Chinese GPU developers including Jingjia Microelectronics and Innosilicon are developing homegrown AI GPUs at full throttle to keep up with the AI boom spurred by the growing popularity of ChatGPT, especially now that the US has banned Nvidia and AMD from selling high-performance AI GPUs to China.
As a leading GPU vendor in China, Jingjia noted its new AI GPU for use in ChatGPT-like applications is still at its research and development stage, and stressed it will continue to develop and promote AI GPU solutions with ever-higher performance to support ever-advanced AI applications.
As early as in April 2014, the company launched China's first homegrown GPU with high performance and low power consumption. Its latest JM9 series GPU, now entering the stage of product testing and market promotion, can be used to conduct high-performance displays and AI computing in geographic information system, media processing, gaming, and virtualization applications.
Innosilicon, an IP, ASIC, and GPU supplier in China, in August 2022 unveiled its second-generation standalone GPU, the Fantasy II, fabricated using 5nm process technology, aiming to catch up with international spec standards such as Nvidia's RT40 series. The company has also completed the basic R&D of Fantasy III.
Meanwhile, Chinese tech players have also successively released generative AI products to cash in on growing market demand for AI applications. Search giant Baidu, for instance, has just debuted its AI chatbot, Ernie Bot, following years of deployments in the AI field. At a mid-March launch event in Beijing, company founder Robin Li disclosed that 650 companies have signed up to use Ernie Bot, which can be implemented in a variety of applications such as searches, AI cloud, autonomous driving and in smart devices.
The Ernie Bot launch comes months after OpenAI's ChatGPT was first released, demonstrating the AI chatbot's abilities in answering questions and even writing essays. Baidu is among several Chinese firms working on similar chatbots.
The rollout of Ernie Bot is expected to usher in a new wave of business opportunities for Chinese AI chip developers. But Jingjia noted it has yet to enter cooperation with Baidu concerning the supply of AI GPU.
According to research organization VMR, China's GPU market scale reached US$4.739 billion in 2020, representing a global market share of 18.7%, and is estimated to expand to US$34.56 billion by 2027 for a CAGR of 32.8% over the 7-year period.
Industry observers said China has a large user base and data support, allowing great room for the growth of localized AIGC (AI generated content) products, with the prospect that the GPU market scale will expand significantly as a result.
Chinese GPU developers are lagging behind major international rivals in terms of technological capability, but the US ban on shipments of AI GPU chips to China has prompted them to step up efforts to catch up in terms of manufacturing process and floating point computing performance to narrow the tech gap, observers said.
Article translated by Willis Ke
