Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), the world’s third largest chip-foundry after Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung, is reportedly struggling to increase the production yield of an artificial intelligence (AI) chip for Huawei Technologies.
Since last year, SMIC has been making Huawei’s Ascend 910B, a 7 nanometer chip which is said to be equivalent to 80% of Nvidia’s A100 in terms of AI-training efficiency. Chinese media reports said earlier this year that Huawei could make about 400,000 to 500,000 units of Ascend 910B in 2024.
On June 25 The Information, a San Francisco-based technology news website, reported that Huawei has faced obstacles in the manufacturing of Ascend 910B chip since officials of the United States Department of Commerce urged chip-making equipment makers and suppliers to stop shipping products to SMIC.