Huawei delays production of its next AI accelerator as Nvidia plans a way to enter China
This month, Nvidia will start production of the B40 AI accelerator. The B40 is made specifically for the Chinese market. Using Nvidia’s latest Blackwell architecture, it is designed to perform at a level that will allow the component to be exported to China under U.S. export rules. With AI sizzling hot, high-profile customers in China have created a new rule for AI chip vendors that says, “Sell only what you already have in stock; if you fail to deliver, you’re in trouble.”
When production does start at the end of this year, SMIC will build the Ascend 910C for Huawei on its second-generation 7nm process node known as N+2. TSMC, without having to deal with U.S. sanctions like SMIC does, builds Nvidia’s H20 GPU chip using its 4nm 4N process node. As a result, the Ascend 910C could be slower and less energy efficient than Nvidia’s H20.
Production of the Huawei Ascend 910C AI accelerator is delayed until the end of 2025. | Image credit-X
AI accelerators and GPUs employed as such use parallel processing which can perform the same calculations simultaneously on many different “pieces” of data. The ability to use parallel processing explains why GPUs, like Nvidia’s GPU chips, are used as AI accelerators rather than CPUs. The latter handles its workloads sequentially which makes it less qualified for AI use.
