BEIJING (Reuters) – A senior executive at Chinese technology giant Huawei on Thursday rejected the idea that a shortage of the most advanced artificial intelligence chips will undermine the country’s aim to be a leader in AI, but said innovation is necessary to solve the problem.
Huawei Cloud CEO Zhang Ping’an’s comments come amid tighter U.S. restrictions on shipments of advanced AI chips to China, including a ban on sales there by companies including U.S. giant Nvidia.
“No one will deny that we are facing limited computing power in China… But we cannot rely on just having AI chips with advanced manufacturing process nodes as the ultimate basis for AI infrastructure,” Zhang said at a forum at the World AI Conference. in Shanghai, a three-day event that began on Thursday.
“If we believe that not having the most advanced AI chips means we will be unable to lead in AI, then we need to abandon this view,” Zhang said.
Huawei, which was placed on the US entity list that prohibits it from purchasing advanced chips from US companies, has developed its own AI chip product called Ascend, which is now used by many companies in China to train AI models .
However, the Ascend AI chip, along with many others from Chinese companies, is considered significantly inferior in terms of computing power compared to Nvidia’s offerings.
Zhang called for innovative approaches that put more focus on the cloud, which he said could help offset the lack of advanced AI chips through innovation in computing architecture.
He also said a converged approach is needed to combine cloud, edge and networks in a way that can be used to reduce energy consumption and improve overall efficiency. Zhang praised Huawei Cloud as one of the leaders in providing such innovative solutions.
(Reporting by Casey Hall in Shanghai; Additional reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Susan Fenton)
