Huawei's new AI chip aims to take on Nvidia's stranglehold despite US restraints

Huawei's new AI chip aims to take on Nvidia's stranglehold despite US restraints

Huawei Technologies is on the verge of trying out its new artificial-intelligence processor, Ascend 910D, that it expects would match or possibly beat Nvidia's high-end AI chips. People familiar with the development revealed Huawei will see the first delivery of the new chip by the end of May and has already solicited China's tech companies to conduct initial technical feasibility trials, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The testing phase is still in its early stages. Extensive trials will be required before the chip can be rolled out to customers. Huawei’s goal is to offer a more powerful alternative to Nvidia’s H100 chip, which has been widely used for AI model training since its release in 2022. Earlier versions of Huawei’s processors, the Ascend 910B and 910C, laid the groundwork for this latest effort.

China’s semiconductor push gains momentum

Huawei’s progress highlights the resilience of China’s semiconductor sector despite Washington’s efforts to restrict its growth, including bans on the sale of advanced Western chip-making equipment. The Shenzhen-based company has become a flagship of Beijing’s strategy to develop a self-sufficient tech ecosystem, standing as one of the few credible challengers to American chip supremacy.

Huawei’s success has been closely watched since its release of the Mate 60 smartphone in 2023, powered by a domestically produced chip that surprised US officials during a visit by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Now, with Nvidia’s H20 chip added to a list of restricted exports to China, Huawei and other local players like Cambricon Technologies are gaining an opening to capture market share.

Huawei expands shipments amid rising demand

Huawei will ship more than 800,000 Ascend 910B and 910C chips to its key Chinese customers, which include state-owned telecommunication operators and private AI developers such as ByteDance, in 2025. Some customers are even interested in expanding their orders of the 910C, especially following the Trump administration's fresh controls over Nvidia's H20 chips.

In spite of setbacks, Huawei and other Chinese companies have been able to make chips that are on par with Nvidia's, albeit usually with a delay of two or three years. To make up for technology limitations, Chinese chipmakers are increasingly employing packaging methods that group several chips together into more powerful units, instead of depending on progress in miniaturization.

Structural barriers persist for Chinese chipmakers

Huawei’s ambitions are tempered by significant manufacturing hurdles. The company remains cut off from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the world’s most advanced chip foundry, and China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International is similarly restricted from accessing cutting-edge equipment.

Furthermore, US bans have prevented China from obtaining key components like high-bandwidth memory units, which are key to high-end AI chips. Without these roadblocks, Huawei officials have turned their attention to designing powerful computing systems instead of pursuing the purest single-chip performance.

Huawei unveiled the CloudMatrix 384, a system that connects 384 Ascend 910C chips, in April. The system was observed, under some circumstances, to outclass Nvidia's top-of-the-line rack with 72 Blackwell GPUs, though the Huawei setup draws a lot more power.
Scale, and not speed, can be China's trump card

Connecting hundreds of AI chips into a stable, high-performing system presents its own challenges, requiring sophisticated networking and engineering expertise. Nonetheless, industry observers believe that Huawei’s scale-based approach could offset the individual performance gap.

"Five times as many Ascends more than compensates for each GPU being one-third the performance of an Nvidia Blackwell," research firm SemiAnalysis wrote in a recent report. They added that although the greater power consumption is a disadvantage, it is not a limiting factor in China's AI market.".

As Washington tightens its export controls, Huawei’s bold new push into high-end AI chips underscores how US restrictions may be inadvertently accelerating China’s ability to build viable domestic alternatives.