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China’s efforts to match US computing energy in synthetic intelligence are being hampered by bug-ridden software program, with prospects of main AI chipmaker Huawei complaining about efficiency points and the issue of switching from Nvidia merchandise.
The Chinese language expertise big has emerged because the frontrunner within the race to develop a home different to trade chief Nvidia, after Washington additional tightened export controls on high-performance silicon final October.
Its Ascend sequence has turn out to be an more and more standard choice for Chinese language AI teams to run inference, a course of that functions similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT use to generate responses to queries.
However a number of trade insiders, together with an AI engineer at a companion firm, mentioned the chips nonetheless lagged far behind Nvidia’s for the preliminary coaching of fashions. They blamed stability points, slower inter-chip connectivity, and inferior software program developed by Huawei known as Cann.
Nvidia’s software program platform, Cuda, is famend as the corporate’s “secret sauce” for being straightforward for builders to make use of and able to vastly accelerating information processing. Huawei is considered one of many corporations attempting to interrupt Nvidia’s stranglehold on AI chips by creating different software program.
Huawei’s personal workers are amongst these complaining about Cann. One researcher, who declined to be named, mentioned it made the Ascend product “troublesome and unstable to make use of” and work on testing it was being hampered.
“When random errors happen, it is extremely troublesome to search out out the place it comes from resulting from poor documentation. You want proficient builders to learn the supply code to see what the difficulty is, which slows every thing down. The coding is imperfect,” they mentioned.
One other Chinese language engineer briefed on Baidu’s use of the Huawei processors mentioned the chips crashed ceaselessly, complicating AI improvement work.
The Huawei researcher mentioned crashes occurred as a result of it was troublesome to make use of the {hardware}. “It’s straightforward to get unhealthy outcomes as a result of folks don’t know a lot in regards to the {hardware} itself,” they mentioned.
To sort out the issue, Huawei has been sending engineers to assist prospects on web site with transferring coaching code beforehand written on Cuda into Cann, in accordance with a number of folks acquainted with the matter. Baidu, iFlytek, and Tencent are among the many tech corporations which have acquired groups of engineers, these folks mentioned.
Huawei declined to remark. Baidu, iFlytek, and Tencent didn’t reply to requests for remark.
A former Baidu worker mentioned: “Huawei excels at customer support, so after all they’ve engineers on web site at their large prospects, serving to them to make use of their chips.”
Huawei can leverage an enormous workforce to speed up the shift. In line with the corporate, greater than 50 p.c of its 207,000 workers work in analysis and improvement, together with the engineers dispatched to put in expertise for patrons.
“Huawei’s benefit over Nvidia is it will possibly work intently with its prospects,” mentioned expertise analyst Tilly Zhang at consultancy Gavekal. “In contrast to Nvidia, it has a big workforce of engineers to assist resolve purchasers’ issues and get them to transition to their {hardware}.”
Huawei has additionally arrange an internet portal for builders to present suggestions on how its software program might be improved.
After the US tightened export controls in October, Huawei raised the worth of the Ascend 910B, its chip used for coaching, by 20 to 30 p.c, in accordance with folks acquainted with the matter.
Huawei’s prospects have additionally expressed concern about provide constraints for the Ascend chip, doubtless resulting from manufacturing difficulties, with Chinese language corporations prevented from shopping for state-of-the-art chipmaking equipment from the Dutch firm ASML.
Huawei has seen sturdy demand for its AI chips. It reported a 34 p.c enhance in first-half revenues on Thursday, with out offering a breakdown of gross sales for its totally different companies.
Greater than 50 foundational fashions have “been educated and iterated” on the Ascend chip, Huawei govt director Zhang Ping’an mentioned on the World Synthetic Intelligence Convention in Shanghai in July.
iFlytek has mentioned its massive language mannequin has been educated completely on Huawei chips after Huawei despatched a gaggle of engineers to its headquarters in Hefei, jap China, final yr to combine the expertise.
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