A new report claims that after successfully training its R1 model on Nvidia hardware, DeepSeek was urged by Chinese authorities to switch to using Huawei Ascend-based hardware for its next model. However, according to the Financial Times, training for R2 was met with persistent Huawei hardware failures, delaying the release of the model. DeepSeek was reportedly forced to switch back to Nvidia chips for training while using Huawei's for inference.
Following the success of R1, Chinese authorities allegedly encouraged DeepSeek to rely on Huawei's Ascend-based platforms instead of Nvidia for training, according to three individuals with knowledge of the matter cited by FT. DeepSeek followed that advice during R2's development, but the move quickly ran into a bunch of issues, including unstable performance, slower chip-to-chip connectivity, and limitations of Huawei's CANN software toolkit.
