US is looking for new ways to create hurdles in the growth of Huawei and the Chinese AI chip industry, but it looks like its latest trick to slow down the Nvidia H20’s sales in China can play wonders for the Mate smartphone maker.
Yes, the U.S. has imposed new AI chip rules where Nvidia may not be able to sell its H20 processors in China. The Trump administration took this step to block advanced semiconductor access to Chinese companies and Huawei allies.
The foreign government thinks that restricting cutting-edge chips in China will prevent it from making advanced chipsets. But Nvidia H20’s exit from the Chinese AI chip market can be a piece of good news for Huawei as it will get more ground.
Nvidia H20 is a China-specific AI chipset. Since the US restricted its firms from supplying any advanced tech to China, the company made such an SoC that complies with the US trade rules and also meets its revenue demands in China.
Major Chinese customers like ByteDance, Tencent, and Alibaba used to rely on Nvidia H20 chips for low-cost AI models. Despite being a less-efficient processor, H20 is capable of meeting inference requirements in AI models.
Although the US authorities are blocking the H20 supply route to China as they believe the chip could be used in supercomputers and could affect US security.
Huawei’s benefit!
ByteDance and other Chinese customers of Nvidia ordered H20 chips in huge numbers. Though the restrictions can turn these consumers to Huawei for its AI solutions.
The Chinese OEM has been working on Ascend 910C chips that can achieve 60% of the inference performance of Nvidia H100. Meanwhile, the tech giant has allegedly developed a new chip called Ascend 920, which can be faster than H20.
Hence, if Nvidia H20 really goes out of China, Huawei will get a chance to increase its foothold in the AI market. That will not only weaken Nvidia’s grip in the Chinese AI market but also become a reason behind Huawei’s growth.
Source: https://www.huaweicentral.com/
