Denglin Technology, a Shanghai-based compute GPU developer established in 2017, recently secured funding from the China Internet Investment Fund, a venture initiated by the State Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Finance. The GPU in question is claimed to feature a “computing architecture compatible with programming models like CUDA/OpenCL,” positioning them well to compete against Nvidia, but while potentially using Nvidia’s greatest competitive advantage — CUDA — against it.

The investment capital will advance the research and development of Denglin’s full-range products, accelerating mass production and commercialization of their next-gen Goldwasser GPUs, reports Jon Peddie Research.

Denglin’s product line, including its flagship Goldwasser, is designed primarily for artificial intelligence applications. Previously, the company said the GPU could also be used for gaming. The company asserts that Goldwasser is the first enterprise Chinese GPU to execute large-scale commercial applications successfully.  

One of the features of the Goldwasser GPU is Denglin’s GPU+ architecture that enables software-defined on-chip heterogeneous computing technology, according to JPR. The most intriguing part is that Goldwasserclaims to be directly compatible with programming models like Nvidia’s CUDA, the report says. (More claims of direct CUDA compatibility here.) Hence, financing from the government could leverage rival Nvidia’s CUDA frameworks for compute. Of course, it remains to be seen whether Denglin will build silicon that’s competitive enough to end Nvidia’s dominance in the AI GPU market, but it certainly has such ambitions.