Subj : Huawei claims its AI chip is faster than Nvidia A100  but Chinese
To   : All
From : TechnologyDaily
Date : Mon Jul 01 2024 18:45:05

Huawei claims its AI chip is faster than Nvidia A100  but Chinese powerhouse 
struggles to match transformational pace of rivals as international sanctions 
force change in design

Date:
Mon, 01 Jul 2024 17:28:47 +0000

Description:
Huawei had to get creative with the design of its Ascend 910B AI chip in 
order to compete with Nvidia A100.

FULL STORY
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Nvidia cant ship its advanced GPUs to China due to strict US export 
restrictions, so Huawei has done its best to step in and fill the void. 

At the recent Nanjing World Semiconductor Conference, Wang Tao, Chief 
Operating Officer of Huawei's Ascend and Kunpeng ecosystem, made the claim 
that Huawei's AI chip is on par with, if not better than, Nvidia's A100. 

According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) , Wang stated Huawei's 
Ascend 910B AI chip delivers 80 percent of the efficiency of an Nvidia A100 
when training LLMs, but "in some other tests, Ascend chips can beat the A100 
by 20 percent." Huawei first introduced the Ascend chip series in 2019, four 
months after the firm was added to the US trade blacklist. Change of design 

Although Nvidia sells lower-grade chips in China, it still claimed 90% of the 
AI processors market in 2023. In comparison, Huawei had just 6% of the market 
but the share could and likely will improve. 

Although Wang insisted there is "not much difference" between the Huawei 910B 
and Nvidia A100 in large AI model training, a data snapshot from CSET (Center 
for Security and Emerging Technology) shows how US export controls are 
hindering Huaweis production. 

The report notes, This analysis of Huaweis first-generation Ascend 910 series 
(2019) and second-generation Ascend 910B series (2022) suggests that despite 
facing export controls, Huawei was able to design a higher-performing chip 
that could be manufactured domestically at SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing 
International Corporation). 

Despite that promising start, CSET adds, Our analysis reveals that the 
performance increase is smaller than advertised; only 75 percent of the 
theoretical maximum performance increase can be attributed to an actual 
increase in hardware performance. Additionally, Huawei reduced the number of 
active AI cores between the 910 and 910B series - likely either due to poor 
yields or limited capacity on SMICs 7nm fabrication process. 

To compensate for the fewer active AI cores, Huawei added an additional 
vector unit in each core for a 25% performance boost and increased the clock 
speed, resulting in a 50% boost. As for the other 25% improvement, that 
appears to be the result of "a change in how Huawei calculates peak 
performance". 

You can read CSET s full findings here. More from TechRadar Pro US announces 
further crackdown on firms selling technology to Huawei UK government and 
others are keeping a very close eye on Nvidia US considering Huawei sanctions 
over secretive chip network



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Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/pro/huawei-claimed-that-its-ai-chip-is-faster-than-n
vidias-a100-but-chinese-powerhouse-struggles-to-match-transformational-pace-of
-rivals-as-international-sanctions-force-change-in-design


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