China Releases Safe List of AI Chips, Huawei and Alibaba Included, "China Nvidia" Absent

China has released its first list of "safe and reliable" certifications for domestic artificial intelligence or AI chips. This list is important because it is a marker of which chips are deemed worthy of entering the country's important sectors.

According to a report by Yicai Global, quoted Wednesday, June 3, there are nine chips from seven manufacturers that are included in the initial list. Huawei and Alibaba are included. However, Cambricon Technologies, a company often dubbed "China's Nvidia", is absent.

Kunlunxin Technology, a unit of Baidu, was also not listed.

The chips that passed include the Ascend 310 and Ascend 910 from HiSilicon, Huawei's semiconductor unit. From Alibaba, there are Zhenwu M530 and Zhenwu M890 made by T-Head Semiconductor.

The other five chips on the list are Biren 166 from Biren Technology, DCU-3G from Hygon Information Technology, KCC-V100X from Iluvatar Corex Semiconductor, MXC600 from Metax Integrated Circuits, and PH100 from Moore Threads Technology.

The certification was announced by the China Information Technology Security Evaluation Center and the National Secrecy Science and Technology Evaluation Center on May 26.

This list is important because the certification is a kind of ticket for domestic technology products to enter strategic sectors. Previously, similar programs included computers, servers, operating systems, and databases. Now the scope has widened to AI chips.

AI chips are used to train artificial intelligence models and run inference processes. Inference means the process when AI uses a trained model to give answers, recognize images, read text, or execute commands.

The certification for the nine chips is valid for three years from the date of issuance.

The absence of Cambricon makes this list steal the spotlight. Because, the Beijing-based company is known as one of the main developers of AI processors and versatile GPUs in China. GPUs are graphics processing chips that are also widely used for AI computing.

The list comes as China's AI chip industry is growing fast, driven by the need to replace imported chips after the United States restricted the export of high-performance chips.

Yicai Global reported that Morgan Stanley estimates China's AI chip market will grow by more than 23 percent per year from 2024 to 2030. Its value is projected to reach 67 billion US dollars by 2030.

China's domestic self-sufficiency rate is also expected to rise to 76 percent. This means that more and more of China's AI chip needs can be met by the domestic industry.