Huawei launches Ascend 910 and MindSpore - A full-stack, all-scenario AI portfolio

Recently at Shenzhen, China, Huawei officially launched the world's most powerful AI processor – the Ascend 910 – as well as an all-scenario AI computing framework, MindSpore.

"We have been making steady progress since we announced our AI strategy in October last year," said Eric Xu, Huawei's Rotating Chairman. "Everything is moving forward according to plan, from R&D to product launch. We promised a full-stack, all-scenario AI portfolio. And today we delivered, with the release of Ascend 910 and MindSpore. This also marks a new stage in Huawei's AI strategy."

The Ascend 910 is a new AI processor that belongs to Huawei's series of Ascend-Max chipsets. Huawei announced the processor's planned specs at its 2018 flagship event, Huawei Connect. After a year of ongoing development, test results now show that the Ascend 910 processor delivers on its performance goals with much lower power consumption than originally planned.

"Ascend 910 performs much better than we expected," said Xu. "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 based on ResNet-50, the combination of Ascend 910 and MindSpore is about two times faster at training AI models than other mainstream training cards using TensorFlow.

Moving forward, Huawei will continue investing in AI processors to deliver more abundant, affordable, and adaptable computing power that meets the needs of a broad range of scenarios (e.g., edge computing, on-vehicle computing for autonomous driving, and training).

On the same day, Huawei also launched MindSpore, an AI computing framework that supports development for AI applications in all scenarios. AI computing frameworks are critical to making AI application development easier, making AI applications more pervasive and accessible, and ensuring privacy protection.

When introducing MindSpore, Xu emphasized Huawei's commitment to helping build a more robust and vibrant AI ecosystem. "MindSpore will go open source in the first quarter of 2020. We want to drive broader AI adoption and help developers do what they do best."

At the end of his presentation, Xu added that Huawei will debut more groundbreaking AI product at its upcoming conference, Huawei Connect 2019, which will be held between September 18 and 20 in Shanghai. Huawei is working closely with its partners to make AI more pervasive and accessible, and help bring the benefits of digital technology to every person, home, and organization.