The new trend of the Sino-US core war, Nvidia's special version bids farewell, and Huawei Ascend rises
When the American chip giant Nvidia (NVIDIA) announced that it was developing for the Chinese market"Special Edition"AI chips, the whole industry is in chaos. The news was shocking, but soon these so-called"Exclusive products"It provoked a lukewarm reaction in China's tech community and sparked a heated discussion about domestic alternatives.
Nvidia said it plans to start mass production of the H20 series of AI chips in the second quarter of 2024, emphasizing that it is specifically designed for the Chinese market"High-end green products"。However, after the secret was revealed, the performance of the H20 chip turned out to be not that much"High-end"。Data shows that the H20 has only about 15% of the computing power of the H100, which is between 296 TFLOPS and 2000 TFLOPS. While there are some advantages in terms of memory and bandwidth, this discount seems particularly severe given the enormous computing power required to train large models.
You must know that at present, thousands of people under domestic Internet giants such as Tencent and Alibaba, such as Huawei Pangu, Tencent Mixed Yuan, Ali Token, etc., are facing questions from Nvidia this time"Bloody version"H20, Tencent, Ali and other companies are very calm Nvidia faces this time"Bloody version"H20, Tencent, Ali and other companies behaved very calmly, and they said that the number of orders for Nvidia's AI chips will be significantly reduced this year.
Behind this sudden profiteering, in fact, Chinese enterprises are deeply worried about the security of the first chain. Even if you pay Nvidia in full, there is no guarantee that the chip will go smoothly**. Because the U.S. Department of Commerce's export policy is as unpredictable as the weather, which can jeopardize the procurement process at any time. This has undoubtedly left China's high-tech giants feeling helpless and reinforcing their determination to find alternatives locally.
At this critical juncture, telecom giant Huawei has also joined the fray and launched its own Ascend series of artificial intelligence chips. Huawei's Ascend 910B is based on its own Da Vinci architecture, with 256 AI compute cores, a peak computing capacity of up to 376Tflops, a memory capacity of 64GB, and a power consumption of 400W, which is equivalent to NVIDIA"Special Edition"H20's computing power. version"H20's computing power. It is worth noting that Huawei's deep foundation in the field of network communication technology has enabled Ascend chips to have their own clusters. It is worth noting that Huawei's deep foundation in network communication technology gives Ascend chips their own cluster advantages, which can theoretically achieve more efficient multi-SIM interconnection and improve overall computing performance.
At the same time, local chip companies such as Cambrian, Renchuang Technology, Siyuan Technology, Ali Pingtouge, and Jingjiawei are also working hard to break the monopoly of foreign technology. The BR100 chip developed by Jingyuan Technology has achieved amazing results in just two years, with half the computing power equivalent to H100, but due to US sanctions, the chip has not yet been mass-produced.
Looking back on this complex and arduous road, it is clear that Chinese technology companies are no longer dependent on the interests of foreign giants, but are firmly on the path of independent research and development. Every step forward is accompanied by difficulties and setbacks, but every breakthrough heralds a bright future. Today, the day of mass production of Huawei's Ascend chips does not seem to be far away, which not only meets the expectations of the Chinese people, but also indicates that Chinese's artificial intelligent chip industry has entered a new stage of development.