China-based tech giant Huawei has revealed new artificial intelligence infrastructure meant to help boost compute power, and allow the company to compete with rival Nvidia. The company announced new Superpod Interconnect technology that can link together up to 15,000 graphics cards, including Huawei’s Ascend AI chips, to increase compute power. This announcement took place during a keynote at its Huawei connect conference.
The chips form the basis of the infrastructure, in which a supercluster is connected to multiple superpods, which, in turn, are built from multiple supernodes. Supernodes, which form the base, are built on Ascend chips, using system design to overcome technical limitations imposed by U.S. sanctions. Huawei said its new Atlas 950 supernode would support 8,192 Ascend chips, and that the Atlas 950 SuperCluster would use more than 500,000 chips.
READ: Nvidia, AMD agree to 15% revenue share in US-China deal (
This tech seems to be competition for Nvidia’s NVLink infrastructure, which facilitates high-speed communication between AI chips. The development comes shortly after China banned domestic tech companies from buying Nvidia’s hardware, including Nvidia’s RTX Pro 600D servers specifically designed for the market in China.
“The competition has undeniably arrived and is gaining momentum,” a Nvidia spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. “Customers will choose the best technology stack for running the world’s most popular commercial applications and open-source models.”
Eric Xu, vice chairman and rotating chairman of Huawei, claimed that its forthcoming Atlas 950 supernode would deliver 6.7 times more computing power than Nvidia’s NVL144 system, also planned for launch next year. He also predicted that Huawei’s product would “be ahead on all fronts” compared with another Nvidia system planned for launch in 2027 — and claimed the Atlas 950 supercluster would have 1.3 times the computing power of Elon Musk’s xAI Colossus supercomputer.
“Huawei’s announcement on its computing breakthrough is well timed with recent increasing emphasis by the Chinese government on self-reliance on China’s own chip technologies,” said George Chen, partner and co-chair, digital practice, The Asia Group. While Chen cautioned that Huawei might exaggerate its capabilities, the company’s ambitions “cannot be underestimated.”
Meanwhile, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is also planning to compete with Nvidia, by developing new AI chips. Alibaba’s latest chip is reportedly aimed at competing with Nvidia’s H2O, a product barred from sale in China over U.S. security restrictions that Nvidia disputes. While Chinese chips have yet to match Nvidia’s performance, the company’s absence from the market weighed on its shares this week.