BEIJING, June 10 (Reuters) - Huawei Technologies'

chips are one generation behind those of U.S. peers but

the firm is finding ways to improve performance through methods

such as cluster computing, Chinese state media quoted CEO Ren

Zhengfei as saying on Tuesday.

The chipmaker invests 180 billion yuan ($25.07 billion) in

research annually and sees promise in compound chips - or chips

made from multiple elements - Ren said in an interview in the

People's Daily newspaper of the governing Communist Party.

The public comments are the first from Ren or Huawei about

the firm's advanced chip manufacturing efforts. U.S. export

controls since 2019 have prevented Huawei from accessing

high-end chips and equipment to manufacture them.

Huawei has since marketed its Ascend series of artificial

intelligence chips which compete in China with offerings from

U.S. rival Nvidia ( NVDA ), the global leader in AI chips.

The U.S. commerce department last month said use of Ascend

chips would be a violation of export controls.

Huawei is just one of many Chinese chipmakers, Ren said in

the interview.

"The United States has exaggerated Huawei's achievements.

Huawei is not that great. We have to work hard to reach their

evaluation," he said.

"Our single chip is still behind the U.S. by a generation.

We use mathematics to supplement physics, non-Moore's law to

supplement Moore's law and cluster computing to supplement

single chips and the results can also achieve practical

conditions," he said.

Cluster computing is when multiple computers work together.

Moore's law refers to the speed of chip advancement.

($1 = 7.1802 Chinese yuan renminbi)