The tech war between China and the United States is getting more serious with restrictions on artificial intelligence (AI) chips being further tightened in the past few weeks. Aware that their access to chips produced by NVIDIA and AMD may be blocked in the near future, Baidu is now reportedly starting to buy AI chips produced by Huawei according to a Reuters report.
Huawei has reportedly purchased 1600 AI 910B Ascend chips from Huawei to be used in 200 browsers. The 910B Ascend is seen as an alternative to the NVIDIA A100 chip. Huawei is believed to have supplied 100 Ascend 910B chips to Baidu so far. Although the number of chips ordered is still relatively small compared to the thousands of NVIDIA chips currently used by Baidu, it is seen as a preparation in case America continues to block access to NVIDIA chips in the future.
AI chip barriers to companies in China are no longer limited to the A100 and A800 chips, but also involve the NVIDIA RTX 4090 video game GPU. Compared to the chips produced by NVIDIA, Huawei's chips do not have comparable processing power. However, the development of AI for local needs needs to continue to ensure that China can continue to compete with other world powers.