DeepSeek's Secret In-House AI Inference Chip Development

According to monitoring by Beating and sources cited by Reuters, Chinese large model company DeepSeek is independently developing AI inference chips. This research and development effort began approximately a year ago and is primarily focused on model inference rather than model training. Over the past few months, the company has been privately recruiting chip design engineers. Currently, DeepSeek's model operations and training rely heavily on chips from NVIDIA and Huawei. If the in-house inference chip development succeeds, it will reduce dependence on external suppliers and provide more cost-effective hardware control. However, this project is still in its early stages and faces challenges such as manufacturing and memory acquisition restrictions due to U.S. export controls. [Original Link]