infotech

Huawei Launches Ascend 920 AI Chip, Nvidia H20 Challenger Amid US Export Ban

Huawei launched its latest AI chip, the Ascend 920, to replace the Nvidia H20 which was banned from exporting to China. The chip was announced a day after US President Donald Trump expanded the ban on April 9. 

The Ascend 920 is said to have performance equivalent to the Nvidia H20 and will be mass-produced in the second half of 2025. This chip is considered to be an alternative for Chinese companies that can no longer access Nvidia products. 

Previously, the Nvidia H20 was a mainstay in China with sales growth reaching 50 percent per quarter even though it was not the most sophisticated chip. However, the latest export ban is estimated to have caused Nvidia to lose potential sales of up to USD 5.5 billion. 

The Ascend 920 chip is made with a 6nm process, has a performance of more than 900 TFLOPs per card and a memory bandwidth of 4 TB/s. The 920C variant intended for AI models such as the Transformer is claimed to be 40 percent more efficient than the Ascend 910C. 

Huawei also introduced the CloudMatrix 384 AI solution which is said to be able to outperform the Nvidia GB200 in terms of performance. However, this solution is known to require higher power consumption. 

This solution has the potential to attract the attention of Chinese companies amid tight export controls. Increasingly tight supervision is also occurring in neighboring countries such as Singapore and Malaysia, as quoted from Tom's Hardware, Wednesday (4/23/2025). 

The launch of the Ascend 920 is considered a strategic step by Huawei. The company has long been preparing to reduce its dependence on foreign-made chips. 

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Tag: Donald Trump Huawei Nvidia H20