Tencent Stockpiled Sufficient NVIDIA AI GPUs To Final Them A Couple Extra Generations

Chinese language AI companies similar to Tencent have revealed that they’ve stockpiled huge quantities of NVIDIA GPUs to final them for generations but additionally plan to modify to home options sooner or later.

Tencent Needs To Change To Home Merchandise However “Stockpile” of NVIDIA AI GPUs To Final Them A Few Generations

In accordance with a report by Reuters, Tencent has disclosed that the corporate has recognized the potential impacts of the brand new US curbs, which have restricted them from the entry of NVIDIA’s higher-end H800 and A800 AI GPUs. In a third-quarter earnings report, Tencent says that it has sufficient of NVIDIA’s gear to coach its customized “Hunyuan” mannequin, which might final for a number of generations to return. For a sure interval, Tencent can have no impact on its “working mannequin” and the corporate will proceed to develop its current AI-based sources.

We must determine methods to make the utilization of our AI chips extra environment friendly. And we can even attempt to search for home sources for these coaching chips

-Tencent’s President Martin Lau

Nonetheless, Tencent is not utterly “invulnerable” to the brand new US sanctions, because the firm believes that its capability to promote “cutting-edge” cloud companies to purchasers might be put at stake. This exhibits how deep Staff Inexperienced was relating to market penetration, since its AI GPUs had been very important for the business’s improvement, particularly within the case of cloud computing. With a domination of greater than 90% within the Chinese language market, the current US ban can have a big impact in slowing down the tempo of progress of the native industries.

Whereas there are rumors revolving round that NVIDIA would possibly introduce extra Hopper GPUs for the affected markets, the constant disruptions have bothered Chinese language companies to a higher extent, which is why they’re searching for alternate options. Tencent will reportedly be part of the likes of Baidu and different Chinese language companies within the want to search for “in-house” options to counter US affect on the markets, and probably the most viable different is seen as Huawei’s Ascend AI chips, with its flagship mannequin reaching round 80% inference and 70% coaching efficiency in comparison with the NVIDIA’s A100 accelerator. Tencent plans on using homegrown gear for “much less precedence” duties in an try and diversify its product portfolio.

We’ll attempt to see whether or not we will offload a number of the inference functionality to lower-performance chips in order that we will retain nearly all of our high-performance AI chips for coaching functions.

It is going to be fascinating to see how the market evolves since Chinese language tech companies and their AI options are actually the one different for China’s enormous home market which hungers for extra chips. This might apparently squeeze out AMD and NVIDIA from the regional AI markets if the sanctions beneath the Biden authorities proceed to harshen.

Information Supply: Reuters