Chip-maker Nvidia revealed that US officials have asked the company to stop exporting two high quality computing chips, used in artificial intelligence, to China. The restrictions, if prolonged, can severely cripple China’s advancements in technology like image recognition.
The Nvidia chips impacted are the A100 and H100, which helps speed up machine learning. Nvidia admitted that the ban can directly affect its development of the H100 flagship chip that was announced earlier this year. Even AMD admitted that they had been asked by the government to stop selling some of their technology to China.
The Chip-ping Block
The restrictions were shared by Nvidia in a regulatory filing. After news broke, the chipmaker saw its stocks fall by around 3% in after-hours trading. Similarly, AMD shares plunged by approximately 2% in after-hours trading.
The announcement shows that tensions between the US and China are set to escalate. Beijing’s data policies and crackdown on tech companies had earlier strained its relationship with many firms. Both Nvidia chips and AMD chips are in high demand as Chinese firms require them to run advanced computing processes.
Nvidia mentioned that the US government told them that the measure is being put in place as there is a risk of the chip being misused or diverted to a “military end user.” According to the filing, nearly $400 million worth of business will be affected by the restriction. The company is working with its Chinese partners to complete planned and future purchases in a timely manner with products not subject to the new licensing terms. The chip-maker clarified that unless the US government grants licenses in a timely manner it will have a significant impact on potential sales and affect its fiscal quarter outlook.
AMD has been asked by US officials to limit its MI250 integrated circuits to Chinese customers. “At this time, we do not believe that shipments of MI100 integrated circuits are impacted by the new requirements,” said the company, referring to another line of components. “We do not currently believe it has a material impact on our business.”
Without computing chips from their American partners, Chinese firms will be unable to carry out work on advanced computing for speech and image processing, amongst other things. These processes are commonly used in smartphones to tag and answer queries. It can also be used by the military to identify weapons or military bases, with the help of satellite imagery.
The US crackdown comes in the light of escalating tensions with regard to Taiwan, where most chips are manufactured. China and the US have struggled to see eye to eye in the recent past over Taiwan’s sovereignty.
The recent bans also cover restrictions on exporting to Russia. Both companies, however, clarified that they do not sell any products to the Kremlin.
Nvidia and AMD Chips
Nvidia’s H100 GPU is a monster chip that comes packed with the latest 4nm tech and incorporates 80 billion transistors along with the bleeding-edge HBM3 memory technology. The A100, which was unveiled in 2020, has 54 billion transistors and can execute five petaflops of performance, making supercomputing tasks cost-efficient and powerful. It uses Ampere architecture. Currently, the company is focused on creating a single chip for commercial AI and computer graphics.
The AMD MI200 accelerators house superior computational power and are favored by scientists and researchers. The accelerators provide up to 128GB high bandwidth HBM2e memory with ECC support at a clock rate of 1.6 GHz. A spokesperson for AMD told Reuters that it will stop its MI250 computing chips from being exported but the MI100 chips will not be affected.
