Huawei has begun mass production of the AI chip Ascend 910C! This fills the gap left by Nvidia's H20, which cannot be imported into China.

Huawei has reported that it has begun to mass-produce the AI chip Ascend 910C, and the chip vacancy caused by the Nvidia H20, which was previously suddenly embargoed by the United States, saw a timely rain. (Synopsis: Trump backstabbed Jensen Huang!) Nvidia H20 "first talk good is useless" was banned by the United States to lose 5.5 billion magnesium, how to enlighten TSMC at the end of the bright card negotiations? (Background supplement: US customs detained bitcoin mining machine "mistaken for Huawei RF" shouted TSMC electric shock ban, now fully released will benefit mining enterprises) The US government has recently tightened its technology export controls again, and Nvidia's originally launched a reduced version of the AI chip H20 for the Chinese market also needs to apply for an export license for future sales, which suddenly hindered the supply of H20 that was previously free to circulate. In the face of this transformation, China's AI industry urgently needs to find alternative sources of high-performance computing chips. According to Reuters, citing two people familiar with the matter, Chinese technology giant Huawei may begin large-scale shipments of its latest generation of AI chips Ascend 910C to Chinese customers as soon as next month, and some small-scale shipments have even begun. U.S. ban escalates: blockade line from H100 to H20 The U.S. government has continued to tighten China's technology export controls in recent years, with the core goal of limiting China's development of cutting-edge technology, especially AI technology that may be applied to the military field. Back in 2022, Nvidia's then-most advanced AI chip, the H100 and its predecessor, the A100, were banned from sale in China. Subsequently, in order to continue to supply the Chinese market, Nvidia specially designed "downgraded" chips with performance that met US export specifications, such as H800, A800, and later H20. Later, as the US control force continued to escalate, even H20, which was originally considered "compliant", is now facing stricter scrutiny, requiring export licenses on a case-by-case basis, almost cutting off all official channels for Chinese companies to obtain Nvidia's high-end AI chips. The US blockade has unexpectedly created an excellent opportunity for China's local chip designers and manufacturers, such as Huawei, Moore Threads, and Iluvatar CoreX, to fill the market gap. Ascend 910C Highlights: Benchmarking High-end Nvidia According to Reuters, Huawei's Ascend 910C for mass production is not a revolutionary technological breakthrough, but represents an important architectural evolution. The chip uses advanced package integration technology to cleverly integrate two existing Ascend 910B processor cores in a single package. By integrating dual cores, the 910C not only has twice the raw computing power and memory capacity of a single 910B, but also more efficiently processes and supports the large amounts of data required for training and inference tasks of various complex AI models. This design allows for a significant improvement in theoretical performance, with the purported goal of achieving a level of computing comparable to Nvidia's previous-generation flagship H100. Although Huawei officials kept a low profile on the news, calling the relevant shipment plans and performance details "market speculation", the industry generally believes that the launch of the 910C is a key step for Huawei to challenge Nvidia's market position. As early as the end of last year, Huawei provided samples of the 910C to a number of potential large manufacturers for testing and evaluation, and began to accept orders. May it be restricted by the United States again? It is reported that some of the key computing units of the 910C will be manufactured by SMIC, China's largest wafer foundry, using its relatively advanced N+2 process (widely believed in the industry to be equivalent to 7nm grade). While this represents a significant improvement in China's local semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, SMIC's yield on this advanced process is rumored to remain low, which could limit the initial capacity of the 910C. More interestingly, another source pointed out that some of the 910C GPUs may use chips produced by TSMC for another Chinese AI chip company, Sophgo. Because chips manufactured by TSMC were also found in Huawei's 910B processors, this triggered the attention and investigation of the US Department of Commerce, aiming to clarify whether TSMC's foundry business for Sophgo indirectly assisted Huawei, which was sanctioned by the United States. According to Lennart Heim, a researcher at RAND's Center for Technology and Security Policy, TSMC has produced nearly three million chips designed for Sophgo in recent years. This makes the 910C's supply chain issues more geopolitically complex, and it remains to be seen whether it will trigger further U.S. regulatory measures in the future. Paul Riolo, a partner at Albright Stonebridge Group, a lifesaver for Chinese AI, pointed out that the latest export restrictions imposed by the United States on the H20 will essentially push Huawei's Ascend 910C to the foreground, making it the preferred domestic hardware alternative for China to develop AI large language models (LLMs) and related inference deployments. In the short term, the mass production of Huawei's 910C will provide anxious Chinese AI companies with a "hanging medicine" to ensure that they will not completely break the cooking when training and running large AI models, which is very important for maintaining China's development momentum in the AI field. In the long run, the actual performance, power efficiency, maturity of the software ecosystem, and most importantly, the stable and cost-effective continuous supply of the 910C will determine whether it can truly replace Nvidia products and support the independent development of China's AI industry. Related reports "Who cares about Taiwan" foreign tweet was choked: Chip overlord you dare to speak? Trump cancels tariffs, the stock market will turn V! TSMC Law said that it will refute "cooperation with Intel", Wei Zhejia: technology will never flow out, there is no joint venture plan 〈Huawei Transmission mass production AI chip Ascend 910C! Filling the pain of Nvidia H20 being unable to import into China" This article was first published in BlockTempo's "Dynamic Trend - The Most Influential Blockchain News Media".