For its AI ByteDance chooses Chinese chips from Huawei

1 October 20241 week ago babelfish

To get around US restrictions on the export of advanced chips, such as those from Nvidia, TikTok's parent company ByteDance is designing a new AI model trained on Huawei chips. The article by Giuseppe Gagliano

Recently, leaked documents revealed that ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, is planning to develop a new artificial intelligence (AI) model, trained primarily with chips made by Huawei. According to sources reported by Reuters , ByteDance would have chosen to switch to domestic Chinese suppliers to circumvent restrictions imposed by the United States on the export of advanced chips, such as those from Nvidia, the market leader in the sector.

ALL THE LIMITATIONS OF HUAWEI CHIPS

Huawei's Ascend 910B chips are at the heart of this new development. These chips, already used for less intensive inference tasks, will now be used to train large language models (LLMs), a process that requires enormous computing power. However, lower performance compared to Nvidia H20 chips and limited supply have so far slowed the plans of ByteDance, which has ordered more than 100,000 Ascend 910B chips, but has only received a portion of them.

According to sources, ByteDance's new AI technology, already used in the Doubao chatbot, will be less powerful than previous models, but still represents a significant step in the race for artificial intelligence, especially in a context in which Chinese companies seek to reduce their dependence on US suppliers.

POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

ByteDance's decision to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) model using Huawei chips has several political, economic and technological implications.

Politically, the move is a clear sign of growing global technological fragmentation, accelerated by tensions between the United States and China. Sanctions imposed by the United States on exports of advanced chips, such as those produced by Nvidia, have pushed ByteDance, and other Chinese companies, to look for internal solutions, thus reducing dependence on Western suppliers. This reflects an attempt by China to increase its technological self-sufficiency, in line with the Chinese government's policies to limit the impact of American sanctions and trade restrictions. From a geopolitical perspective, it reinforces the idea of a “decoupling” between the economies of the United States and China, where both seek to build independent technological ecosystems.

ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS

Economically, ByteDance's decision represents a challenge for both Huawei and ByteDance itself. Huawei, which has suffered severe economic blows due to Western sanctions, may find a new opportunity for growth and stability in growing domestic demand for chips. However, the fact that Ascend 910B chips are less powerful than Nvidia's GPUs could slow down the innovation and competitiveness of companies like ByteDance in the global AI market, an industry where chip performance is crucial to the development of advanced AI models. On the one hand, this could push the Chinese market to invest more resources in the development of advanced technologies, but on the other it could create a competitive gap with Western companies, which have access to more advanced technologies.

TECHNICAL IMPLICATIONS

Technically, the shift to Huawei chips for AI inference and training demonstrates how Chinese companies are trying to adapt to an increasingly hostile business and technology environment. However, the inferior performance of Huawei chips compared to those of Nvidia could represent a significant obstacle, slowing the development of cutting-edge AI models, which require large computing capabilities.

SACRIFICING COMPETITIVENESS IN THE NAME OF INDEPENDENCE?

In summary, ByteDance's move can be interpreted as an attempt to resist international economic and political pressures, but it could entail compromises in terms of innovation and technological competitiveness at a global level. The outcome of this strategy will depend on China's ability to rapidly develop competitive technologies that can replace Western ones.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/per-la-sua-ia-bytedance-sceglie-i-chip-cinesi-di-huawei/ on Tue, 01 Oct 2024 06:57:17 +0000.