First up, from The Next Platform, April 23:
The Separate But Equal AI Realms Of China And The US
China has lots of coal but it does not have a lot of GPUs or other kinds of tensor and vector math accelerators appropriate for HPC and AI. And so as it has done with exascale-class HPC supercomputers, it is going to trade density and power efficiency for scale and just get the job done with big AI workloads.
Companies doing AI in China have little choice. Especially with a trade war going on between the United States and China, and Nvidia not able to sell even crimped recent vintage GPUs based on its “Hopper” GPUs into the Middle Kingdom because of US export controls. And to make matters harder for China, those expert controls reach into Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co for chips that get sold into China, and also restrict sales of machinery to make advanced chips using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) submersion lithography to etch ever-smaller and ever-taller transistors onto silicon wafers.
So the Chinese government has no choice but to make do with the accelerators it can design indigenously, etch them in the processes that Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) can bring to bear, and pair them with whatever HBM memory it can get its hands on. It doesn’t hurt to have companies like DeepSeek figuring out ways to have AI models do more with less, too.
With Nvidia and AMD being slapped with new export controls on April 9, Chinese chip maker Huawei Technology’s HiSilicon division has taken the pole position in China with its Kunpeng Arm server processors and its Ascend AI accelerators – the latter of which we discussed in detail last August when the company was putting out hints about its Ascend 910C accelerators. With Nvidia and AMD making the news with yet more export controls on their respective and crimped H20 and MI308 GPU accelerators, that was a perfect time for Huawei to start talking about its next generation Ascend 920 and 920C accelerators....
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And from ZeroHedge, April 30:
'We're Very, Very Close': Nvidia's Huang Warns Of U.S.-China AI Race, Sees Trade Jobs Boom
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang warned Wednesday at the Hill and Valley Forum in Washington, D.C., that the U.S. and China are in a fierce, long-term AI supremacy race, while touting AI’s potential to transform industries and drive a trade jobs boom.
“China is right behind us,” Huang told CNBC’s Squawk on the Street after his forum appearance. “We’re very, very close.” The billionaire tech founder, whose company dominates the AI chip market, framed the competition as enduring. “This is a long-term, an infinite race,” he said. “In the world of life, there’s no two-minute drill or end of the quarter.” Huang’s comments underscore the high stakes of AI development as both nations channel vast resources into the transformative technology. “We’re going to compete for a long time,” he added.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says China is right behind the U.S. in the AI race while at the Hill and Valley Forum. pic.twitter.com/XbVL5iQgFf
— Turpentine (@TurpentineMedia) April 30, 2025At the forum, Huang, in conversation with Jacob Helberg, Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment nominee and forum co-founder, weighed in on AI’s impacted on manufacturing. “Every company that makes things today—whether lawnmowers or construction machinery—will shift from manual to autonomous or semi-autonomous systems,” he said. “When it becomes autonomous, it’ll be software-defined, and you’ll need factories to produce the AI that powers it.” Huang envisioned a dual industrial model: one factory building physical products, another generating the AI “tokens” that drive them....
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Although not picked up in the ZeroHedge article Mr. Huang gave a shout-out to Huawei. Via NBC10, Boston:
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Wednesday that China is "not behind" in artificial intelligence, and that Huawei is "one of the most formidable technology companies in the world."....
....Huawei, which is on a U.S. trade blacklist, is reportedly working on an AI chip of its own for Chinese customers.
"They're incredible in computing and network technology, all these essential capabilities to advance AI," Huang said. "They have made enormous progress in the last several years."....
