Huawei will begin mass shipments of its advanced 910C AI chip to Chinese customers as early as next month, according to media reports.
The Shenzhen, China-based firm appears to be attempting to fill the gap left by Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA, ETR:NVD) in China, as new US government export restrictions have barred Nvidia from selling its H20 and other advanced AI chips in the country.
The 910C reportedly matches the performance of Nvidia's H100 chip by integrating two of Huawei's 910B processors into a single package, boosting computational power and memory capacity.
Analysts at Wedbush highlighted that Huawei appears to be readying two new AI parts with the 910C potentially shipping in May and its newly introduced 920 chip on track to ship in the second half of the year.
“With the 910C, Huawei is seemingly following in Nvidia's footsteps in boosting performance by putting two die in a single package and boosting networking capabilities to support larger clusters,” they wrote.
“We are less certain as to the reasoning behind the 920. While it matches up with NVDA's H20, and ostensibly offers Chinese customers an alternative for that now restricted part, we also believe data centers had only been buying the H20, because they couldn't source more powerful silicon.”
The analysts questioned the ability of Chinese semiconductor foundry company Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) to support China’s burgeoning AI demand, given the increase in semiconductor processing requirements.
“But if SMIC can surmount these issues and US restrictions remain in place, eventually new offerings from Huawei could permanently constrict Nvidia's opportunity in China,” they wrote.
Nvidia shares traded down 5.4% on the news.