(Bloomberg) \u2014 Huawei Technologies Co. openly admits its silicon can\u2019t match Nvidia Corp.\u2019s in raw power and speed. So to pack the same punch, China\u2019s national champion is counting on its traditional strengths: brute force, networking, and policy support.<\/p>\n
Huawei on Thursday took the rare step of publicizing a three-year vision for eroding Nvidia\u2019s dominance in the AI boom. Rotating Chairman Eric Xu outlined the technology the Shenzhen-based company envisions in painstaking detail during its annual Huawei Connect conference, triggering wall-to-wall media coverage.<\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg<\/p>\n
The unusually loud fanfare \u2014 emerging a day before US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping held their second phone meeting in four months \u2014 stands in contrast with Huawei\u2019s typically more subdued approach. The secretive company has introduced successive generations of AI products without even a press release after it lost access to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the go-to chipmaker for Nvidia, in 2020 due to US curbs.<\/p>\n
Huawei has also not specified the technology of mobile processors in its latest smartphones in recent years \u2014 industry experts had to break down devices to figure out their technological innards.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the company trumpeted its grand plan with all the drama of an Nvidia launch. Xu took the stage to present the next generation of AI chips, twinned with its upgraded \u201cSuperPod\u201d designs \u2014 a term borrowed from Nvidia\u2019s own playbook that refers to a data center platform that encompasses computing, storage, networking, software and infrastructure management technologies.<\/p>\n
In theory, the technique lets Huawei link as many as 15,488 of its Ascend-branded AI chips using self-developed UnifiedBus interconnect protocol, a new technology also formally unveiled on Thursday.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the rough equivalent of overwhelming an enemy force through sheer numbers, and its prowess is further enhanced by far faster data transmissions between individual chips \u2014 as much as 62 times quicker than Nvidia\u2019s upcoming NVLink144 technology, Huawei claims. Meanwhile, Nvidia\u2019s current-generation NVLink72 technology allows the company to connect 72 Blackwell graphic processing units and 36 Grace central processing units together.<\/p>\n
\u201cHuawei\u2019s willingness to publicly articulate its AI roadmap represents a strong signal of confidence in the resilience of its future local foundry supply,\u201d Bernstein analysts led by Qingyuan Lin said in a note published on Monday. \u201cThese developments indicate that Huawei has secured reliable manufacturing capabilities to support its ambitious AI plans, marking a significant milestone in building a robust local semiconductor ecosystem capable of withstanding global supply chain disruptions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Story Continues <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Huawei\u2019s announcement coincided with a recent plethora of revelations about advances in AI chips led by Chinese firms from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to Baidu Inc. The drumbeat of news is remarkable given most of the country\u2019s firms have for years kept their cutting-edge technology a secret, to avoid drawing Washington\u2019s scrutiny. They\u2019re emerging in rapid succession as Beijing puts chip policy at the center of delicate talks with the US.<\/p>\n
Washington for years has tried to ringfence China, for fear that US technology will further its economic and military ambitions. In response, Beijing has exhorted the country\u2019s tech firms to climb the value chain. The Chinese government recently launched a series of moves targeting Nvidia, including a directive to stop Chinese firms from buying certain components supplied by the company.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, China\u2019s Xi showed that his country is prioritizing support for strategic sectors when he met with a small group of entrepreneurs including Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei. Senior Chinese officials have also repeatedly pledged to harness the entire nation\u2019s resources to speed homegrown technologies breakthroughs.<\/p>\n
Chinese chips generally remain inferior to those from Nvidia or Advanced Micro Devices Inc., both of which get to use the world\u2019s most cutting-edge chipmaking processes offered by TSMC. Bernstein analysts noted that a single next-generation Ascend 950 can only offer 6% the performance of Nvidia\u2019s upcoming VR200 superchip.<\/p>\n
But in recent years, Chinese firms have found innovative solutions to get around power and performance ceilings. Huawei talked Thursday about how it can group or cluster up to a million chips, theoretically bridging that gap.<\/p>\n
To build the so-called super cluster, Huawei plans to ramp up connection and memory access speeds within chips. It claims a self-designed high-bandwidth memory architecture that can beef up a processor\u2019s ability to transfer data between different components. That\u2019s despite US restrictions that cut Huawei\u2019s ties to memory industry leaders like SK Hynix Inc.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Huawei also touted its technology for connecting multiple chips with blazingly fast speeds for sharing data, a core competency for the company because of its long history as the leader in communications equipment for telecom operators. Xu claimed the Ascend 970 slated for 2028 will sport a 4 terabit-per-second interconnect speed. Nvidia currently offers an interconnect speed of 1.8 terabit-per-second.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019re the key details from Huawei\u2019s conference:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen whether any of Huawei\u2019s claims will hold up over time \u2014 and whether their designs can be produced at scale. Huawei surprised the tech world by introducing a 7-nanometer chip to power its Mate 60 Pro smartphone in 2023, but it hasn\u2019t been able to advance beyond that level since. Xu on Thursday also did not elaborate on how the company will manufacture the new chips \u2014 a potentially serious choke point.<\/p>\n
Nvidia\u2019s dominance of the market is such that even AMD and Intel Corp. are relegated to also-rans in the hot AI space. Elsewhere, companies like ASML Holding NV dominate high-end chip equipment. TSMC makes most of the world\u2019s most sophisticated processors \u2014 and is technically barred from doing business with a swath of Chinese firms including Huawei sanctioned by the US government.<\/p>\n
Read: Nvidia, OpenAI Make $100 Billion Deal to Build Data Centers<\/p>\n
\u201cHuawei\u2019s new chips, in our view, are uncertain, since its plan last year to roll out Ascend 910D using 5nm has not materialized due to poor yield,\u201d Jefferies analysts led by Edison Lee said in a note on Thursday, saying that a lack of advanced chipmaking equipment remains China\u2019s biggest hurdle in reducing dependence on Nvidia chips.<\/p>\n
Yet Xu didn\u2019t sound fazed though he did hint at prolonged technological bottlenecks. The executive talked constantly about how Huawei intended to supplant Nvidia\u2019s place in the industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe only by relying on \u2018SuperPod\u2019 and cluster technology can we achieve a breakthrough in the constraints we face in chipmaking process technology and supply endless computing support for our country\u2019s AI development,\u201d Xu told the official Xinhua news agency last week.<\/p>\n
\u2014With assistance from Winnie Hsu.<\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek<\/p>\n
\u00a92025 Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Bloomberg) \u2014 Huawei Technologies Co. openly admits its silicon can\u2019t match Nvidia Corp.\u2019s in raw power and speed.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,4932,18,54125,19,17,292,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-80679","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-bloomberg","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-eric-xu","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-nvidia","17":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}