Chinese Tech Firms Reportedly Unimpressed with Overheating of Huawei AI Accelerator Samples

[T0@st]

Mid-way through last month, Tencent's President—Martin Lau—confirmed that this company had stockpiled a huge quantity of NVIDIA H20 AI GPUs, prior to new trade restrictions coming into effect. According to earlier reports, China's largest tech firms have collectively spent $16 billion on hardware acquisitions in Q1'25. Team Green engineers are likely engaged in the creation of "nerfed" enterprise-grade chip designs—potentially ready for deployment later on in 2025. Huawei leadership is likely keen to take advantage of this situation, although it will be difficult to compete with the sheer volume of accumulated H20 units. The Shenzhen, Guangdong-based giant's Ascend AI accelerator family is considered to be a valid alternative to equivalent "sanction-conformant" NVIDIA products.

The controversial 910C model and a successor seem to be worthy candidates; as demonstrated by preliminary performance data, but fresh industry murmurs suggest teething problems. The Information has picked up inside track chatter from unnamed moles at ByteDance and Alibaba. During test runs, staffers noted the overheating of Huawei Ascend 910C trial samples. Additionally, they highlighted limitations within the Huawei Compute Architecture for Neural Networks (CANN) software platform. NVIDIA's extremely mature CUDA ecosystem holds a significant advantage here. Several of China's prime AI players—including DeepSeek—are reportedly pursuing in-house AI chip development projects; therefore positioning themselves as competing with Huawei, in a future scenario.



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[FreedomEclipse]

why cant huawei use their Ai to design a better chip?

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

This is just a load of bunk. I mean, they are fabricating 5nm chips according to the Chinese media, so they can't possibly be having heating issues: Youtube - CCTV claims to fabricate 5 nm chips by hand



Heavy sarcasm aside, what is the surprising bit here? Is it the lies about the technology, the facts that it is working but it is overheating, or the fact that they are actually admitting that their number one producer of smart phones is actually dependent upon western chips...and that even with all the money that's been poured into them Nvidia is still the safest bet for (price gouged) AI components? Consider me utterly floored by fact that these things aren't simply being cranked out on older processes, where they don't have to worry about yield, but can invest into the crap ton of silicon that'll be needed to simply brute force compete against superior western offerings. Could you imagine something that didn't compete with the western model, but swung for insane quantity to overcome the quality issues. Kind of like the US did when they bought up a bunch of PS3's and created a supercomputing cluster.

 

[windwhirl]

Consider me utterly floored by fact that these things aren't simply being cranked out on older processes

At some point they have to consider moving to a more advanced process tho. This experience, as annoying as it may be for all parties involved, will help them in the long run.

 

[sepheronx]

To think they won't overcome this, is foolish. They will. It's just that China races to do it quickly which isn't the solution either. They will develop the necessary lithography eventually. Regardless if people think it's good or bad they do.

 

[wNotyarD]

At some point they have to consider moving to a more advanced process tho. This experience, as annoying as it may be for all parties involved, will help them in the long run.

Unless they somehow circumvent the restrictions on ASML equipment, they can't.

 

[RandallFlagg]

Unless they somehow circumvent the restrictions on ASML equipment, they can't.

Exactly. There is a big difference between a chip maker like Intel or TSMC vs a lithography manufacturer like ASML.

The only lith manufacturer in Chin is known by the acronym SMEE.

Disregarding the last couple years of propaganda coming out of China, the last credible report of where SMEE was with its lith machines came out ~2023.

They had achieved 28nm.

[News] Reports of SMEE Successfully Developing 28nm Lithography Machine, Original Source Deleted Shortly After | TrendForce News

One of the shareholders of Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group (SMEE), Zhangjiang Group, recently posted on WeChat, claiming that SMEE had succ...

www.trendforce.com

Chinese company claims chipmaking tool breakthrough — announces 28nm-capable litho tool

But when it is set to be available in mass quantities?

www.tomshardware.com

 

[wNotyarD]

Exactly. There is a big difference between a chip maker like Intel or TSMC vs a lithography manufacturer like ASML.

The only lith manufacturer in Chin is known by the acronym SMEE.

Disregarding the last couple years of propaganda coming out of China, the last credible report of where SMEE was with its lith machines came out ~2023.

They had achieved 28nm.

[News] Reports of SMEE Successfully Developing 28nm Lithography Machine, Original Source Deleted Shortly After | TrendForce News

One of the shareholders of Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group (SMEE), Zhangjiang Group, recently posted on WeChat, claiming that SMEE had succ...

www.trendforce.com

And even if they got to engineer equipment on level with ASML's tech, using it would be another issue altogether. Even big players like Intel and Samsung Foundries struggle like hell with their bleeding edge nodes.

 

[A Computer Guy]

This is just a load of bunk. I mean, they are fabricating 5nm chips according to the Chinese media, so they can't possibly be having heating issues: Youtube - CCTV claims to fabricate 5 nm chips by hand



Heavy sarcasm aside, what is the surprising bit here? Is it the lies about the technology, the facts that it is working but it is overheating, or the fact that they are actually admitting that their number one producer of smart phones is actually dependent upon western chips...and that even with all the money that's been poured into them Nvidia is still the safest bet for (price gouged) AI components? Consider me utterly floored by fact that these things aren't simply being cranked out on older processes, where they don't have to worry about yield, but can invest into the crap ton of silicon that'll be needed to simply brute force compete against superior western offerings. Could you imagine something that didn't compete with the western model, but swung for insane quantity to overcome the quality issues. Kind of like the US did when they bought up a bunch of PS3's and created a supercomputing cluster.

They have that huge river with that huge dam. Why not just water-cool it?

 

[Bomby569]

china bad bla bla bla

i hope it's a success and more companies in china go for it, we can't be held hostage to the US and their greed.

 

[Red Hood]

Wonder where those Chinese companies are buying AI chips from?