Huawei-style ‘chip stacking’ seen as a path for China to rival Nvidia’s GPUs

China is stepping up its chip self-sufficiency push by combining relatively mature chips with new computing architectures in an effort to approach Nvidia’s performance levels, according to a top industry expert.

Logic chips made with a 14-nanometre process, which are generally seen as trailing cutting-edge AI processors, could reach a performance comparable with Nvidia’s 4nm products if they were integrated with high-performance memory and an innovative computing architecture, said Wei Shaojun, vice-president of the China Semiconductor Industry Association.

He made the remarks at a recent industry event in the southern tech hub of Shenzhen, according to Chinese tech outlet ESM China.

Wei, who is also a professor at Tsinghua University’s School of Integrated Circuits, outlined a solution based on “software-defined near-memory computing” that uses three-dimensional (3D) hybrid bonding to stack 14nm logic chips with 18nm DRAM.

He said this configuration could rival Nvidia’s 4nm graphics processing units (GPUs) – currently the industry standard for AI training – while significantly cutting costs and power consumption.

His proposal echoes the technological path pursued by Huawei Technologies.

Unable to produce 5nm and more advanced chips at scale because of US export controls, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei has argued that China could still achieve state-of-the-art performance by “stacking and clustering” chips rather than competing node for node.

South China Morning Post