Tech war: Huawei founder Ren's remarks illuminate China's strategy to overcome US curbs
Recent comments from Huawei Technologies founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei regarding US chip restrictions have shed light on China's strategies to overcome Washington's sanctions, according to analysts.
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In a front-page interview published on Tuesday by the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, the 80-year-old Ren expressed confidence that there was no need to worry about China's access to advanced chips, asserting that the nation could achieve computing capabilities comparable to the best in the world, even though its individual semiconductors still lagged 'one generation' behind those from the US.
His remarks came amid widespread speculation on whether China has successfully defied US restrictions by secretly developing a self-sufficient semiconductor supply chain, even though it lacks access to advanced chip manufacturing tools like the lithography systems produced by Dutch company ASML.
Ren's view aligns with those of industry insiders suggesting that Huawei's artificial intelligence (AI) chips, enhanced by improved software and algorithms, can deliver adequate computing power to support China's tech development.
President Xi Jinping shakes hands with Huawei's Ren Zhengfei during a meeting with entrepreneuers in Beijing in February. Photo: Xinhua
Liu Qingfeng, chairman and founder of Chinese voice recognition company iFlytek, said recently that the training efficiency of Huawei's Ascend 910B chips used by his company had surged to 73 per cent of Nvidia's A800 processors, up from just 25 per cent at the end of last year.
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Huawei's initiative to leverage its engineering expertise to address the limits in single-chip performance is evident in its CloudMatrix 384, a comprehensive AI accelerator and rack-scale architecture solution unveiled in April.
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