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Time of India
15 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
China's first gaming GPU struggles to match 2012 graphics card, yet delivers a strong strategic message
When a GPU debut is wrapped in a flag to rival one of the best performers in the market, expectations soar, as in the case of China's first indigenous-built GPU. It aspired to take on NVIDIA's powerful RTX 4060 but only matches up to a 13-year-old GTX 660 Ti. But performance is not the correct indicator to measure how steep the price of sovereignty can be. After officially entering the consumer GPU race this month, Lisuan Technology , a relatively new domestic chipmaker, powered up the Lisuan G100 , its first homegrown gaming GPU . Built on a 6nm process, likely through China's foundry SMIC, the chip has drawn global attention not for its performance, but for what it represents in a world increasingly divided by technology and geopolitics. According to early Geekbench tests, the G100 delivers performance comparable to the NVIDIA GTX 660 Ti, a graphics card first released in 2012. It features 32 compute units, a 300 MHz clock speed, and 256MB of VRAM. On paper, it's nowhere close to modern GPUs used by gamers or AI researchers today, but it may also be for a prototype. But for Chinese tech watchers, this is not a failure; it's a flag planted. Live Events A strategic first step, not a specs war Critics have been quick to mock the G100's outdated performance. But China's ambitions with this chip lie elsewhere. It marks a critical milestone in Beijing's quest for technological self-reliance, especially after escalating US export controls that block access to cutting-edge chips and tools from companies like NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel. What's more significant is that the G100 uses domestically developed IP and is manufactured within China. This reduces dependency on Western chip designers and overseas fabrication giants like TSMC or Samsung, both of which are subject to US pressure. The Lisuan G100 may not win gamers over yet, but it's a foundational move like other Chinese companies toward building an independent GPU industry from scratch. Built under pressure The G100's debut comes as China races to insulate itself from global supply chain vulnerabilities. Huawei's return to the chip scene last year with its Kirin 9000S, a high-end system-on-chip (SoC) also produced on SMIC's 7nm-class node, offered a glimpse of what was possible under extreme constraints. Lisuan's move into the GPU space adds another piece to the puzzle. While the chip's low clock speeds and small memory suggest it's still in an early development phase, its existence proves that Chinese engineers are iterating fast. Analysts and netizens expect that with better drivers, firmware, and scaling support, future versions could close the gap with low- to mid-tier Western GPUs within a few product cycles. A message beyond the silicon Lisuan's G100 is less about serving the current gaming market and more about signaling long-term capability shifts. Consequently, the release will not shake NVIDIA's market share today, but it sends a clear message: China is done waiting. In the face of tightened export rules and blocked technology access, Beijing is choosing to build, however long it takes. Whether the G100 becomes commercially viable is almost secondary. Its symbolic weight lies in its defiance, proof that despite sanctions, blacklists, and geopolitical headwinds, China's domestic tech ecosystem is not standing still. Lisuan aims to ramp up development, improve software support, and bring the chip to commercial scale by late 2025 or early 2026. Much like Huawei's strategy in the smartphone space, the focus now is on endurance, not instant wins. In the high-stakes race for semiconductor sovereignty , the G100 is a starting pistol, not a sprint finish. Economic Times WhatsApp channel )
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Nvidia's Jen-Hsun Huang says Chinese competitors are 'quite formidable' just days after the announcement of a Chinese RTX 4060-level GPU powering up
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. US export controls have increasingly stopped GPUs with certain AI capabilities from getting into China, and just this week, Nvidia stated the US's ban of H20 chips into the country meant a 'multibillion-dollar write-off' for the tech company. Though these protectionist policies from the US are not keeping China from building its own GPUs, as a new China-made GPU has powered up. Lisuan Technology, a Chinese startup, has been developing the "first self-developed architecture and fully independent intellectual property GPU chip", and it turned on this week. This was announced in a recent WeChat post, alongside additional guarantees to "carry out detailed and comprehensive software and hardware testing and driver optimization work." According to Tom's Hardware, the 6 nm GPU chip is targeting RTX 4060-level performance, and is currently titled the G100. Lisuan has reportedly been working on the G100 since 2023, with plans to launch it in 2023, so there is a level of skepticism around whether or not it can actually hit that RTX 4060 performance level. Despite being a budget card from the last generation, the RTX 4060 is still an impressive card, built on the 5 nm process from TSMC. The smaller the process, the higher the density of transistors, and this results in better performance and efficiency. Effectively, it's harder (and sometimes impossible) to get the same performance out of older processes. The G100 powering on is a good sign for the card, but it's the first of many steps before it can actually see a launch into the Chinese market. Further optimising and just plain testing is needed, especially as it's targeting "the needs of desktops, notebooks, graphic workstations and other devices." Huang tells Bloomberg, "The Chinese competitors have evolved" and Huawei, with its new AI chips, has become "quite formidable." Given that the domestic ability to create processes for the G100 is quite limited, it is likely that Huawei's Ascend 920 and Lisuan's G100 are using silicon from the same Chinese foundry: SMIC. This is all according to estimations from Tom's Hardware. According to Huang, 'Like everybody else, they [Chinese companies] are doubling, quadrupling capabilities every year." This is all to build towards a central point that Huang wants "all of the world's AI researchers and all of the world's developers to be building on American stacks". This is reportedly "irrespective of the near-term revenue success that we have", though opening up sales to a bigger market surely can't hurt the hardware giant. Best CPU for gaming: Top chips from Intel and gaming motherboard: The right graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher SSD for gaming: Get into the game first.
