Huawei founder Ren says state-of-the-art chip performance can be achieved

Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Chinese technology giant Huawei Technologies, said the company’s Ascend chips are still lagging behind those from the US “by a generation”, but state-of-the-art performance can still be achieved by using other tactics.

In a front page interview published on Tuesday with People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, Ren said by using methods like “stacking and clustering, the computing results are comparable” to the most advanced programmes in the world. Huawei has patented some techniques to package chiplets on top of each other to make processors smaller.

It was the first time that Ren spoke about the effects of US sanctions since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022. His comments echoed a view that Washington has failed to arrest China’s technological advances, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).

People visit Huawei’s Ascend AI booth during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on July 4, 2024. Photo: AP

He said China has many advantages in developing AI, including “hundreds of millions of young people” in addition to “sufficient electricity and a developed information network”.

“China’s power generation and power grid transmission are very good, and the communication network is the most developed in the world,” Ren said.

“In terms of software, there will be hundreds of open source software [programmes] in the future to meet the needs of the entire society,” he said.

The interview was published at a time when Washington is ramping up its restrictions on China and Huawei Technologies is in the eye of the storm. In May, the US Department of Commerce published new guidance saying the use of Ascend chips “anywhere in the world” could be interpreted as a violation of American export controls.

South China Morning Post