Huawei Technologies, the big tech company under the bipartisan crossfire from the United States’ trade war with China since 2019, may soon unveil a new semiconductor for processing artificial intelligence (AI) in devices, an exclusive Wall Street Journal report has found.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, the Shenzhen-based firm began trials of its Ascend 910C processor over the last few weeks. It also noted that the new chip performs similarly to NVIDIA’s H100 processor.
According to the Verdit, Chinese tech firms like ByteDance, Baidu, and others aim to procure the new Huawei chips. The report also noted that Huawei could likely reach 70,000 units, totalling roughly $2bn in revenues.
Despite ongoing difficulties with semiconductor processing triggered by US sanctions and restrictions to components, the firm aimed to ship the first units of the processor in October, the sources concluded.
NVIDIA Annual Report Reveals Trade Woes
The news comes after US lawmakers and regulators blocked NVIDIA from selling H100 processors in the Chinese market in recent months.
Washington cited alleged national security concerns, prompting NVIDIA to manufacture three processors — one being the H20 — with lower compute capabilities to the Chinese market.
However, in the company’s Annual Report, NVIDIA said trade restrictions from the United States governmet had ‘harmed’ its competitive position in global markets, citing restrictions to China, Russia, and the Middle East.
The company said in a statement,
“Our competitive position has been harmed, and our competitive position and future results may be further harmed in the long term, if there are future changes in the USG’s export controls. Given the increasing strategic importance of AI and rising geopolitical tensions, the USG has changed and may again change the export control rules at any time and further subject a wider range of our products to export restrictions and licensing requirements, negatively impacting our business and financial results.”
It also noted that restriction changes could block it from developing replacement products, “effectively excluding us from all or part of the China market, as well as other impacted markets, including the Middle East.”
The statement continued, adding that US export controls could also limit “alternative manufacturing locations” for its operations, triggering operational knock-on effects.
Despite this, current and anticipated regulatory compliance did not “had a material effect” on its capital expenditures (CAPEX), operational results, or competitive position in the global market to date, the company noted.
However, new concerns over compliance with government regulations such as IP ownership, tax, import and export rules, anti-corruption, foreign exchange controls, data privacy requirements, responsible AI use, and others “could increase our costs, impact our competitive position, and otherwise may have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition” and others, the company continued.
According to Companies Market Cap, NVIDIA’s has topped a market cap of $2.681tn, a 119.24 percent change from the fiscal period last year.
NVIDIA stands as the world’s third-largest company by market cap, after Apple and Microsoft at $3.307tn and $3.023tn, respectively.
The news also comes after Huawei circumvented US trade restrictions after developing a 5G-capable chip for smartphones and devices in September lasat year, sparking anger and condemnation in Washington.
Revealed in the firm’s Mate 60 Pro, Huawei’s latest Kirin 9000 chip shocked global markets after Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) co-produced the 7-nanometre (nm) chip.
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