(Yicai) May 29 -- China has unveiled its first “secure and reliable” certification list for domestic artificial intelligence training and inference chips, placing nine from seven makers, including Huawei Technologies and Alibaba Group, on the inaugural roster, while notable names such as Cambricon Technologies, often dubbed “China's Nvidia,” and Kunlunxin Technology were left off.

The Ascend 310 and Ascend 910 from HiSilicon, Huawei’s fabless semiconductor unit, along with the Zhenwu M530 and Zhenwu M890 from Alibaba's T-Head Semiconductor, received Level I safety and reliability certification, the China Information Technology Security Evaluation Center and the National Secrecy Science and Technology Evaluation Center jointly announced late on May 26.

The other chips to make the list were the Biren 166, developed by Biren Technology, the DCU-3G from Hygon Information Technology, the KCC-V100X from Iluvatar Corex Semiconductor, the MXC600 from Metax Integrated Circuits, and the PH100 from Moore Threads Technology.

Cambricon, a Beijing-based startup renowned as China's leading developer of AI processors and general-purpose graphics processing units, along with Enflame Technology and Kunlunxin, a unit of internet giant Baidu, were among several well-known chipmakers not included in the list.

The certification for the nine chips will remain valid for three years from the date of publication, according to the two agencies responsible for national information security and secrecy-related assessments.

The certification serves as a passport for domestic information technology products to enter critical sectors. Led by the China IT Security Evaluation Center, the program has traditionally covered products such as computers, servers, operating systems and databases, and is now being extended to AI chips.

China’s AI chip sector has been growing quickly driven by replacement demand amid a US export ban on high-performance chips. Morgan Stanley expects China’s AI chip market to grow at a compound annual rate of more than 23 percent from 2024 to 2030, reaching USD67 billion by 2030 and lifting domestic self-sufficiency to 76 percent.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Martin Kadiev