Editor: David Wumu
Just one day after the news that AI acceleration chips "cut off" China, NVIDIA quickly spoke out: it has obtained the US government's export authorization to China, and the A100 and H100 can be sold for another year!
Yesterday, a message about NVIDIA and AMD's "AI chip cut off from China" swept the major technology media.
To put it simply:
Nvidia and AMD received a notice from the U.S. government banning the export of high-end AI computing acceleration chips to China. The specific models are: AMD's MI100 and MI200, NVIDIA's A100 and H100.
If it has been shipped, it is necessary to summarize customer information in detail, and if there is no shipment, it will no longer be shipped, except for OEM inventory goods.
Nvidia expects the new export restrictions to reduce revenue by $400 million this quarter.
NVIDIA H100 was just released at this year's GTC conference, has not yet been officially shipped, another A100 that has been shipped for 3 years, performance is still leading the AI acceleration computing performance of a number of rankings.
But just a day later, NVIDIA claimed that the matter might be reversed.
Of course, to say "reversal" is an exaggeration, but it is actually a year of delay.
Nvidia's latest announcement says:
The U.S. government has authorized the company to continue to develop the export, re-export, and domestic transfers required for the H100 integrated circuit after the company filed its current report on Form 8-K with the SEC on August 31, 2022.
In addition, the new authorization also allows Nvidia to make the required exports to U.S. customers of the A100 by March 1, 2023. In addition, the order arrangement and logistics transportation of the authorized A100 and H100 can be arranged through NVIDIA's office in Hong Kong for the authorization period until September 1, 2023.
It seems that it is indeed a temporary relaxation, and a one-year export license has been issued, and the transport has been changed to Hong Kong transit.
Why the United States "loosened its mouth"
What caused the U.S. government to "loosen its mouth" is not known, and some analysts believe that Nvidia may be working with the U.S. government to reduce the impact of export restrictions.
In addition, the ban on the sale of AI chips to China has a significant impact on Nvidia's business, which Nvidia said on Wednesday could interfere with the development of its flagship H100 chip, which is expected to ship later this year.
While Chinese technology companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and Huawei will be affected by the supply cut, technology companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are also using NVIDIA's AI chips.
The U.S. government may be concerned that this move of "annihilating one thousand enemies and losing eight hundred" will affect Nvidia's supply of AI chips to American technology companies, so it "opens one side".
However, it is certain that the "loosening" is temporary.
The U.S. government has set the tone for the chip cut, and a Commerce Department spokesman told Reuters they wanted to "prevent advanced technology from falling into the wrong hands."
The spokesman was more direct in the face of The New York Times, saying the U.S. government "is preventing China from acquiring and using U.S. technology in the context of its civil-military integration program."
In addition, while the United States is restricting Chinese mainland access to advanced chip technology, US politicians are also trying to strengthen cooperation with Taiwan in the chip industry.
For example, Taiwan's largest chipmaker, TSMC, plans to build a $12 billion factory in Arizona in the coming years.
The parties responded
The GPUs involved this time are not consumer-grade products, but as infrastructure for enterprise data centers and cloud computing, while China's large Internet companies and cloud computing companies are significantly slowing down the pace of building data centers.
JPMorgan analyst Harlan Sur believes:
"While there are potential short- and medium-term risks to the export ban, Nvidia is working closely with the U.S. government to weather the storm, and we believe the U.S. government is fully aware of the critical strategic implications of NVIDIA's accelerated computing platform for the global tech industry."
The representative of the U.S. Department of Commerce said that while it is not possible to outline specific policy changes at this time, we are taking comprehensive steps to implement additional necessary actions related to technology, end-use, and end-users to protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests.
Yesterday, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Commerce publicly stated their position on the matter.
Photo: CCTV News
Shu Jueting, a spokesperson for China's Ministry of Commerce, said that for some time, the US side has continuously abused export control measures to restrict the export of semiconductor-related items to China, and China firmly opposes this.
Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that the US approach is typical of scientific and technological hegemonism, and the US side has repeatedly generalized the concept of national security, abused national power, and attempted to use its own scientific and technological advantages to curb and suppress the development of emerging markets and developing countries, which violates the rules of the market economy and undermines the international economic and trade order. China firmly opposes this.
Domestic GPU, ready?
This time, the United States first threatened to cut off the supply, and then said that it could "slow down", but this time the "card neck" was not complete, which did not mean that the next time the United States would not be soft.
From this point of view, China's independent research and development of AI chips, although it is very difficult, is very necessary.
So, what is the current level of research and development of domestic AI chips?
The "Electronic Engineering Album" under ASPENCORE, a global electronic industry media organization, issued a "Research and Analysis Report on 45 Domestic AI Chip Manufacturers" in the first half of this year.
After the report investigated and analyzed domestic AI chip manufacturers such as Hanbo Semiconductor, Flinty Technology, Pingtou Brother, Huawei HiSilicon, Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui, Cambrian, horizon and so on, it came to a conclusion:
"Domestic AI chip companies still face many challenges in the design of high-performance and advanced process AI chips, and there is still a big gap in the EDA and IP links in the AI chip value chain.
However, the volume and rapid iterative development of China's AI market still provide a wealth of test bases and application design opportunities for many domestic AI chip manufacturers, and the next 3-5 years will be a period of rapid development for domestic AI chip manufacturers to accelerate the landing and large-scale deployment of AI applications."
As the Western proverb goes, "every cloud has a silver lining," if frequent U.S. sanctions strengthen our determination to take the path of independent innovation, perhaps this is the beginning of a breakout against the trend.
The United States has been constantly suppressing the country, and domestic GPU manufacturers are also accelerating their own research and development, in order to achieve self-sufficiency in a critical moment.
Now, this self-research road still has a long way to go.
Resources:
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/01/nvidia-says-us-government-allows-ai-chip-development-in-china.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/31/nvidia-stock-falls-after-us-government-restricts-chip-sales-to-china.html