Huawei chips are one generation behind US but firm is finding workarounds, CEO says
BEIJING (Reuters) -Huawei Technologies' chips are one generation behind those of U.S. peers but the firm is finding ways to improve performance through methods such as cluster computing, Chinese state media quoted CEO Ren Zhengfei as saying on Tuesday.
The chipmaker invests 180 billion yuan ($25.07 billion) in research annually and sees promise in compound chips - or chips made from multiple elements - Ren said in an interview in the People's Daily newspaper of the governing Communist Party.
The public comments are the first from Ren or Huawei about the firm's advanced chip manufacturing efforts. U.S. export controls since 2019 have prevented Huawei from accessing high-end chips and equipment to manufacture them.
Huawei has since marketed its Ascend series of artificial intelligence chips which compete in China with offerings from U.S. rival Nvidia, the global leader in AI chips.
The U.S. commerce department last month said use of Ascend chips would be a violation of export controls.
Huawei is just one of many Chinese chipmakers, Ren said in the interview.
"The United States has exaggerated Huawei's achievements. Huawei is not that great. We have to work hard to reach their evaluation," he said.
"Our single chip is still behind the U.S. by a generation. We use mathematics to supplement physics, non-Moore's law to supplement Moore's law and cluster computing to supplement single chips and the results can also achieve practical conditions," he said.
Cluster computing is when multiple computers work together. Moore's law refers to the speed of chip advancement.
($1 = 7.1802 Chinese yuan renminbi)
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