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Huawei made a major AI announcement today with its Ascend 910 data center and cloud targeted chipsets, MindSpore. No one should be surprised about this announcement. Huawei has been positioning itself to be an AI powerhouse for 2-3 years. Its previous products – such as its Ascend Nano and Tiny chips and its AI-embedded Kirin chips have been mostly targeted at devices like smartphones and gadgets. But it's been eyeing a more competitive position, in the market for data center and cloud-based processing, by Chinese government's goal of being a worldwide leader in AI.
How does this announcement Huawei position?
The Ascend 310 is a high-end, 300+ watt system that is certainly not going to make it into the phone or smart appliance (its lower-end Ascend 310 targeted at lower power mostly inference solutions). Rather, it's targeted at the AI training market, where companies like Nvidia have staked out a major claim, where Intel is pushing on the boundaries of its x86 architectures (but mostly for inference rather than training), and where specialty TPU chips from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, etc., want to dominate. When asked about pricing for this chip, Huawei said it would be more competitive with higher-end devices, like those from Nvidia, currently running at $ 10K each. That's clearly a high-end system strategy and will have some major impact on Nvidia specifically.
But beyond just offering a new powerful processor, Huawei is even more likely to be able to change the market by having Google TensorFlow, even though it would indeed support TensorFlow. This is a major game for Huawei, it can be difficult to convince developers to switch. MindSpore is offering functionality (Intel has a somewhat similar strategy with its OpenVINO platform).
No more just a vendor component
In the past, Huawei has been a supplier of more than a full-scale service provider. The release of the Ascend 910 and MindSpore signal has different direction for Huawei. The 910 will be available as a commodity chip to other companies; instead Huawei will use it to bolster its own data center services. Add MindSpore to the mix – a framework optimized for Huawei 's own chips – and it' s clear the company 's complete set of systems for smart vehicles, smart cities, healthcare, and so on. and offers back-end services to make solutions available to the market (e.g., its collaboration with Audi on autonomous cars).
Huawei will push its customers to adopt the full suite of Huawei tech – chips and framework – in order to create a more compelling lock-in. And it has its sights set on a global market (U.S. permitting). Huawei wants to have the best processors for the task (Huawei, Intel, Nvidia, and custom designs from Google's TPU, Facebook, Microsoft) to who can offer a full ecosystem of services. And it has the weight to be able to build a large ecosystem of partners to do so (no AI company, no matter how big, can go it alone in this market).
It's about more than technology
Today's announcement must also be seen in light of the current geopolitical situation. The U.S. embargo has forced Huawei, and indeed many other Chinese companies, to seek full self-reliance from U.S. tech suppliers. That includes capabilities and components it needs for smartphones, 5G network gear, and to support its enterprise and aspirations. ARM Licensing it is a core ARM licensing, it is an ARM core off the supply of tools it needs to design and manufacture its own chips. In the past, Huawei and other Chinese companies would have taken the path of least resistance and acquired existing technology in parallel to their own work. They now see their strategic path as accelerating their own technology to cope (for example, Huawei's back-up plan to use its own Harmony OS for smartphones if Android is closed off to it). And the Chinese government's call for the country to lead in AI only reinforces that path.
Bottom line
Huawei's new products and services – Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba, which are now widely available . They have stepped up their moves to be more self-connecting as a result of the current political climate. And I expect to see an acceleration of announcements coming from China, especially in AI, where the marketplace is just forming and many are jockeying for position. It remains to be seen if Huawei and / or others can build a major player, but it is clear they are pursuing this space with determination.
Jack Gold is the founder and principal analyst at J.Gold Associates, LLC, an information technology firm based in Northborough, MA., Covering the many aspects of business and consumer computing and emerging technologies. Follow him on Twitter @jckgld or LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jckgld.
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