Is the US afraid of Huawei? Reports point to the Ascend 910C accelerators performance to explain the surprising reversal of Nvidia's H200 AI GPU ban on China

Date:
Fri, 12 Dec 2025 22:30:00 +0000

Description:
The US permits Nvidia H200 exports to China as Huaweis Ascend 910C chips demonstrate competitive AI compute performance and potential.

FULL STORY ======================================================================The White House allows Nvidia H200 exports to China with a 25% fee US officials evaluated strategies ranging from full export bans to market flooding President Trump says H200 exports support American jobs and manufacturing efforts

The White House has authorized the export of Nvidia H200 AI accelerators to China , attaching a 25% fee per shipment.

According to reports, the decision was influenced by Huaweis rapid
development of its Ascend 910C chips, particularly the CloudMatrix 384
system, which integrates 384 of these accelerators.

Internal sources suggest that the US move aims to maintain American dominance in the global tech ecosystem while keeping the countrys proprietary Blackwell and Rubin architectures restricted. Huaweis CloudMatrix 384 performance

Huaweis CloudMatrix 384 has been described as a nuclear-level product capable of delivering 300 petaflops of dense BF16 compute.

It surpasses Nvidias GB200 NVL72 system on certain performance metrics, highlighting its raw computational power.

The system also provides 3.6 times more aggregate memory and over twice the memory bandwidth compared to Nvidias platform.

However, these gains come at the cost of nearly four times the power consumption, raising efficiency concerns.

These accelerators have been deployed in Huawei data centers , where abundant electricity reduces the importance of energy efficiency.

The company plans to scale Ascend 910C production to hundreds of thousands of units next year, with projections suggesting millions could be manufactured
by 2026.

Despite Chinas development of its own AI instruction set through CANN, Nvidia GPUs remain the preferred choice for many AI developers, including companies such as Deepseek.

Huawei has made its CANN software for Ascend GPUs open source , offering multi-layer programming interfaces for AI applications.

The move aims to challenge CUDAs nearly two-decade dominance, encouraging a domestic ecosystem that reduces reliance on American hardware.

Early adoption remains uncertain, as CANNs ecosystem is still immature compared to the long-established CUDA platform.

With the progress of Huawei, the US allegedly reviewed multiple scenarios, ranging from full export bans to attempts to overwhelm Huawei by flooding the market.

The final decision represents a middle ground, balancing national security, global AI competitiveness, and economic interests.

President Trump emphasized that authorized exports will support American jobs and manufacturing while retaining leverage over advanced AI technology.

Nvidias CEO, Jensen Huang, acknowledged uncertainty over whether Chinese customers would fully purchase H200 systems, noting a $5.5 billion revenue shortfall in AI chips earlier in 2025.

The reversal, therefore, appears to be driven by Huaweis Ascend 910C performance trajectory, which poses a potential threat to US leadership in AI hardware.

While exporting H200 chips allows the US to maintain influence over AI software ecosystems.

It also reflects the recognition of Chinas growing capabilities in high-performance accelerators.

Via Tom's Hardware

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/is-the-us-afraid-of-huawei-reports-hint-at-the-a scend-910c-accelerator-performance-to-justify-the-surprising-reversal-of-nvidi as-h200-ai-gpu-ban-on-china


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