GPU ambitions. Additionally, if the 910C doesn't make substantial improvements over the 910B, with respect to yields, that would also be a significant problem for Huawei, and at minimum would reduce the new chip's profitability.

Huawei challenges Nvidia with new AI chips for Chinese markets

Huawei Technologies has reportedly started testing its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips with Chinese companies - in what can be considered a threat to Nvidia. According to reports, Huawei has sent its Ascend 910C chips to potential clients in China, especially those firms looking to shift away from Nvidia chips. This development comes after the United States prohibited Nvidia from shipping its most sophisticated graphic processing units (GPUs) to China. This move also fueled Chinese companies' efforts to become self-sufficient in the chip race.

Huawei Initiates Sampling of Its Next-Gen Ascend 910C AI Chips, Designed To Replace NVIDIA

Huawei is reportedly sampling its new and advanced Ascend 910C AI chip with the top Chinese firms as the region moves away from dependency on NVIDIA. China is one of the nations at the forefront of AI developments, and with that, the demand for adequate computing power has soared to new heights. Local AI tech giants, notably ByteDance, Alibaba, and Baidu, are looking for every possible alternative to expand their arsenal of computing power, but given the constant revision in the US trade policies, acquiring chips from NVIDIA is no longer a viable option for them. This point has been capitalized by domestic AI chip manufacturers like Huawei, which are now moving towards offering upgraded options to clients. SCMP reports that Chinese giant Huawei has now offered samples of its new Ascend 910C AI chips to domestic AI tech giants, who are also said to be major NVIDIA customers. While we are unaware of the specifics of the Huawei Ascend 910C AI chip, it is said to offer decent upgrades compared to its previous counterpart, and according to an earlier report, it is said to be comparable to NVIDIA's H100 AI GPU in terms of the raw performance. This development comes when NVIDIA is on the verge of witnessing another US trade policy revision, which will likely result in the ban of the firm's H20 AI accelerators, which are designed specifically for the Chinese markets. If this development takes place, it will be a vital time for Huawei to make a stride in the industry, given that domestic tech giants are already "frustrated" by the growing uncertainty surrounding the purchase of AI equipment. Switching towards an in-house AI solution seems the only viable option, and Huawei will likely capitalize on this. It will be interesting to see how the situation pans out for Huawei and the local AI markets, given that previously when Huawei Ascend 910B was in hot demand, tech giants were bothered by Huawei's "confined" production lines, which is why they ultimately switched back to NVIDIA. Given that Huawei manages to cater to the supply issue, we are very well looking at NVIDIA getting replaced.