China’s Huawei Technologies is preparing to power up trials of its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, the Ascend 910D, in a bid to challenge U.S. chip maker Nvidia and its flagship H100 accelerator, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
According to people familiar with the matter, Huawei has reached out to leading Chinese tech firms to validate the technical feasibility of the new processor. The Wall Street Journal adds that Huawei expects to receive its first batch of Ascend 910D samples by late May.
Earlier this week, some media reports that Huawei plans to commence mass shipments of its Ascend 910C AI chip to Chinese customers as soon as next month. Despite heavy investment in its AI roadmap, Huawei and other Chinese semiconductor companies have long struggled to match Nvidia’s top-end AI GPUs, which remain the industry standard for training deep learning models—the process of feeding vast datasets to algorithms to improve predictive accuracy.
Washington has repeatedly restricted China’s access to Nvidia’s cutting-edge AI products—most notably banning the H100 from Chinese markets in 2022 and imposing export controls on the ultra-high-end B200 chip and also H20. These measures aim to curb China’s ability to advance its military and dual-use AI capabilities.
%20chip,%20the%20Ascend%20910D,){kind=link}