Huawei Ascend Production Ramp: Die Banks, TSMC Continued Production, HBM is The Bottleneck

Compute is the critical resource for AI, and the US is using export controls to limit China's access and maintain its lead. In response, China is rallying behind its national champion, Huawei, to create a sovereign, vertically integrated hardware stack from silicon to full systems. Despite impressive progress in chip design and manufacturing through firms like SMIC, the primary bottleneck for China's AI accelerator production is the availability of High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM). China is attempting to develop its domestic HBM industry with companies like CXMT but faces significant challenges in catching up to foreign suppliers.