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One of the most hit companies by the US curbs on chip exports to China seems to be Nvidia. Just after the first set of US curbs, the company tuned its chips to meet the minimum requirements needed to sell its AI chipsin China. However, the US strengthened the curb forcing the chipmaker to reportedly develop three more GPUs. But it seems that the curbs may have given small chip makers in China an opportunity to pitch themselves as alternatives.
According to the US curbs, Nvidia cannot sell its chips that have processing power beyond a certain point. This means that chipmakers who rely on Nvidia processors to power their AI infrastructure will need more chips so that the models can work easily.
Now, as per a report by news agency Reuters, Tencent and smaller AI players are accelerating chip product launches and organising more marketing visits as they hope US rules affect only the most advanced chips, they could still turn clients off Nvidia.
Citing four people familiar with such discussions, the publication said Chinese chip designers including Tencent Holdings are aggressively pitching their AI chips as alternatives to Nvidia.
Huawei is front runner
Huawei has emerged as the front and is said to be making the most progress with its Ascend 910B being compared to Nvidia’s A100 in terms of computing power. Meanwhile, Tencent, which is China’s largest social media and gaming firm, has been pushing services that use the AI inference chip Zixiao it developed with deep learning startup Enflame.
Smaller players in the fray
One of the people said Tencent is pitching its Zixiao v1 variant as a cheaper substitute for Nvidia’s A10, which is used for image and speech recognition AI applications, the report added.
Tencent-backed Enflame, which has an AI training accelerator chip called Yunsui, along with Iluvatar CoreX, which makes the Tiangai graphics processing unit (GPU), have also been promoting upcoming upgrades.
Another player Hygon is also marketing its Shensuan No. 2 GPU, a third person was cited as saying. Startup Intellifusion also announced the Deepedge10 chip to compete with the upcoming H20 chip that Nvidia designed to be compliant with the latest export curbs.
According to the US curbs, Nvidia cannot sell its chips that have processing power beyond a certain point. This means that chipmakers who rely on Nvidia processors to power their AI infrastructure will need more chips so that the models can work easily.
Now, as per a report by news agency Reuters, Tencent and smaller AI players are accelerating chip product launches and organising more marketing visits as they hope US rules affect only the most advanced chips, they could still turn clients off Nvidia.
Citing four people familiar with such discussions, the publication said Chinese chip designers including Tencent Holdings are aggressively pitching their AI chips as alternatives to Nvidia.
Huawei is front runner
Huawei has emerged as the front and is said to be making the most progress with its Ascend 910B being compared to Nvidia’s A100 in terms of computing power. Meanwhile, Tencent, which is China’s largest social media and gaming firm, has been pushing services that use the AI inference chip Zixiao it developed with deep learning startup Enflame.
Smaller players in the fray
One of the people said Tencent is pitching its Zixiao v1 variant as a cheaper substitute for Nvidia’s A10, which is used for image and speech recognition AI applications, the report added.
Tencent-backed Enflame, which has an AI training accelerator chip called Yunsui, along with Iluvatar CoreX, which makes the Tiangai graphics processing unit (GPU), have also been promoting upcoming upgrades.
Another player Hygon is also marketing its Shensuan No. 2 GPU, a third person was cited as saying. Startup Intellifusion also announced the Deepedge10 chip to compete with the upcoming H20 chip that Nvidia designed to be compliant with the latest export curbs.
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