Huawei Launches Proprietary AI Chipset In Its Ongoing Bid To Reduce Reliance On U.S. Components

Huawei today unveiled in its Shenzhen headquarters a new AI chipset for IoT devices, in yet another move by the company to reduce its reliance on U.S. components. Named the Ascend 910, this chipset comes just two weeks after Huawei pulled back the curtain on its own proprietary operating system, HarmonyOS, which will be used in an upcoming smart TV and soon other smart home products from the company. Almost exactly two years ago Huawei introduced the Kirin 970, the first mobile chipset with a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which brought on-device machine learning capabilities to the Mate 10 series of smartphones. Apple and Qualcomm didn't implement a neural engine into their respective mobile chipsets (the A series and Snapdragon series) until a year later. The Ascend 910's A.I. scale is much larger than the Kirin chips' NPU, as it's designed to handle large data networks and in the near future power smart cities and driver-less cars--in China, at least. It is very unlikely western countries will adopt Huawei's A.I. framework anytime soon, given all the recent allegations made by the U.S. government.