Huawei unveils AI Ascend chips as part of its ‘big bet’ on AI technology

Huawei Technologies, which is one of the world’s largest telecom equipment vendor, has now revealed two artificial intelligence microchips that it says will going to help them in extending the application of AI to “all walks of life”.

The Ascend 910 which is going to offers the “greatest computing density in a single chip”, Huawei’s rotating chairman Eric Xu Zhijun said during the Huawei Connect 2018 conference in Shanghai on Wednesday.

The companion chip, the Ascend 310, comes up with support for the “pervasive intelligence for a fully connected, intelligent world”, a key part of the company’s “all scenarios” AI strategy, according to Xu. The 310 chip is available now while the 910 will going to be released in the second quarter of next year.

Huawei is betting big on Artificial Intelligence development which it believes will going to deliver all the enormous economic benefits to the company and society in general, with AI-driven automation expected to gradually replace the entire man power in a large number of jobs and organizations.

Amid rising trade tensions with the America, Chinese vice-premier Liu He said last month the country was developing AI in an “open environment” and encouraged companies across the world to engage in vast range of intensive collaboration at the corporate and research institute level.

Xu said Huawei’s “full stack” strategy means it can provide AI application developers with “unparalleled computing power and a strong application development platform.”

The business potential which is also going to be behind the AI technology is expected to be huge, with Huawei forecasting more than 40 billion personal smart devices across the globe, 90 per cent of which will use a smart digital assistant, by the end of 2025. By the time as of now 86 per cent of companies across all the industries segment will going to deploying big data or related technologies to solve their problems.