Nvidia's Selloff Might be Exaggerated as Huawei's 910D Can't Match Up
Rewritten Article:
Last week, the tech behemoth Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) found itself under fresh scrutiny as rumors circulated that Huawei had reportedly asked some Chinese companies to put their 910D AI chip—a potential competitor to Nvidia's flagship H100 chip—through rigorous testing.
Here's the lowdown on this AI power struggle:
The Huawei Ascend 910D is rumored to outperform the H100, but it's important to note that this isn't a foregone conclusion. The H100 clocks in at a whopping 2,000 BF16 TFLOPS, a feat few can match in the realm of AI processing. Huawei's earlier Ascend 910C, on the other hand, offers performance roughly equivalent to 60-70% of the H100's might.
Huawei is betting big on the Ascend 910D, touting that it could surpass the H100 in select AI workloads. However, these claims have yet to be backed by independent benchmarks, leaving some skepticism hanging in the air.
Huawei's strategy is twofold. One, they're reckoning on creating massive systems by grouping several Ascend 910D processors, aiming to rival Nvidia's formidable Blackwell and Rubin GPU pods in terms of overall performance. Two, they're optimizing for energy efficiency, parseInting to bridge the gap with the H100. Initial testing samples of the Ascend 910D are expected towards the end of May 2025.
The Ascend 910D promises some impressive improvements over the H100 in certain areas, such as AI task processing speed and energy efficiency at the system level. However, it's essential to keep in mind that outdoing the H100 across all parameters hasn't been achieved yet by the single Ascend 910D chip.
Huawei has been somewhat tight-lipped regarding the Ascend 910D's technical specifications. Compared to the well-documented H100, which boasts 640 4th-gen Tensor Cores, 16,896 CUDA cores, and special AI optimizations, the Ascend 910D remains a bit of a mystery.
Analysts remain cautious about Huawei's ability to surpass Nvidia's performance and ecosystem maturity in the near term. The battle between these titans shows no signs of slowing down, especially given the geopolitical constraints that impact Huawei's chip production.
In summary, while the Huawei Ascend 910D has the potential to challenge and potentially outperform the Nvidia H100 in specific cases, it has yet to outmatch the H100 across the board. Nvidia's H100 remains the gold standard for AI training, boasting higher peak compute power and a more mature ecosystem. Huawei is counting on scaling via large-scale systems and energy efficiency improvements to close the performance gap, with full commercial availability and independent benchmarking still on the horizon.
- In the ongoing competition between Nvidia's H100 and Huawei's Ascend 910D, both chips utilize artificial-intelligence technology, with the H100 boasting a significant lead in terms of peak compute power.
- Huawei's strategy for the Ascend 910D includes optimization for energy efficiency and the creation of massive systems, employing artificial-intelligence technology to potentially rival or surpass the performance of Nvidia's H100 in select AI workloads.
