Hong Kong-based AI research institute uses Huawei Ascend 910B chips to train latest model, as domestic firms make up for Nvidia blockade
The Hong Kong-based Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR) has launched a medical AI model trained with Huawei accelerator chips, in an example of how domestic Chinese organisations are adapting to US trade restrictions blocking the flow of advanced Nvidia parts.
CAIR, an AI research institute established in 2019 by mainland China’s national research institute, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), said its new AI model Cares Copilot 2.0 is designed to assist surgeons in tasks such as surgical planning, generating diagnostic reports and retrieving similar case files.
The model, an upgrade from an earlier version launched in March, was trained using Huawei’s Ascend 910B chip, which Huawei said in June could meet or surpass Nvidia’s A100 for some capabilities.
Rapid advances
CAIR executive director Liu Hongbin told local media the organisation signed a memorandum of understanding with Huawei in August 2023 to work together on using AI for surgery-related tasks, due to increasingly strict US restrictions.
“As a research institution, we needed to have alternative plans,” Liu told the South China Morning Post.
He said the chips had advanced “visibly” since then, with training on the same amount of data shrinking from one or two months to one week more recently.
Cares Copilot 2.0, based on Meta Platforms’ Llama 2 open source large language model (LLM) and trained with Huawei’s Atlas 800T A2 server, has been used by hospitals including the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou and the Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong, Liu said.
He said that while Nvidia’s ecosystem is stronger than Huawei’s, domestically produced chips were capable of meeting CAIR’s functional requirements.
Export rules
Huawei’s Ascend chips have been used to train roughly half of China’s 70 most powerful LLMs as of last year, Huawei has said.
Taiwan’s TSMC recently reported to the US Department of Commerce that chips it had manufactured were found in the Ascend 910B, an indication that one of its customers may have skirted export regulations.
TSMC’s report was in turn triggered by a 910B teardown by Canadian research firm TechInsights.
Following the report the Commerce Department earlier this month ordered TSMC to stop supplying certain mainland China customers with chips manufactured using its most advanced processes.
