Huawei has announced two chips, one of them is available right away and another is to be rolling out in 2019.
China’s Huawei has announced to sell servers with own chips in cloud computing push, doubling down on efforts to boost its cloud computing business. The company unveiled two new artificial intelligence powered chips at its annual global partners’ conference, Huawei Connect. Huawei has set up a cloud business unit in 2017 attempting to get a share of the public cloud market in China, which is dominated by Alibaba Cloud.
Huawei’s semiconductor arm Hisilicon already makes chips for smartphones, telecom equipment, and surveillance cameras, though its smartphone chips are only for Huawei phones. Huawei did not disclose what percentage of the servers it makes would use its chips.
The new chipset is more powerful than that of competitor
Firstly, the 7-nanometer Ascend 910 chipset, which the company claims is twice as powerful as its nearest competitor Nvidia’s v100, will be available from the second quarter of 2019.
Huawei also unveiled Ascend 310, a chipset for computing on smart devices, which is available right away. Huawei has been trying to boost its profile in the cloud computing market and has teamed up with Microsoft to offer Microsoft apps on Huawei Cloud.
Huawei’s chips are not for third parties
Eric Xu, Rotating Chairman, Huawei, stated, “Since we do not sell to third parties, there is no direct competition between Huawei and chip vendors,” he added, “We provide hardware and cloud computing service.”
Huawei’s AI strategy for future
Recently, in the AI themed annual ‘Huawei Connect’ event, company’s Rotating Chairman Eric Xu announced Huawei’s AI strategy. Reportedly, with its full-stack AI portfolio, Huawei aims to provide pervasive intelligence to help drive industry development and build a fully connected, intelligent world.
During the keynote, Eric Xu, stated, “Huawei’s AI strategy is to invest in basic research and talent development, build a full-stack, all-scenario AI portfolio, and foster an open global ecosystem.”
Further, he explained, “Within Huawei, we will continue exploring ways to improve management and efficiency with AI. In the telecom sector, we will adopt SoftCOM AI to make network O&M more efficient. In the consumer market, HiAI will bring true intelligence to our consumer devices, making them smarter than ever. Our Huawei EI public cloud services and FusionMind private cloud solutions will provide abundant and affordable computing power for all organizations – especially businesses and governments – and help them use AI with greater ease. Our portfolio will also include an AI acceleration card, AI server, AI appliance, and many other products.”
According to Huawei, AI has become a new general purpose technology and will change all industries and organizations on earth, so, proactive change is the first step towards a better future in AI. At the event, Huawei has listed major changes that will help pave the way in future, such as new algorithms, AI automation, and multi-tech synergy etc.
