Despite severe US sanctions on exports of advanced AI processors, China is dynamically developing its own technologies, as can be seen from Huawei. This company, utilizing its Ascend circuits, builds a competitive AI infrastructure that, according to analysts, can compete with Nvidia solutions today.
Progress despite limitations
Since 2022 the US has gradually tightened the control of GPU exports and chip production equipment to China. Nevertheless, Huawei, utilizing its own designs and adapting older production machines, massively produces Ascend systems. According to SemiAnalysis, the Huawei server cluster built on these chips can already exceed the performance of Nvidii systems, although it uses much more energy.
The success of local production
The Chinese giant SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing global Corp.) has been producing 7-nanometer chips since 2023, and the efficiency of this technology is constantly increasing. Experts indicate that China's rate of independency from western technology is faster than initially assumed. – “The transition to local solutions and efficiency improvements advancement faster than expected” – says anonymous manufacture source.
Not only hardware – the fight for the ecosystem
The key advantage of Nvidia is not only equipment, but besides developed CUDA software ecosystem. Huawei tries to make up for it by offering its own tools specified as framework MindSpore (30% share in China) and training for tens of thousands of AI engineers. In May 2025, Huawei published investigation confirming that its 718-billion-dollar language model, trained on 6000 Ascend chips, matches the achievements of the popular Chinese model *DeepSeek-R1*.
Chinese marketplace is changing – Nvidia loses dominance
As Nvidia's boss, Jensen Huang, admitted, American restrictions proved to be “fail”. In fresh years, Nvidia's share of the Chinese marketplace has fallen from 95% to 50%, and companies specified as iFlytek, a supplier of speech designation technology, are already full switching to local solutions. – “We have done training (training) and applications based solely on national solutions” – says president of iFlytek Wu Xiaoru.
Future prospects
Although the study Center for strategical and global Studies (CSIS) from March 2025 indicates that Ascend chips are inactive detached from Nvidia in terms of performance in training advanced AI models, this difference is rapidly decreasing. If China keeps the current pace of development, it can become full self-sufficient in the area of AI in the coming years.
Source:
- Nikkei Asia – “Huawei’s AI servers show tech advanced despite US curbs” (23.05.2025)
- Center for strategical and global Studies (CSIS) – “China’s Semiconductor advancement Amid Export Controls” (03.2025)
- SemiAnalysis – “Huawei’s Ascend Clusters vs Nvidia’s GB200: Performance Breakdown” (05.2025)
- Reuters – *’SMIC’s 7nm chip production and China’s semiconductor self-sufficiency push’* (2024)
- South China Morning Post – “Huawei’s MindSpore gain traction in China’s AI market” (2025)
Leszek B. Glass
Email: [email protected]
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