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Huawei’s founder stated the US was exaggerating the Chinese language chipmaker’s capabilities and performed down his firm’s know-how amid commerce talks between Beijing and Washington that embody discussions of export controls.
In a uncommon interview with China’s state-run Folks’s Every day on Tuesday, Ren Zhengfei stated Huawei’s Ascend chip, the primary rival to Nvidia’s merchandise in China, “nonetheless lags behind the US by one technology”. He added that the “US has exaggerated Huawei’s capabilities — we’re not that robust but”.
Ren’s feedback come as Nvidia chief government Jensen Huang has sounded the alarm in latest weeks on Huawei’s progress with its synthetic intelligence chips, saying Washington’s limits on the US chipmaker promoting to China have given rise to a “formidable” competitor that threatens to undermine American dominance of AI know-how.
The US and China started a brand new spherical of commerce talks on Monday in London, which included dialogue of Washington’s export controls on key know-how.
In the course of the first spherical of talks in Geneva, the US didn’t talk about export controls. Nonetheless, Beijing’s latest use of restrictions on some important uncommon earths and minerals utilized in automotive manufacturing — which threatens to close down manufacturing facility strains within the US, Europe and Japan — has introduced the difficulty into commerce discussions.
Huawei has benefited from Washington’s ban on shipments of Nvidia chips to China as Chinese language tech giants have accelerated purchases of Ascend chips and made preparations to undertake Huawei’s know-how.
Nonetheless, the vast majority of Chinese language AI firms, together with DeepSeek, use Nvidia chips to coach the massive language fashions that energy AI instruments. Home options are more and more used for the much less complicated activity of calling upon the fashions to generate responses in instruments corresponding to chatbots.
Analysts and Huawei researchers have beforehand complained about technical glitches in utilizing the corporate’s chips for coaching LLMs, citing problem in making the chips work collectively and distributing computing workloads throughout them.
Ren on Tuesday hinted the corporate had made strides to resolve these points, saying Huawei may “compensate” for poorer efficiency by cluster computing, which includes linking a number of chips to spice up AI server energy.
“Utilizing clustering and stacking, our computing outcomes are similar to the world’s finest,” he stated.
Huawei’s new CloudMatrix 384 AI server is the centrepiece of its technique to compete with Nvidia by assembling a lot of chips to bolster bandwidth capability and deal with extra knowledge. The server connects 384 AI processors utilizing Huawei’s optical know-how.
A number of Huawei prospects are already testing the CloudMatrix server, working with the corporate’s engineers to resolve points associated to the warmth generated by the massive variety of chips working in unison and the machine’s weight, stated an individual concerned within the testing.
Huawei’s largest problem was creating “an ecosystem” of builders that can use its platform to construct AI fashions, the particular person added. One in all Nvidia’s benefits is its software program platform Cuda, which builders say is simple to make use of.
Ren stated Huawei was investing Rmb180bn ($25bn) a yr on analysis and growth, with Rmb60bn going into primary analysis not aimed toward growing merchandise however making breakthrough discoveries.
He added that China had distinct benefits when constructing out its technological capabilities.
“AI is determined by considerable electrical energy and superior community infrastructure,” he stated. “China’s energy technology and grid methods are world-class. Our telecoms infrastructure is probably the most superior on the planet.”
Extra reporting by Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
