Huawei is stepping up as a potential rival to Nvidia in the AI chip sector, and Nvidia is unhappy about it.
Upon Huawei's announcement of their AI Chipset, SMCP revealed that Nvidia is focusing on the Ascend 910B chip, which is gaining traction as an alternative to Nvidia's GPUs.
To make matters worse for Nvidia, they are facing export restrictions in China at the moment. It is the same place where Huawei's stronghold is a lot stronger, potentially toppling their dominance in the chipset-making industry.
In the case of Nvidia, it seems their luck is not on the table. Huawei faced limitations primarily due to US sanctions imposed in 2019, which restricted its semiconductor development. These sanctions severely impacted Huawei's smartphone business and constrained its access to advanced chip technologies.
Their AI chip design and production were severely affected, particularly in sourcing key components and technologies necessary for chipset fabrication.
Recently, Huawei's semiconductor capabilities were further restricted by the trade blacklist imposed by the US Commerce Department, per Yahoo News. This, therefore, limited its access to essential resources and technologies required for chipset development and manufacturing.
Fortunately, partnerships with local suppliers like Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) have boosted Huawei's chip development.
Now, Huawei is not the first to try to compete with Nvidia. According to VCPost, last year, AMD revealed their new AI chips that can parallel that of Nvidia. True to their words, their shares surged after the announcement. Unfortunately, they were taken over a few weeks later.
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