Cloud computing is quite practical: the ideal solution when your company cannot acquire, for whatever reason, the chips used to train and make …
Cloud computing is quite practical: the ideal solution when your company cannot acquire, for whatever reason, the chips used to train and operate its artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm. This is the thinking of the Chinese digital giants and it does not please the United States very much.
AI always finds a way
Since the fall of 2022, Washington has multiplied measures to close access to China to the most advanced chips on the market. The objective, assumed by Washington, is to hinder the technological progress of its rival in strategic sectors such as AI.
Components, including Nvidia’s H100 and A100 chips, the most efficient for AI, have become inaccessible for purchase. However, a parade exists: Chinese companies always have the possibility of renting to cloud computing players, such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, present in the country, time of use on these same chips.
It is this circumvention strategy that Washington would like to tackle. According to Wall Street Journal, the American administration would prepare a text to force Chinese customers of cloud platforms to obtain a license in order to continue their operations. The measures could also expand the number of exportable chips without licenses in China, such as Nvidia’s A800s. In addition, the cloud activities of Alibaba and Tencent in the United States could be targeted.
Alan Estevez, who heads the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the Department of Commerce, in charge of US export controls, has never hidden the possibility of extending the restrictions imposed on China. Precisely to fill the gaps of the strict measures taken in October 2022 on the sale of advanced chips.
This update, scheduled for the next few weeks, could take the form of a broader publication, bringing together all the measures taken in the semiconductor sector. It would potentially integrate the decisions of Japan and the Netherlands, negotiated with the United States.
The atmosphere is still as good between China and the United States…
These revelations are likely to further animate the trip in a few days of Janet Yellen, Secretary of the Treasury, to China. She must go there to avoid a spiral of sanctions, in particular an overflow on the batteries of electric vehicles.
After sanctioning the American memory chip company Micron, Beijing on July 3 limited the export of two metals used in the manufacture of semiconductors. On June 30, on the occasion of the formalization of export restrictions on chip manufacturing machines by the Netherlands, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mao Ning, had declared ” These actions of interfering with normal business-to-business commerce through administrative means seriously undermine market rules and the international trade order, disrupt global industrial and supply chains, and serve no one’s interest. »
2023-07-04 13:16:00
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