The new set of chip restrictions hitting China are designed to close loopholes in existing regulations
The U.S. Department of Commerce has escalated its efforts to restrict the sale of advanced chips to China after loopholes in last year’s export restrictions were discovered. This time, the target is Nvidia’s chip designed specifically for the Chinese market, reported Bloomberg.
The sale of the Nvidia H100 graphics processing units (GPUs) — the ideal selection for cloud providers and AI companies — were already included in the existing ban, and so Chinese companies were left with the slower A800 processors; however, according to CNBC, the new set of restrictions will ban the sale of these to China as well.
The development isn’t much of a surprise as reports of extended restrictions have been circulating since the spring, when the White House was said to be pondering more extensive U.S. limitations on the sale of chips and chip-making equipment to Chinese companies. Even at the time, it was known that these might have substantial impacts on Nvidia’s ability to sell to Huawei, in addition to a lesser impact others including Qualcomm, AMD and Intel.
“Today’s updated rules will increase effectiveness of our controls and further shut off pathways to evade our restrictions,” commented U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo in a statement. “These controls maintain our clear focus on military applications and confront the threats to our national security posed by the PRC Government’s military-civil fusion strategy.”
As Raimondo indicated, the focus is on hindering China’s military applications, and so, U.S. officials stated that chips used in more innocuous instances such as phones, video games and electric vehicles were purposefully left out of the new rules.
