Huawei increases its share of the Chinese AI chip market, Nvidia falls to 34 percent
Nvidia's market share in China fell to 34 percent, while Huawei increased its share to 28 percent thanks to its Ascend chips. Huawei is preparing the Ascend 960 and 980 models with up to 384 GB of HBM memory, but according to the company it currently has no plans for the European market.
According to IDC data, Nvidia's market share in the Chinese AI chip market fell to 34 percent, while Huawei increased its share to 28 percent. Other growing domestic suppliers include Alibaba, Cambricon, Baidu, and Hygon – according to the article, a total of nine out of eleven Chinese suppliers are increasing their domestic market share. This development is a result of US and Western export restrictions on advanced chips, which were meant to slow down Chinese technological development but, according to the article, instead accelerated the emergence of domestic alternatives.
Huawei is preparing the Ascend 960 AI chip series and the follow-up Ascend 980. According to the company, the Ascend 960 should achieve a performance of 2 petaflops at FP8 and up to 8 petaflops at FP4, with up to 288 GB of HBM memory and a bandwidth of 9.6 TB/s. The Ascend 980 is supposed to have 384 GB of HBM with a bandwidth of 38.4 TB/s. These chips are assembled into servers and SuperPoD clusters, where Huawei also uses its own networking components and Kunpeng processors. RAM and HBM memory is supplied by the Chinese company CXMT (according to the article, it is up to one generation behind in HBM, but it can handle DDR5), and NAND chips are supplied by the Chinese company YMTC.
The ecosystem also includes the CANN and MindSpore software tools as Chinese alternatives to CUDA and PyTorch. At the same time, according to the article, China is introducing its own restrictions on the export of AI technologies, including authorization procedures for developers of large language models. Huawei's Chief Technology Officer for Europe, Christophe Batiard, stated that the company currently has no plans to import its AI chips and servers into the European market and is focusing on the domestic Chinese market.
Why it matters
It shows that US export restrictions have accelerated the emergence of an independent Chinese AI hardware and software ecosystem (Ascend chips, CANN/MindSpore tools) separate from Nvidia and CUDA, reinforcing the split of the market into two separate technology spheres. For companies outside China, Huawei's statement that it currently has no plans to import its AI chips and servers into Europe is particularly relevant.
Relevant practical impact
What this means
For a business
Companies purchasing AI hardware or services in China or with Chinese partners must prepare for a gradual shift to the Huawei/Ascend ecosystem and CANN/MindSpore instead of Nvidia/CUDA, which could affect compatibility and availability of technologies; moreover, according to its representative, Huawei is not currently planning to import its AI chips and servers into the European market.
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Event sources
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