Huawei claims AI leadership with launch of Ascend 910 chip and MindSpore

Networking giant Huawei reckons the new Ascend 910 is the world’s most powerful AI processor.

The chip was launched alongside ‘an all-scenario AI computing framework’ called MindSpore at an event positioned as the realisation of the AI strategy announced in October of last year. “Everything is moving forward according to plan, from R&D to product launch,” said Huawei Rotating Chairman Eric Xu. “We promised a full-stack, all-scenario AI portfolio. And today we delivered, with the release of Ascend 910 and MindSpore. This also marks a new stage in Huawei’s AI strategy.”

Huawei chucked around a few datapoints involving things like Teraflops, to support its claim that the Ascend 910 kicks AI ass. It also consumes around 10% less power than Huawei had previously expected it to. “Ascend 910 performs much better than we expected,” said Xu. “Without a doubt, it has more computing power than any other AI processor in the world.”

MindSpore is not the omniscient, Skynet-like AI platform implied by the slightly creepy name, but an AI development platform. Among its priorities are flexibility, security and privacy protection and it’s designed to be used to develop AI stuff across both devices and the cloud.

For obvious reasons anything Huawei announces these days features liberal references to the importance of security and privacy. “MindSpore will go open source in the first quarter of 2020,” said Xu. “We want to drive broader AI adoption and help developers do what they do best.”

At the same event Xu reportedly addressed the impact of all the US aggro on its bottom line. Referring specifically to the consumer business unit Xu said he’s optimistic it won’t be as badly affected as previously feared, but that the impact of US sanctions could still be as much as $10 billion in revenue.