Huawei to test Ascend 910D AI chip to rival Nvidia

Huawei Technologies is set to test its new AI processor, the Ascend 910D, aiming to rival Nvidia’s high-end AI products.

The company has approached Chinese tech firms to assess the chip’s technical feasibility, with the first batch of samples expected by late May.

The Ascend 910D is designed to outperform Nvidia’s H100 chip, which has been banned from sale in China since 2022 due to US government export controls targeting China’s technological advancements, particularly in military applications.

Huawei plans to begin mass shipments of its Ascend 910C AI chip to Chinese customers next month.

Nvidia declined to comment, and Huawei has not responded to request for comment.

🔗 Source: Reuters

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ Sanctions as innovation catalysts: the rapid advancement of China’s AI chip capabilities

Huawei’s AI chip development has dramatically accelerated in response to US export restrictions, demonstrating how geopolitical pressure can stimulate domestic innovation.

When Huawei launched its first Ascend 910 processor in 2019, it claimed performance of 256 TeraFLOPS for FP16 operations, which was significant at the time1.

Just six years later, Huawei has progressed through multiple chip generations, with the Ascend 910C achieving approximately 60% of Nvidia’s H100 inference performance according to independent research2.

This rapid development timeline highlights how export controls have intensified China’s focus on achieving technological self-sufficiency.

The progression from the original Ascend 910 to the upcoming 910D represents a notably fast development cycle in AI chip history, showing how market isolation can drive innovation when sufficient resources are deployed.

2️⃣ The economics of AI chip manufacturing: yield rates and production scale

Huawei’s reported achievement of 40% yield rates for its Ascend 910C chip, comparable to Nvidia’s H100 production efficiency, reveals the significant manufacturing advances made by China’s semiconductor ecosystem3.

This production efficiency milestone is particularly noteworthy considering that yield rates directly determine chip cost and availability, which are critical factors for competing with established global players like Nvidia.