China Telecom, a state-owned service, has developed two LLMs that had been solely educated on domestically produced processors.
This breakthrough demonstrates China’s progress towards chip independence, significantly within the area of AI.
The corporate’s AI Institute introduced that its open-source mannequin, TeleChat2-115B, together with one other undisclosed mannequin, was educated on tens of hundreds of Chinese language chips. That is particularly vital given the US’s rising restrictions on China’s entry to cutting-edge chips, resembling Nvidia’s newest AI processors.
Based on the AI Institute, this achievement displays China’s full self-sufficiency in coaching its personal LLMs, which energy instruments like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In addition they regard it as the start of a brand new chapter within the nation’s pursuit of AI know-how innovation and independence.
China Telecom revealed that the unnamed mannequin options one trillion parameters. In layman’s phrases, parameters are the variables that an AI mannequin utilises to be taught throughout coaching; the extra parameters the mannequin has, the smarter and extra highly effective it’s. TeleChat2-115B, the opposite mannequin, has over 100 billion parameters.
Chinese language corporations are working onerous to remain aggressive in AI, particularly given Washington’s export restrictions. Whereas China Telecom didn’t specify precisely who offered the chips, the South China Morning Publish reported that it has beforehand talked about Huawei’s Ascend chips as a part of its LLM improvement.
Huawei, which is beneath US sanctions, has these days begun testing a brand new AI processor with potential purchasers in China. Corporations are looking for options to Nvidia’s high-end {hardware}, and Huawei seems to be stepping in to fill the hole.
Based on sources, Huawei has already provided samples of its Ascend 910C processor to main Chinese language server corporations for testing. The chip can also be being made out there to Chinese language web corporations, lots of which have lengthy relied on Nvidia’s know-how.
For native AI corporations, Huawei’s Ascend chips and coaching options are rising as viable options to Nvidia’s choices. Along with Huawei, China Telecom is providing processors from Cambricon, a Chinese language start-up, via its State Cloud service.
These collaborations are probably to assist China minimise its reliance on international chips resembling Nvidia’s GPUs, which have lengthy been the popular possibility for coaching AI fashions.
With US export laws limiting entry to superior Nvidia GPUs such because the A100 and H100, a number of Chinese language AI companies have resorted to black markets. Nonetheless, many choose to make use of lower-powered options to make sure that they will proceed to get pleasure from Nvidia’s official help and companies.
See additionally: US examines safety dangers posed by China Telecom and China Cell’s operations
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