BEIJING, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Baidu ( BIDU ) unveiled two

new semiconductors for artificial intelligence on Thursday,

saying the products can provide Chinese companies with powerful,

low-cost and domestically controlled computing power.

Escalating tensions between the United States and China have

led to restrictions on exports of advanced U.S. AI chips to

Chinese firms, prompting many to develop their own processors or

seek domestic alternatives.

The company said at its annual Baidu World technology

conference that the M100, an inference-focused chip, is set to

be launched in early 2026. The M300, capable of both training

and inference, is slated for early 2027.

Training builds AI models by learning patterns from large

datasets, while inference uses those models to make predictions

and process user requests.

Baidu ( BIDU ), which has been developing proprietary chips since

2011, also announced two so-called supernode products. Such

products leverage advanced networking capabilities, linking

multiple chips and seeking to compensate for limitations in

individual chip performance.

Huawei has deployed a similar product called CloudMatrix

384, comprising 384 of its Ascend 910C chips, which industry

observers consider more powerful than Nvidia's GB200 NVL72, one

of the U.S. chipmaker's most advanced system-level products.

Huawei also announced in September it would launch more powerful

supernode products in coming years.

Baidu's ( BIDU ) Tianchi 256, which will be comprised of 256 of its

P800 chips, will be available in the first half of next year.

Another more souped-up version using 512 of those chips will be

launched in the second half.

The company also unveiled a new version of its Ernie large

language model, which it said excels not only at text

processing, but also image and video analysis.