DeepSeek tests show Huawei's AI chip 'Ascend 910C' achieves 60% of the inference performance of NVIDIA's 'H100'

As the United States restricts exports of high-performance chips to China due to security concerns, Chinese manufacturers such as Huawei have been developing domestic AI chips. Tests conducted by Chinese AI development company DeepSeek have reportedly shown that Huawei's AI chip 'Ascend 910C' delivers 60% of the performance of NVIDIA's 'H100' chip in inference tasks.

Power supply: 910C core performance 60% of H100! DeepSeek 已验证
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ETHwNxWl04mqQt04o0zO8g

Huawei Ascend 910C offers 60% of Nvidia H100 performance: Report - Huawei Central
https://www.huaweicentral.com/huawei-ascend-910c-offers-60-of-nvidia-h100-performance-report/

DeepSeek research suggests Huawei's Ascend 910C delivers 60% of Nvidia H100 inference performance | Tom's Hardware
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/deepseek-research-suggests-huaweis-ascend-910c-delivers-60-percent-nvidia-h100-inference-performance

Huawei has been developing the high-performance chip 'Ascend' series since 2018, and announced the 'Ascend 910' as 'the world's most powerful AI processor' in 2019. Since then, as the United States has strengthened its export restrictions on AI chips, it has been reported that search giant Baidu and others have chosen the 'Ascend 910B' as a replacement for NVIDIA chips.

Huawei announces 7nm process AI processor 'Ascend 910', hinting at possibility of adopting RISC-V in the future - GIGAZINE

In 2024, Huawei announced the Ascend 910C, an AI chip that is an evolution of the Ascend 910B. Huawei claimed that the performance of the Ascend 910C was comparable to the NVIDIA AI chip H100.

According to Huawei, the new AI chip 'Ascend 910C' is comparable to NVIDIA H100 - GIGAZINE

Chinese AI media outlet AGI Hunt reported in February 2025 that 'DeepSeek tests showed that Huawei's Ascend 910C delivered 60% of the performance of NVIDIA's H100 in inference tasks.'

According to AGI Hunt, DeepSeek natively supports the Ascend 910C and has a self-managed PyTorch repository, which is a key advantage for Huawei's AI chips, and they claim that further performance improvements can be expected by manually optimizing the CUNN kernels.

Technology media Tom's Hardware pointed out, 'This suggests that Huawei's AI processor capabilities are rapidly advancing despite US government sanctions and lack of access to TSMC's cutting-edge process technology.' Although NVIDIA still holds a significant lead in the area of AI training, DeepSeek's knowledge of hardware and software optimization will allow it to significantly reduce its reliance on NVIDIA.