Huawei unveils new AI chips amid Chinese technology ambitions

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, the world’s largest telecom-equipment maker, unveiled an AI chip yesterday that will power its servers, in a push to boost its nascent cloud-computing business.

The move, which will see Huawei use its own chips in its servers for the first time, comes as China is looking to speed up the development of its semiconductor market https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-chips-exclusive/ exclusive-china-look s-to-speed-up-chip plans-as-u-s-tr ade-tensions-boil-sources id us kbn1hq1qp amid a fierce trade stand-off with the United States that has underscored the country’s reliance on imported technology.

China wants locally made chips inside 40 percent of all smartphones in the domestic market by 2025 and is betting billions of dollars on homegrown champions to get there.

Huawei set up its cloud business unit last year and is now trying to gain a firmer foothold in the domestic public cloud market, currently dominated by Alibaba. While the unit accounts for a small part of Huawei’s overall sales, it has flagged the business as a potential growth driver.

The new 7 nanometre Ascend 910 chipset that Huawei unveiled at its annual global partners’ conference will service this unit and is meant for data centres that crunch mountains of data.

The chip will process data much faster than rival products, Huawei’s rotating chairman, Eric Xu, said, adding it was twice as powerful as its nearest competitor Nvidia’s v100.

Huawei also unveiled another chip that can be used to power surveillance cameras. It expects the Ascend 310 to help make AI cheaper for hardware firms by allowing them to buy readymade modules to fit their own products.

The Ascend 910 will be available from the second quarter of 2019 and the 310 is already on shelves.