Claims it can build and deploy them fast, whether they run at speed is another matter

As the AI boom rages, investors and buyers have thrown cash at anyone that even looks capable of selling them hardware capable of crunching tokens at speed. And now they have a new option: China’s Huawei.

At home, Huawei offers an “Intelligent Computing Platform” that includes its storage, servers powered by its own Kunpeng CPUs and homebrew Ascend GPUs. Tests of those devices suggest their performance can’t match 5th-gen processors from Intel or AMD, and significantly lag Nvidia’s 2022 Hopper architecture.

But Huawei has decided to start selling them outside China anyway, with a promise that it has the smarts to prepare a datacenter to host its kit in four to six months – which it claims is a couple of months faster than others can manage – thanks to its clever integration of power supplies, cooling infrastructure, and cabling. The company also claims it can deliver 1,024-node ...