Overseas media: Huawei's chips lag behind American peers by a generation

In an interview with the People's Daily, Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of Huawei, said that Huawei's chips are one generation behind those of its American competitors, but the company is using methods like cluster computing to meet demand.

Ren disclosed in the interview that Huawei invests approximately 180 billion yuan annually in research and development, of which "about 60 billion is for basic theoretical research, without performance evaluation; around 120 billion is invested in product development, which requires performance evaluation." "Without theory, there can be no breakthrough, and we won't catch up with the U.S.," he added.

When discussing the U.S. export control policies towards China, Ren stated, "Our single-chip technology still lags behind the U.S. by one generation. We use mathematics to compensate for physics, non-Moore's Law to complement Moore's Law, and cluster computing to make up for single-chip limitations, achieving practical results." He also emphasized that software technology does not constitute a bottleneck, saying, "The chip issue doesn't need to be overly worried about; using methods like superposition and clustering, the computational results can reach parity with the most advanced levels."

The interview published by the People's Daily coincides with a new round of trade negotiations between China and the U.S. in London, where one of the focal points may very well be the U.S.'s policy on export restrictions for high-tech products to China.

Since 2019, the U.S. has implemented a series of export control measures aimed at curbing China's technological advancement and military enhancement, restricting high-end chips and related manufacturing equipment for Chinese companies like Huawei.

Rarely did Ren Zhengfei previously discuss Huawei's chip technology. In the interview, he said, "Many companies in China are making chips, and many are doing quite well; Huawei is just one of them. The U.S. overstates Huawei's achievements; we are not as advanced as they claim. We must strive harder to reach their evaluations."

After the U.S. government imposed comprehensive pressure on Huawei's chips in 2019, Huawei launched the Ascend series of AI chips to compete with American leader NVIDIA. Although NVIDIA's AI chips perform stronger than Huawei's Ascend series, the U.S. government banned NVIDIA from selling the most advanced chips to China, causing its market share to plummet and allowing Huawei to seize it. Huang Renxun, CEO of NVIDIA, said in May that the U.S.'s export control on AI chips to China was "a failure," as Chinese enterprises used domestically developed cutting-edge technologies; due to the export control, NVIDIA had already lost "billions of dollars."

This April, Huawei unveiled the "AI CloudMatrix 384" system, which combines 384 Ascend 910C chips into a cluster, enabling businesses to use it for training AI models. Analysts believe that this system surpasses NVIDIA's GB200 NVL72 system in some metrics. In an article in April, Patel, founder of semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis, stated that this indicates Huawei has acquired the capability to surpass NVIDIA's AI systems.

In mid-May, the U.S. Commerce Department warned global enterprises against using high-tech AI semiconductors manufactured in China, particularly Huawei's Ascend chips, warning that they could face violations of U.S. export controls, with "maximum penalties including imprisonment, fines, loss of export rights, or other restrictions." The U.S. Commerce Department claimed that all such chips designed by companies located in China, headquartered in China, or whose ultimate parent company is headquartered in China are "likely either designed using certain U.S. software or technology, or produced using semiconductor manufacturing equipment that is a direct product of certain U.S.-origin software or technology, or both," thereby potentially violating U.S. export control policies. China's Ministry of Commerce criticized this as "typical unilateral bullying and protectionism, severely disrupting the stability of the global semiconductor supply chain."

Source: Reuters, People's Daily, etc.

Original source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/1834601802430794/

Disclaimer: This article solely represents the author's personal views.