Huawei introduces new Ascend 920 AI chip to replace NVIDIA chips in China

Huawei has introduced a new chip, the Ascend 920, which is intended to compete with NVIDIA's H20 in the artificial intelligence market, WccfTech reports, citing DigiTimes.

This move was in response to the US ban on exporting NVIDIA H20 chips to China, which created an opportunity for Huawei to strengthen its position. The Ascend 920 is manufactured using SMIC's 6nm process, an improvement over the previous Ascend 910C model, which used 7nm. The new chip is reported to provide 900 TFLOPS of performance and 4000 GB/s of memory bandwidth.

Huawei claims that the Ascend 920 is 30-40% faster than the previous generation, making it potentially better than the NVIDIA H20. However, final conclusions will be made after it is tested by independent experts.

Huawei is also actively developing the AI cluster segment. Its CloudMatrix 384 system, built on the Ascend 910C, demonstrates superior performance compared to leading NVIDIA systems such as the GB200 NVL72.

This development demonstrates Huawei's ambitions to become a leader in AI, especially given the constraints facing NVIDIA. The Ascend 920 could be a key element in the company's strategy to dominate the AI market.