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{调取该文章的TAG关键词}|When will China have its own NVIDIA?

{调取该文章的TAG关键词}|When will China have its own NVIDIA?
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NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang (Image Source: NVIDIA)
“The product we are about to show you integrates the computing speed of GPU and Mellanox high-performance network. This is the world’s first CPU designed for TB-level data center acceleration, which completes our v product line. Its code name is Grace.”
This is a speech made by NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang at the NVIDIA CTC 2021. NVIDIA is an American multinational technology company and the inventor of GPU.
What makes the 14-second speech interesting is the fact that it was delivered by a virtual Huang produced via NVIDIA GPU and Omniverse.
The virtual speech sparked a heated discussion about virtual reality, metaverse, and deepfake technology. In addition, NVIDIA once again became a trending topic on the Internet.
Founded in 1993, NVIDIA had successfully invented GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) under the leadership of Huang, which later evolved into GPU for PC and server. NVIDIA’s market value increased from US$31 billion to US$561.9 billion in the past five years, making it the 7th biggest semiconductor supplier and a top AI chip player.
Chinese semiconductor companies such as Jingjia Microelectronics, Cambricon, and Birentech started to see greater market potential in the GPU and AI chip market after NVIDIA surpassed Intel in market value. They then started to invest in this particular sector along with NVIDIA.
However, although China accounts for the biggest market share of the global chip market, it does not yet have a top player like NVIDIA in scale. According to IC Insight’s statistics, the global semiconductor market reached US$395.7 billion in scale in 2020, with China contributing US$143.4 billion of the market share, accounting for 36.24% of the global share. In sharp contrast, semiconductor companies that are headquartered in mainland China only generated a total output of US$8.3 billion in 2020, accounting for merely 5.9% of the market share.
Why China only enjoys a small piece of the cake? And when will China has its own GPU giant like NVIDIA?
Missing the golden opportunityChina started its own GPU design progress very early. But the results were dissatisfying.
China started to import semiconductor and integrated circuit technologies and production lines in 1970s, but it fell into the vicious cycle of technology import. China would always get the last-gen technologies and produce outdated products under this cycle. The Hanxin scandal also branded a bad reputation on Chinese chips, further hampering China’s efforts in developing its own processors. What’s worse, after joining WTO, Chinese companies realized that it is more cost-effective to import than make their own chips.
The semiconductor only started to transition into the production structure of design, manufacture, and assembly in 2000 after the Chinese government released its guidelines for developing the semiconductor industry. Foundries like Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation were then able to produce chips in China, which drove the development of relevant technologies as well.
Major players in China, such as Jingjia Microelectronics, Cambricon, and Birentech, focus on GPUs for general purposes.
In 2014, Jingjia Microelectronics successfully developed GPU JM5400 for military purposes. Later in 2018, the company rolled out 2nd generation GPU JM7200 with 28nm process. Jingjia Microelectronics started as a maker of GPU for military purposes and later became one of the few companies in the world that have achieved independent production of GPU for commercial use. Jingjia Microelectronics is the only company in China that has been able to make such progress.
It is worth noting that JM7200’s performance is only equivalent to NVIDIA’s 2012 GTX 640, which means it is very hard to satisfy the performance demand of enterprise clients. Even Enflame’s 邃思2.0 AI chip’ performance is similar to A100, surpassing A100 in only two areas in a Benchmark test.

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