Huawei launches Ai processor and framework for AI development

Huawei officially launches its most powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI) processor,Ascend 910, as well as the new all-in-one AI Computing framework named MindSpore. The ceremony held yesterday (23 august, 2019) in China’s Shenzhen. Huawei’s Rotating Chairman Eric Xu and and other higher officials of the company were present at the event.

The Ascend 910, an AI processor built upon Da Vinci system architecture and can deliver more performance than any other processor currently available in the market. Despite its unrivaled performance, Ascend 910’s max power consumption is only 310W, much lower than its planned specs (350W).

MindSpore is an AI computing framework that supports the development of AI applications in all scenarios across all devices, edge, and cloud environments. Also, in a typical neural network for natural language processing (NLP), MindSpore has 20% fewer lines of core code than leading frameworks on the market, and it helps developers raise their efficiency by at least 50%.

“Ascend 910 performs much better than we expected,” said Eric Xu, Huawei’s Rotating Chairman “Without a doubt, it has more computing power than any other AI processor in the world.”

Ascend 910 is used for AI model training. In a typical training session, the combination of Ascend 910 and MindSpore is about two times faster at training AI models compared to TensorFlow.

AI computing frameworks are critical to making AI application development easier, making AI applications more pervasive and accessible, and ensuring privacy protection. In 2018, Huawei announced the three development goals for its AI framework. The goals were easy development, efficient execution, adaptable to all scenarios. MindSpore marks significant progress towards these goals. As privacy protection grows more important than ever, support for all scenarios is essential for enabling secure, pervasive AI.

Huawei defines AI as a new general purpose technology, like railroads and electricity in the 19th century, and cars, computers, and the Internet in the 20th century. The company believes that AI will be used in almost every sector of the economy.

According to Xu, AI is still in its early stages of development, and there are a number of gaps to close before AI can become a true general purpose technology. Huawei’s AI strategy is designed to bridge these gaps and speed up adoption on a global scale.