The U.S. government has been imposing similar export controls on China for years aimed at limiting its ability to make advanced silicon, but the controls apparently haven't stopped Huawei from developing competing chips for training large AI models.
The Chinese technology giant, which was temporarily crippled by US sanctions half a decade ago, send samples Its latest AI training chip, called Ascend, will be introduced to customers this September, according to The South China Morning Post. Companies testing Ascend reportedly include TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance Said that training is being given A larger model primarily using Ascend. Baidu, which makes China's leading search engine and has recently developed autonomous driving systems Ordered for Huawei chips In a shift away from US chip giant Nvidia, according to Reuters. (Nvidia declined to comment.)
Export restrictions aimed at curbing China's AI sector first began under the Trump administration. In 2019, there were many emerging Chinese AI companies added to Entity List, which means US companies, including chipmakers like Nvidia, will need to obtain a special license to do business with them. After this, China's leading telecom company and leading smartphone manufacturer Huawei was banned from selling chips made with American technology.
The Biden administration extended controls in October 2022, Limiting exports of cutting-edge GPU chips to ChinaThat includes moves made by Nvidia that aim to curb the ability to train the most powerful AI models of any Chinese company. Rule tightened up A year later the loopholes that still allowed Chinese companies access to some advanced chips were closed.
The impact of US chip restrictions may be difficult to assess, and some experts question whether the controls are prompting China to make more rapid progress in chip manufacturing, reducing its dependence on US companies. .
By the end of 2023, Huawei Mate 60 unveiledA smartphone featuring an advanced chip from Chinese chip maker SMIC. The announcement caused a stir in Washington, as it revealed that SMIC had made substantial progress in advancing its own manufacturing technologies. (Further analysis indicated that Huawei and SMIC were still dependent on Foreign suppliers,
but a report published This week the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, argued that the Chinese government had begun increasing investment in domestic chip manufacturing even before the U.S. government restricted the country's access to advanced semiconductors. It also said China has made great progress in sectors that are not subject to export controls, such as solar cell and electric vehicle manufacturing.