Huawei’s latest move could put China at the forefront of the AI race

Huawei Pangu Model 3.0 AI announced Ascend cloud service
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At the annual Huawei Developer Conference (HDC.Cloud) held last week, the company unveiled its latest development of AI products. Including the Pangu Model 3.0 and Ascend AI cloud services. And with the company’s latest advancements, China could finally catch up to US in the AI race. So let’s learn more about the Huawei Pangu Model 3.0 AI and more.

Huawei Pangu Model 3.0 AI Overview:

Here, the Pangu Model 3.0 is a family of multiple pre-trained AI models. Huawei first introduced it back in 2021 after the US put the company on the “Entity List“.

This AI model is completely based on the company’s hardware and platform due to US restrictions. The ban restricts Huawei from using American chips and high-power GPUs, unlike the other AI companies. For reference, OpenAI‘s ChatGPT is backed by NVIDIA‘s powerful GPUs.

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Zhang Ping’an, Huawei’s executive director and CEO of Huawei Cloud Computing Technologies, said “Our AI platform … can offer solid infrastructure … as its computing power can reach 1.1 times that of mainstream GPUs.”  “If you can’t buy the mainstream GPUs, you can now use Huawei’s Ascend-powered AI cloud services, which will free you from the suffering of high-priced GPUs”, he added.

What can it do?

Huawei Pangu Model 3.0 can leverage large-scale data sets and machine learning algorithms. It allows the AI model to be used in multiple areas such as weather forecasts, finding faults in machinery and vehicles, and even in the mining industry.

Huawei Pangu AI Model Launch
Image: Huawei

Popular science journal “Nature” recently praised Huawei’s Pangu Weather AI Model team for developing a precise and accurate AI weather forecasting system. Hauwei used 43 years of deep learning data for this model.

Who exactly is the Pangu Model 3.0 for?

Huawei says the Pangu Model is mainly focused on enterprise clients, rather than individual clients. So, it might not be a major threat for ChatGPT which primarily relies on individual users. More information about this is expected to arrive in the coming days.

China in the AI Race

Amidst the US restrictions, Chinese tech companies are accelerating to roll out their own AI tech. Top companies like Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu alongside more than 30 Chinese firms are joining the AI race.

Since the inception of the Pangu Model in 2021, Huawei Cloud has been active in more than a thousand AI-related projects, covering railways, minings, drug development to meteorology. It witnessed a 19% growth in 2022 while Alibaba Cloud still retains the top spot. And overall, it looks like China could finally have a shot at gaining an upper hand against the US in the AI race.