The U.S. has sought to cut China off from the most advanced semiconductors for training AI models. To cope, Chinese companies have turned more to grouping large numbers of less efficient, often homegrown, chips together to achieve similar computing capabilities.
Under Huawei’s AI computing infrastructure, a supercluster is connected to multiple superpods, which, in turn, are built from multiple supernodes. Supernodes, which form the base, are built on Ascend chips, using system design to overcome technical limitations imposed by U.S. sanctions.