The US lifts Nvidia H200 ban as Huawei’s Ascend 910C threatens to challenge American AI hardware dominance globally
- White House allows Nvidia H200 exports to China for 25% fee
- U.S. officials have weighed strategies ranging from completely banning exports to flooding the market
- President Trump says H200 exports support American jobs and manufacturing efforts
The White House has authorized the export of Nvidia H200 AI accelerators to China, for a fee of 25% per shipment.
The decision was reportedly influenced by Huawei’s rapid development of its Ascend 910C chips, particularly the CloudMatrix 384 system, which integrates 384 of these accelerators.
Inside sources suggest that the US move aims to maintain US dominance in the global tech ecosystem while limiting the country’s proprietary Blackwell and Rubin architectures.
Huawei CloudMatrix 384 performance
Huawei’s CloudMatrix 384 has been described as a “nuclear-grade product” capable of delivering 300 petaflops of dense BF16 computing.
It outperforms Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72 system on some performance metrics, highlighting its raw computing power.
The system also provides 3.6 times more overall memory and more than twice the memory bandwidth compared to the Nvidia platform.
However, these gains come at the cost of nearly four times the energy consumption, raising efficiency concerns.
These accelerators have been deployed in Huawei data centers, where abundant electricity reduces the importance of energy efficiency.
The company plans to increase production of the Ascend 910C to hundreds of thousands of units next year, with projections suggesting millions could be manufactured by 2026.
Despite China developing its own AI instruction set through CANN, Nvidia GPUs remain the preferred choice for many AI developers, including companies such as Deepseek.
Huawei has open sourced its CANN software for Ascend GPUs, offering multi-layer programming interfaces for AI applications.
The move aims to challenge CUDA’s nearly two-decade dominance, encouraging a domestic ecosystem that reduces reliance on American hardware.
Early adoption remains uncertain, as the CANN ecosystem is still immature compared to the long-established CUDA platform.
With Huawei’s progress, the United States is reportedly considering several scenarios, ranging from a complete export ban to attempts to overwhelm Huawei by flooding the market.
The final decision represents a middle ground, balancing national security, global AI competitiveness, and economic interests.
President Trump emphasized that authorized exports would support U.S. jobs and manufacturing while maintaining leverage on advanced AI technology.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang acknowledged uncertainty over whether Chinese customers would fully purchase H200 systems, pointing to a $5.5 billion shortfall in AI chips earlier in 2025.
This reversal therefore appears to be due to the performance trajectory of Huawei’s Ascend 910C, which poses a potential threat to US leadership in AI hardware.
While the export of H200 chips allows the United States to maintain its influence over AI software ecosystems.
It also reflects recognition of China’s growing capabilities in high-performance accelerators.
Via Tom’s material
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