According to a recent Reuters report, TSMC has decided to cut off Chinese firm Sophgo following the discovery of TSMC-manufactured components in Huawei's advanced AI processor. The suspension came after technology research firm TechInsights identified a TSMC-manufactured chip within Huawei's Ascend 910B processor during a detailed analysis. This discovery raised significant concerns, as Huawei has been restricted from accessing such technology under US export controls since 2020. TSMC promptly notified US authorities upon learning of the situation and launched an internal investigation. While being sanctioned by the US, Huawei needed to use a proxy firm to get access to high-end silicon manufacturing to produce its Ascend accelerators.

Sophgo, which has ties to cryptocurrency mining equipment manufacturer Bitmain, strongly denies any business relationship with Huawei. The company states it has provided TSMC with a detailed investigation report asserting its compliance with all applicable laws, saying: "SOPHGO has never been engaged in any direct or indirect business relationship with Huawei. SOPHGO has been conducting business in strict compliance with applicable laws and regulations, including but not limited to all the applicable US national export control laws and regulations, and has never been in violation of any of such laws and regulations. SOPHGO has provided detailed investigation report to TSMC to prove that SOPHGO is not related to the Huawei investigation."

Huawei has reportedly started shipping its Ascend 910C accelerator—the company's domestic alternative to NVIDIA's H100 accelerator for AI training and inference. As the report from China South Morning Post notes, Huawei is shipping samples of its accelerator to large NVIDIA customers. This includes companies like Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent, which have ordered massive amounts of NVIDIA accelerators. However, Huawei is on track to deliver 70,000 chips, potentially worth $2 billion. With NVIDIA working on a B20 accelerator SKU that complies with US government export regulations, the Huawei Ascend 910C accelerator could potentially outperform NVIDIA's B20 processor, per some analyst expectations.

If the Ascend 910C receives positive results from Chinese tech giants, it could be the start of Huawei's expansion into data center accelerators, once hindered by the company's ability to manufacture advanced chips. Now, with foundries like SMIC printing 7 nm designs and possibly 5 nm coming soon, Huawei will leverage this technology to satisfy the domestic demand for more AI processing power. Competing on a global scale, though, remains a challenge. Companies like NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel have access to advanced nodes, which gives their AI accelerators more efficiency and performance.

Alibaba's T-Head unit, responsible for the design and development of in-house IC design, has announced the first domestic SSD controller based on the PCIe 5.0 specification standard. Called the Zhenyue 510, the SSD controller is aimed at enterprise SSD offerings. Interestingly, the Zhenyue 510 is powered by T-Head's custom Xuantie C910 cores based on RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA). Supporting the PCIe 5.0 standard for interfacing, the SSD controller uses DDR5 memory as a cache buffer. Regarding the performance, there are no official figures yet, but the company claims to have 30% lower input/output latencies compared to competing offerings. T-Head claims the SSD has an IO processing capability of "3400 Kilo IOs per second, a data bandwidth of 14 Gbytes/s, and an extremely high energy efficiency of 420 Kilo IO per second for every Watt".

This is an essential step towards Chinese self-sufficiency as T-Head has designed various ICs for processing different tasks. Still, now Alibaba's chip design unit has a domestic design for storage as well. Claiming low latency figures, the Zhenyue 510 is suitable for enterprise workloads like big data analysis, as well as AI inference/training systems workloads. The development of Zhenyue 510 started in 1H 2021, and it took the company more than two years to complete the design and validation of the chip to prepare it for deployment. This is the second Chinese-made SSD controller after Yingren Technology (InnoGrit) announced their chip in September.

OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and PC components, today unveiled the new Silencer 910 power supply from PC Power & Cooling. The Silencer line has proven itself as one of the most trusted PSU series on the market over the past twenty years, built for absolute stability and reliability for high end enthusiast systems, and the newest addition to our legendary Silencer series completes the family of ultra-quiet highly reliable and efficient PSUs which now range from 370W to the new 910W (1KW peak). Featuring an industry-leading 80+ Silver Certification, the Silencer 910 offers one of the highest efficiencies on the market combined with a power output to meet the demands of the most component-heavy systems. Where ultimate power meets top efficiency, the robust Silencer 910 is the ideal solution for today's high-end gaming systems and professional workstations.