He went on to say, “Huawei using their customer service capabilities to work more closely with customers in using their chips will help them counter Nvidia’s advantage with their software ecosystem long-term.”
In addition, said Nguyen, “export controls will continue to give opportunities for Huawei to compete, since the export controls prevent Nvidia from selling the ‘best’ version of its products in China.”
In its report, FT stated that Huawei has been sending its engineers to customer sites to help them transfer their training code, written in Cuda, to Huawei’s Cann.
Thomas Randall, director of AI market research at Info-Tech Research Group, said “China is certainly trying to be self-sufficient in advanced chip manufacturing. However, Huawei is suffering yield setbacks in expanding production of its processing hardware, which was originally designed to substitute for Nvidia’s processors.”
Low yields for its processors, he said, “will mean that advanced chip-making will remain commercially unsustainable. This does not mean Huawei is down and out, as they have improved their market share in China — they are just under a continued time crunch to improve their competitiveness.”
And they’re pushing hard. On August 13, a Reuters article stated, “China’s Huawei Technologies is close to introducing a new chip for artificial intelligence use to challenge Nvidia in China amid US sanctions, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing sources.” It said that Huawei was touting the Ascend 910C to potential customers, saying it is comparable to the Nvidia H100.
