In a move that underscores the rapid advancement of China’s AI capabilities, DeepSeek has begun leveraging Huawei’s latest Ascend 910C chips for inference workloads. This development highlights significant shifts within the tech industry over recent months.
DeepSeek has certainly made waves globally. Recently, their R1 LLM model sent ripples through the U.S. stock market, leading to a staggering $2 trillion wipeout as investors reacted nervously. While the exact computing power behind the R1 model remains a talking point, Huawei’s role has become evident. Renowned tech analyst Alexander Doria shared on Twitter that DeepSeek is utilizing Huawei’s Ascend 910C chips for inference, adding an intriguing layer to the ongoing narrative.
For those not in the loop, Huawei’s Ascend 910C chip is poised as a formidable contender against NVIDIA’s Hopper H100 AI accelerators. Although specific details about Huawei’s chips are still up in the air, it’s anticipated that mass production will begin in early 2025, drawing significant interest from major Chinese tech giants like ByteDance and Tencent. These chips are emerging as a leading option in China, capturing significant market share and gaining broader popularity.
Despite considerable media chatter, there’s a lot of confusion surrounding the computing resources for DeepSeek’s R1 AI model. It’s crucial to note that the widely discussed “$5 million” merely represents operational costs for the final model, not the whole training process. Furthermore, reports suggest that DeepSeek might have utilized over 50,000 of NVIDIA’s H100 chips, signaling that their resource needs align with those of comparable AI models.
Switching to Huawei’s chips for inference is particularly intriguing. Not only are these chips readily accessible to local companies, but they also come with a price advantage compared to trimmed-down NVIDIA variants or black-market alternatives. Huawei is also on track with the development of its next-generation Ascend AI chips, expected to compete head-on with NVIDIA’s upcoming Blackwell AI products, setting the stage for intensified global competition.
