Huawei founder Ren remains optimistic despite US curbs
Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei. — Bloomberg
BEIJING: The United States' restrictive policies against China are ironically catalysing China's technological advancements, say industry insiders, referring to the chip breakthroughs achieved by Huawei Technologies and the recent remarks of its founder Ren Zhengfei, who downplayed the impact of US export controls.
In an interview with People's Daily that was published on Tuesday on the front page of the newspaper, Ren said that Huawei has no need to worry about chip challenges.
In the face of external blockades and suppression, 'there is no need to think too much about difficulties; just take action and move forward step by step', he said.
Ren outlined his company's pragmatic strategy for overcoming US technology restrictions, emphasising investment in and relentless execution of theoretical research.
Addressing Washington's warnings about using Huawei's Ascend AI chips, he said: 'Many Chinese chip firms perform well. Huawei is just one of them. The United States overstates our achievements – we're still one generation behind in single-chip performance.'
Ren made the remarks after Jensen Huang, CEO of US semiconductor company Nvidia, told Bloomberg in a recent interview that Huawei's AI chip technology, including the CloudMatrix cluster and Ascend 910C chip, now competes with Nvidia's high-end offerings such as Grace Blackwell and H200.
Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Zhongguancun modern information consumer application industry technology alliance, a telecom industry association, said Huawei's achievements have demonstrated how the US restrictions are accelerating China's progress in chip technology.
'China's semiconductor industry, tempered by years of US sanctions, now boasts stronger prowess,' Xiang said.
According to Huawei's founder Ren, the software-related challenges that China faces are manageable. 'Software is built on mathematical symbols, codes and layers of cutting-edge algorithms. There are no shackles here,' he said.
'The real challenge lies in our education system and talent development. In the future, China will have hundreds, or even thousands, of operating systems supporting its progress across industry, agriculture, healthcare and beyond,' he added. — China Daily/ANN
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