Huawei aims to help build largest AI platform

Writer: Han Ximin  | Editor: Holly Wang  | From: Shenzhen Daily | Updated: 2019-12-02

Huawei aims to help build the world’s largest artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform by working with a major national laboratory, offering its self-developed chipsets as fundamental architecture to compete with Intel and NVIDIA.

The Pengcheng laboratory, a government-owned lab in Shenzhen, released a new AI computing platform Friday called Cloud Brain II with the help of the Chinese tech giant’s recently launched Atlas 900, the world’s fastest AI training cluster.

Huawei launched Atlas 900 in September to help make AI more readily available for scientific research and business innovation in various fields. The cluster is powered by the company’s self-developed chipsets Kunpeng and Ascend processors, competing with Intel’s dominant X86 architecture.

“We hope to offer the world a new choice,” Hou Jinlong, president of Huawei’s Cloud and AI Products and Services, said at the launch ceremony Friday.

The chipset, Kunpeng 920, which the Cloud Brain AI uses for computing, is expected to be faster than the X86 and have 30 percent lower energy consumption.

Our generation has grown up using Intel and NVIDIA technologies, Hou said, expressing hope that the Chinese company’s self-developed chipsets will become the new fundamental architecture for AI computing worldwide.

The Pengcheng lab works with hundreds of researchers from Chinese and foreign institutions in advanced scientific domains like quantum computing. It is also part of China’s first batch of innovative open platforms for developing AI technologies to be approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

China hopes to become a driving force in AI innovation in the coming years, and a batch of individual cities are striving to build tech clusters for technological development by integrating policy support, talents and an innovation platform. Shenzhen is among the top cities that have established the Pengcheng lab to advance research in AI.