US Chip Curbs Give Huawei a Chance To Fill the Nvidia Void In China (reuters.com) 23
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. measures to limit the export of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China may create an opening for Huawei to expand in its $7 billion home market as the curbs force Nvidia to retreat, analysts say. While Nvidia has historically been the leading provider of AI chips in China with a market share exceeding 90%, Chinese firms including Huawei have been developing their own versions of Nvidia's best-selling chips, including the A100 and the H100 graphics processing units (GPU).
Huawei's Ascend AI chips are comparable to Nvidia's in terms of raw computing power, analysts and some AI firms such as China's iFlyTek say, but they still lag behind in performance. Jiang Yifan, chief market analyst at brokerage Guotai Junan Securities, said another key limiting factor for Chinese firms was the reliance of most projects on Nvidia's chips and software ecosystem, but that could change with the U.S. restrictions. "This U.S. move, in my opinion, is actually giving Huawei's Ascend chips a huge gift," Jiang said in a post on his social media Weibo account. This opportunity, however, comes with several challenges.
Many cutting edge AI projects are built with CUDA, a popular programming architecture Nvidia has pioneered, which has in turn given rise to a massive global ecosystem that has become capable of training highly sophisticated AI models such as OpenAI's GPT-4. Huawei own version is called CANN, and analysts say it is much more limited in terms of the AI models it is capable of training, meaning that Huawei's chips are far from a plug-and-play substitute for Nvidia. Woz Ahmed, a former chip design executive turned consultant, said that for Huawei to win Chinese clients from Nvidia, it must replicate the ecosystem Nvidia created, including supporting clients to move their data and models to Huawei's own platform. Intellectual property rights are also a problem, as many U.S. firms already hold key patents for GPUs, Ahmed said. "To get something that's in the ballpark, it is 5 or 10 years," he added.
Huawei's Ascend AI chips are comparable to Nvidia's in terms of raw computing power, analysts and some AI firms such as China's iFlyTek say, but they still lag behind in performance. Jiang Yifan, chief market analyst at brokerage Guotai Junan Securities, said another key limiting factor for Chinese firms was the reliance of most projects on Nvidia's chips and software ecosystem, but that could change with the U.S. restrictions. "This U.S. move, in my opinion, is actually giving Huawei's Ascend chips a huge gift," Jiang said in a post on his social media Weibo account. This opportunity, however, comes with several challenges.
Many cutting edge AI projects are built with CUDA, a popular programming architecture Nvidia has pioneered, which has in turn given rise to a massive global ecosystem that has become capable of training highly sophisticated AI models such as OpenAI's GPT-4. Huawei own version is called CANN, and analysts say it is much more limited in terms of the AI models it is capable of training, meaning that Huawei's chips are far from a plug-and-play substitute for Nvidia. Woz Ahmed, a former chip design executive turned consultant, said that for Huawei to win Chinese clients from Nvidia, it must replicate the ecosystem Nvidia created, including supporting clients to move their data and models to Huawei's own platform. Intellectual property rights are also a problem, as many U.S. firms already hold key patents for GPUs, Ahmed said. "To get something that's in the ballpark, it is 5 or 10 years," he added.
What exactly is the concern here? (Score:3)
I see lots of articles saying that the US is worried about China (and by extention the Chinese military) having access to advanced AI. What I can't find is any information on exactly what the Chinese could do with said AI that is so concerning to the US. What exactly is the US so worried about China doing with these advanced AI chips?
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In military matters, there is the concept of detente -maintaining a balance of power... or if you can't keep a balance of power, making sure that your side is the one with more power.
The idea comes down to not letting the Chinese military make technological advances faster than the US military.
To quote Dr Strangelove "we cannot allow a mine-shaft gap!" (watch the movie -its worth it)
As long as the powers remain in balance, neither believes it can "win" a war -so neither starts one.
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We cannot allow a mine-shaft gap!
Every military wants technological superiority. Detente happens because the cost of winning or even continuing the pissing-contest is too high: Reagan maintained nuclear detente while starting a technology pissing-contest, which Russia lost.
Some generals define 'winning' as suffering fewer casualities: Thus North Korea lost, Cuba lost and Vietnam lost, while the U.S. didn't acheive any of their anti-communism/pro-merchantilism objectives. Worse, years of oppression allowed equally oppressive militas to
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As long as the powers remain in balance, neither believes it can "win" a war -so neither starts one.
Balance is not needed. It's sufficient for both sides to maintain counter-value strike capability. As long as neither side believes they have perfected anti-ballistic missiles, then any attack would cost more than one could gain from it, and no major war will occur. Of course they could be mistaken about their own capabilities, which is why ABMs are destabilizing. If nuclear missiles cannot maintain MAD, then countries might turn towards other kinds of weapons that could, such as space-based weapons or biol
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Probably propaganda and fake social media post concerns too. A moderately decent AI can produce fake posts at an alarming rate, and bypass things like captchas to create new accounts, faster than humans can.
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They're going to use them to do photorealistic renders of the J20-C to make it look like they've got a fleet of them ready to take on the US.
If Russia can get enough washing machines together we may get to see a wing of SU-57's in action as well.
Current trade policy reminds me of something. (Score:2)
Unlimited trade with a totalitarian empire never made sense; neither do embargoes that encourage them to become self-sufficient.
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funny you'd say that...
Russia's GDP going up pretty good https://tradingeconomics.com/r... [tradingeconomics.com] while the US is heading into a recession...
Cute (Score:2)
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the one thing the US is not going to ever be short of is hubris...
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Ahmed said. "To get something that's in the ballpark, it is 5 or 10 years," he added.
Which means China will do it in a year or so.
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That people think US can sanction export of a tech and yet Chinese companies are supposed to respect US patents on the same tech and not develop their own versions. Rule of law only works if everyone is on the same playing field. China will simply derecognize patents of US companies complying with export bans. Patents have validity only if recognized by the sovereign which in the case of China is not the US govt.
There was something similar a year or two ago and the legal situation (the WTO rules) was reported to be as you say - if they can't buy it then they are permitted to make it.
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That people think US can sanction export of a tech and yet Chinese companies are supposed to respect US patents on the same tech and not develop their own versions. Rule of law only works if everyone is on the same playing field. China will simply derecognize patents of US companies complying with export bans. Patents have validity only if recognized by the sovereign which in the case of China is not the US govt.
What is really staggeringly puzzling is the fact that some people can't or won't realize that China society (both the government and business) will never respect any IP or patent rights of any US technology and will continually steal it for the advantage of the Chinese. The US government is finally realizing this and is reacting. Whether or not that reaction is appropriate is but for debate. But the fundamental dynamic of the relationship is not debatable. The Rule of Law only works if both societies are pl
Spotted the wife beater (Score:2)
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Currently evaluating Ascend (Score:2)
We're planning to publish compatibility results for CUDA as well.
When I visited China last month I saw much more impressive AI tech than Ascend at Huawei for Chinese only consumption.
And, on systems that scale horizontally, it doesn't matter if Ascend is as fast as NVidia. As long as the TCO matches, just add boxes.