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As the U.S.-China chip war heats up, China is going all-in on AI ASICs, with Huawei’s flagship chips stealing the spotlight. But with rumors of the Ascend 920 entering mass production in 2H25, Commercial Times raises doubts about SMIC’s N+3 process and the chip’s access to top-tier HBM.
According to Chinese media outlet mydrivers, Huawei’s upcoming AI chip, the Ascend 920, could serve as a potential replacement for NVIDIA’s H20, which now faces indefinite export restrictions to China. Market chatter suggests the chip will be built using SMIC’s N+3 process and paired with HBM3 memory.
But according to Commercial Times, SMIC’s N+3 process—despite claiming similar transistor density to TSMC’s 6nm—still lacks the backup of EUV tools and relies on DUV multi-patterning, which likely drags down yield and efficiency, making it hard to match U.S. AI chips on cost.
Under this scenario, China’s chip industry may turn to AI algorithms to help ease the hardware gap, according to Commercial Times. A previous report from Wccftech indicates that Huawei’s Ascend 910C could achieves 60% of NVIDIA H100’s performance, delivering strong inference results.
Meanwhile, whether Huawei’s Ascend 920 could get access to high-quality HBM also remains another key bottleneck, as noted by Commercial Times.
Commercial Times shoots down rumors that Huawei could get reused HBM chips via desoldering by intermediary firms, calling it unrealistic—especially given the ultra-high-speed demands of AI processors. With Chinese memory makers still unable to produce HBM, the report says this remains a key roadblock for China’s homegrown AI ASIC development.
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(Photo credit: Huawei)
