Divided forces: what threatens the US market with the emergence of new Chinese chips

The Chinese company Huawei has created a new generation chip for AI computing called Ascend 910D, which can turn the market of neural network models in the republic upside down. The distribution of experimental images of the chip is scheduled for the end of May. Industry sources call the American Nvidia Corporation the main competitor, a technology giant headquartered in California, whose H100 chip was actively used for AI training and was sold in China as a simplified version of the H800. Whether Ascend AI will be able to fight the Americans and turn the market around is in the Izvestia article.

What is interesting about the new Huawei chip?

Chinese technology giant Huawei continues to strengthen its position in the field of artificial intelligence, the company is working on introducing a new product to the market — a chip for advanced training of AI models Ascend 910D. According to industry sources, the organization is already finalizing preparations to distribute the earlier 910B and 910C models to the first customers, among them government telecommunications operators, private AI investors and developers. Among others, ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, will receive samples of the new chip. Beijing, according to The Wall Street Journal, actively encourages Huawei's activities and gives benefits to AI developers in order to increase sales of domestic chips amid rising tensions between China and the United States.

The 910D has several strengths, Valery Sidorenko, a member of the public council under the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation and founder of the Interium digital agency, told Izvestia. Among them: high productivity and independence from Western technologies. The chip itself is designed for complex AI computing, including neural network training and big data processing. At the same time, the development of the Ascend 910D indicates that China is aiming for technological sovereignty, and Huawei is betting not only on capacity, but also on reducing energy consumption, which is currently very important and on the agenda, the expert noted.

— In addition to energy efficiency, the importance of which is difficult to overestimate, the chip is deeply integrated with the Huawei ecosystem. In fact, it is optimized for MindSpore's own deep learning software platform, and is also compatible with the company's servers and cloud platforms," added Valery Sidorenko.

China is actively fighting for leadership in the technology world and has been pushing manufacturers from the United States for a long time, said Alexey Ermakov, an IT expert at the Department of Esports at the Faculty of Gaming Industry and Esports at Synergy University. Most likely, a significant part of the computing hardware market will be Chinese in the foreseeable future, unless the collective West comes up with effective restrictive measures, the expert added.

What are China's plans for the new technology?

According to Valery Sidorenko, all markets are now objectively entering a deep crisis zone, and there can be no talk of any revolutions and coups. Under the conditions of US customs duties, Chinese companies are forced to look for alternatives, the expert noted. It can be assumed that due to the production of the new chip, Nvidia's share in China will decrease. At the moment, the republic is the fourth largest sales market for Nvidia after the United States, Singapore and Taiwan, according to the company's annual report. Last fiscal year, 13% of Nvidia's total revenue was generated in China, although previously its share reached 17%.

— Due to the duties imposed by the new US administration, all world markets will split along the Atlantic Ocean line in the coming months. And Huawei's move is an attempt to take the place of American chip manufacturers in this market segment that has been vacated due to duties. Choosing partners like TikTok seems as logical as possible. The platform has strong algorithms and recommendation systems, and ByteDance remains one of the largest players in the AI industry," said Valery Sidorenko, a member of the public council under the Ministry of Finance.

It is still premature to talk about the capabilities of the new processor, as Huawei is only preparing to test it, said Timofey Voronin, Deputy Director for Technology Transfer at the NTI Competence Center for Big Data Storage and Analysis Technologies at Lomonosov Moscow State University. But we can already say that Chinese solutions significantly strengthen the republic's position in the AI race with the United States. As a good example, the expert recalled the DeepSeek language model, the launch of which demonstrated high performance at significantly lower costs for AI training.

— The main strength of the 910D is that it is made in China and is suitable for AI work and training. Before that, Nvidia-only chips were used for this. Now the chip will be experimentally implemented in many local companies that develop neural networks. This year, it is planned to supply more than 800 thousand chips, after which Huawei will be able to use the collected statistics to demonstrate the performance of the devices," added Anton Averyanov, CEO of the ST IT group of companies, TechNet NTI market expert.

The 910D's strengths include price and accessibility. In view of the trade war, China will support the release of the new chip at the government level, as this is their priority. And they do not want to hand over the markets to Nvidia, said Alexey Belov, market expert at NTI Neuronet. According to him, the new technology will give battle to the American Nvidia, as there are more resources in China. There is only one question — will they be abandoned, will they be sent to compete or will they prefer to keep the balance.