Huawei Technologies, a key player in Beijing’s strategy for self-reliance in technology, is being lauded as China’s best chance to replace Nvidia’s artificial intelligence (AI) chips, after Washington tightened restrictions on what the US company can sell to Chinese customers. The Huawei Ascend 920 is expected to begin mass production in the second half of this year, with analysts saying it could become an alternative to Nvidia’s H20 AI chips, which were recently subjected to export restrictions. China has high hopes that Huawei’s Ascend series will be a viable Nvidia alternative, as the chips exhibit strong performance and come with an ecosystem to support their use in AI computing, said Gao Chengfei, director of Guangzhou-based consulting firm Tiaoyuan Huawei has always been very secretive about its chip plans, so it was no surprise it responded with “no comment” when contacted by SCMP for further information on the mass production timetable. A Chinese blogger, who described himself as an engineer at a Chinese EDA firm, said in a WeChat post that the Ascend 920 uses the 6-nm process node, a step up from the 7-nm node used in the Ascend 910 series. Most of what we know about Huawei’s chips comes from independent tear down reports, like the one that said the advanced 7-nm processors used in its Pura 70 smartphones were fabbed at China’s top foundry, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC). So it is only logical to assume that SMIC also fabricates Huawei’s AI chips, because Huawei cannot get them made at foreign foundries like TSMC due to US sanctions. And China’s No 2 foundry Hua Hong Semiconductor can only handle mature nodes from 55-nm to 28-nm. SMIC is also subject to US sanctions, which curtail its ability to ramp up wafer production, but also increases the cost at sub-10-nm. So the million dollar question is: how can SMIC handle all of Huawei's chip fabrication needs – smartphones and AI chips – and do so at commercially viable costs? https://www.scmp.com/tech.. #🇨🇳 ChinA.I. 🤖🧠🦾🤖