Huawei Begins Delivering CloudMatrix 384 AI Clusters to China; Costs Triple That of NVIDIA’s GB200 NVL72 System

Oh man, where to even begin with this Huawei vs. NVIDIA showdown? It’s like tech drama with servers instead of celebrities. So, Huawei’s got this CloudMatrix 384 thing going on—an AI cluster that supposedly has Chinese tech bigwigs buzzing. Honestly, who would have thought? Anyway, the idea is that this server is giving NVIDIA a run for their money. Or at least that’s what they’re betting on since NVIDIA’s had a stronghold—especially around China. But Huawei? They’re like, nah, we’ve got our own tricks.

I mean, let’s just pause here for a sec. Can you imagine the meetings behind closed doors? “We need to take down NVIDIA,” said some Huawei exec probably, throwing papers dramatically. Whatever the case, the Financial Times drops a bombshell that ten clients have snatched up these servers. It’s a huge deal, right? But here’s the kicker: we don’t even know who these clients are. They’re keeping it all hush-hush, which somehow makes it feel likelier that something big is brewing behind the scenes.

These CloudMatrix clusters—bit of tech jargon here—they pack 384 of Huawei’s Ascend 910C chips in some kind of magical crisscross pattern. All-to-all topology, they call it, like that’s supposed to mean something to us mere mortals. That’s five times more Ascend chips compared to NVIDIA’s equivalent. So, more chips, more power, more… everything? Makes sense.

But let’s talk numbers. Huawei’s cluster can churn out 300 PetaFLOPS of BF16 computing. That’s geek-speak for “a lot of processing power,” almost double what NVIDIA’s got. The catch? This thing’s an energy guzzler—3.9 times the juice NVIDIA’s server needs. Now that’s what we call a trade-off. Energy drinks for servers, maybe?

Oh, and the price tag. This CloudMatrix chunk of silicon costs about $8 million. Yep, you read that right. That’s nearly three times the price of the NVIDIA GB200 NVL72, making you wonder if Huawei’s just flexing at this point. Like, “Hey, we can make expensive stuff too. Just because.”

Who knows where this will lead? It’s a bit of a tech soap opera, to be honest. Who will win? Who will lose? Will NVIDIA strike back? Only time will tell…