The Co-Founder & GM of Biren Tech, the Chinese GPU startup which was going to tackle NVIDIA's Data Center GPUs, has quit the company.
Chinese GPU Startup, Biren Tech, Co-Founder Has Left The Company As The Will To Rival NVIDIA Fades Away
The report came a few days ago from various Chinese media outlets (so don't treat this as an April Fools story) which stated that Gold Jiao, the Co-Founder and General Manager of Biren Tech left the company. The exact reason is not detailed yet but it looks like several factors could be involved for Golf to make this decision.
But before that, let's recap what Biren Tech is all about. The Chinese Startup based in Shanghai secured more than 5 billion yuan ($726.6 million) in financing for its latest GPU endeavor which promised to offer much better performance than NVIDIA's latest GPUs available on the market such as the Ampere A100.
During a presentation and also at HotChips 23, the company revealed more details of its 77 Billion transistor juggernaut known as the Biren BR100 which used a 7nm process node and some incredible specs to go along with it. The B-series GPUs included two dies, one for the HPC & Datacenter segment known as BR100 and the other for the entry-level server & workstation segment known as the BR104.
However, just as soon as the company started unveiling its plans for its Biren GPUs and how they are designed to tackle NVIDIA, China was hit with a complete ban on using offshore manufacturing for its chip production. This meant that Biren couldn't use the 7nm process node it hoped to make the Biren GPUs on from TSMC. Due to the US regulations and the heavy competitive threat that the GPUs posed to NVIDIA and US Military research, the company had to find an alternative but one thing is clear the technology required to make the same GPUs that were promised by Biren is not available in China.
Meanwhile, NVIDIA has retrofitted its Ampere A100 & Hopper H100 GPUs in such a way that they can be offered to Chinese companies in the form of the A800 and H800.
With time running out, it is possible that Biren's top executives may be leaving the company since they know what the future holds for them. It's sad to see that politics and war had to get in the way of tech advancement and we hope that some form of Biren still continues to exist as only the co-founder has left. The company may continue since a large amount was invested in it and it could be possible that we see a version of the B-Series GPUs in the future to rival NVIDIA and other major US brands.
News Source: MyDrivers
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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