NVIDIA is currently the company best known as the world's leading artificial intelligence (AI) chip manufacturer, successfully shedding their previous image as just a video game GPU manufacturer. At an event in Singapore today, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said his company currently sees Huawei, Intel and several startups as its strong competitors in AI chip manufacturers.
Despite being subject to technology restrictions, Huawei came back with a bang this year with its own Kirin chip to the surprise of America. Ascend's AI 910B chip was bought by Beidu in preparation to replace the chip produced by NVIDIA with China also now investing heavily to develop the local chip industry.
Since the relationship between China and the United States cooled three years ago, various technology restrictions, especially in the export of AI chips, have been introduced by the United States. It forced NVIDIA to produce chips specifically for the Chinese market with reduced performance. Yesterday the US Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo issued a warning to NVIDIA not to try to find a way around the barriers that have been imposed. According to him any efforts to produce new AI chips based on the latest chips for the Chinese market will also be included in the list.