Bugs, performance issues hinder Huawei’s AI chips

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China’s efforts to match US computing power in artificial intelligence are being hampered by bug-ridden software, with customers of leading AI chipmaker Huawei complaining about performance issues and the difficulty of switching from Nvidia products.

The Chinese technology giant has emerged as the frontrunner in the race to develop a domestic alternative to industry leader Nvidia, after Washington further tightened export controls on high-performance silicon last October.

Its Ascend series has become an increasingly popular option for Chinese AI groups to run inference, a process that applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT use to generate responses to queries.