Huawei’s HiSilicon Ascend 910C is a version of the company’s Ascend 910 processor for AI training introduced in 2019. By now, the performance of the Ascend 910 is barely sufficient for the cost-efficient training of large AI models. Still, when it comes to inference, it delivers 60% of Nvidia’s H100 performance, according to researchers from DeepSeek. While the Ascend 910C is not a performance champion, it can succeed in reducing China’s reliance on Nvidia GPUs.
Testing by DeepSeek revealed that the 910C processor exceeded expectations in inference performance. Additionally, with manual optimizations of CUNN kernels, its efficiency could be further improved. DeepSeek’s native support for Ascend processors and its PyTorch repository allows for seamless CUDA-to-CUNN conversion with minimal effort, making it easier to integrate Huawei’s hardware into AI workflows.
This suggests that Huawei’s AI processor’s capabilities are advancing rapidly, despite sanctions by the U.S. government and the lack of access to
9 Comments
lostmsu
No, it doesn't. Where are the flops/tops?
im3w1l
Where is it sold?
viraptor
The key piece of information is missing though – at what price and energy cost. For the first sample it sounds exciting, but… they'll have to compete with the cost of smuggling Nvidia into the country.
willvarfar
> This suggests that Huawei's AI processor's capabilities are advancing rapidly, despite sanctions by the U.S. government and the lack of access to leading-edge process technologies of TSMC.
So chipping away at Taiwan's "silicon shield" (the defence strategy that an attack on Taiwan would deny China of the chips it needs itself).
Soon China can have a security situation with Taiwan (doesn't really matter if it actually invades, or just has a hotting-up conflict with rocket exchange) to choke off supplies of high-end chips to the West whilst domestic alternatives ramp up?
seanmcdirmid
What about yields? Even if it is 600% faster but yields are 1000x worse, it doesn’t mean much commercially. But if this is an old chip that is easy to fab with equipment China has easy access to, then it is a big deal.
kome
why don't they use Loongson? are they also manufactured by Huawei?
ein0p
The US also has comparable hardware, and it had it for a while: Intel Gaudi. Similar perf characteristics, works very well for inference, costs substantially less than H100. The entire field seems to be drowning in money, so no one gives a shit.
buyucu
This is great news. More competition will be good.
Havoc
That seems good enough to make a China State brute force approach viable