China currently has various domestic AI accelerators, the most important of which are the products of Tencent, Alibaba (T-Head), Baidu and Huawei. The last mentioned has probably the most advanced of them on the market, which is not only interesting in terms of performance (320 TOPS FP16), but also in the process. 7nm+, also referred to as 6nm by some sources, is the second generation of 7nm Chinese SMIC production. Its authors did not have Western tools and technologies available for its development, and despite the assumptions of some entities that, as a result of American sanctions, China would stop at the first generation of 7nm production, this did not happen.
HuaweiBaiduAlibaba
(T-Head)TencentmodelAscend 910BKunlunxin Gen 2Huanguang 800Zixiaotrial7nm+/6nm7nm12nm12nmINT8640 TOPS256 TOPS825 TOPS-FP16320 TOPS128 TOPS-120 TOPSmemoryHBM2e
(64 GB)GDDR6SRAMHBM2eTDP400W150-160W276W?released2023202020192021
However, according to TrendForce analysis, Huawei is working on a successor to the Ascend 910B accelerator, which should be manufactured using the SMIC process. There is not complete agreement on the specific process. According to TrendForce, it should be the so-called N+2 process, which is the mentioned second generation of 7nm production referred to as 7nm+ or 6nm. However, according to Tom’sHardware, it is not excluded that it will be a 5nm process.
Its existence was discussed, for example, by the analyst Burn J. Lin or the analyst of SeekingAlpha Robert Castellano, who expects it in 2025. If everything goes well, then in the first half of the year. From this, it could be concluded that if Huawei is preparing a successor to the Ascend 910B for 2024 or the beginning of 2025, it will be designed for a 7nm+ process, on the other hand, if it should arrive later in 2025, a 5nm process is out of the question.
There are opinions that Huawei will tend to prefer the production of its mobile SoCs on the available capacities of new processes. However, that is a matter of supply and demand. If the offer of AI accelerators in China is not sufficient from Huawei’s point of view, AI accelerators will be a priority for it and it will certainly limit its production capacity to them.
2023-12-13 09:03:49
#indications #confirm #5nm #process #prepared #China
