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Tech war: US ban on tailor-made Nvidia and Intel chips hits Beijing’s AI ambitions
- Under the updated export controls, Nvidia will be unable to export its A800 and H800 chips, which were designed to comply with earlier export rules
- The GPU ban will have a long-term impact on the industry, and in turn, will affect the capabilities of Chinese cloud service providers, said one source
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Che Panin Beijing
The US has delivered another blow to China’s artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions by banning China-specific Nvidia and Intel graphic processing units (GPUs) and blacklisting two top Chinese GPU start-ups.
Under updated tech export controls announced by the US Commerce Department on Tuesday, Nvidia will be unable to export its A800 and H800 chips, which were designed to comply with Washington’s earlier export rules, to Chinese tech companies.
The move undercuts China’s frenzied artificial intelligence (AI) drive by denying it access to the semiconductors used to train AI algorithms.
After Nvidia was banned from selling its state-of-the-art A100 and H100 chips to China under regulations Washington introduced a year ago, it tailor-made the A800 and H800 as alternatives for Chinese clients.
The chips saw huge demand amid China’s AI fever, as tech giants Tencent Holdings, Alibaba Group Holding (which owns the Post), ByteDance and Baidu rushed to place orders.
Separately, Intel Corp, which launched a China-specific AI processor called Gaudi2, may not be allowed to export that product without a license under the updated export controls, hurting Chinese firms Inspur, New H3C and xFusion, which had based their server products on Intel’s chips.
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