Just a year ago, the United States restricted the sale of cutting-edge AI chips to China. According to Reuters, the Biden administration is expected to unveil new rules in the coming days aimed at preventing U.S. microprocessor makers from selling chips that circumvent existing government limitations.
China does not hide its ambition to catch up and overtake the USA in the field of AI to become the world leader. However, it is lagging behind in the manufacturing of high-end chips that it buys in particular from TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) where chips for NVIDIA and large companies are manufactured.
On August 31, 2022, NVIDIA announced that it had received a letter from the American government imposing restrictions on exports to China and Russia of its A100 graphics processors and those in development H100. The same day, AMD announced that the sale of its MI250 acceleration chips to China and Russia would also be subject to a license request.
Nvidia therefore decided to sell alternative products to China that meet the government’s requirements: the A800 and H800 chips, less efficient than the A100 and H100 GPUs but powerful enough to train generative AI models.
According to a US official, the new restrictions will block the sale to China of some AI chips that narrowly escape current restrictions, including the H800, while forcing companies to report shipments of other chips. They could also close loopholes allowing Chinese companies to access U.S. AI chips through Chinese units located overseas.
A “performance density” parameter would be considered to thwart circumvention attempts by companies.
The Sino-American rivalry
The two most important world powers, China and the United States, are in competition whether on a commercial, military or geopolitical level.
It is also the geopolitical context which would have pushed the American government to restrict the sale of cutting-edge GPUs in order not to contribute to China’s military efforts. The latter contested this decision, considering it a “technological blockade”. When the possibility of this new wave of restrictions was reported last summer by the media, it responded by restricting the export of two materials essential to the manufacture of semiconductors.
The following month, Joe Biden’s executive order to ban or require notification of certain investments by United States persons in China, Hong Kong and Macau, in the AI, quantum and semi-automatic sectors conductors, came to fuel the tensions. The latter do not really seem to be calming down, although the American Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, assured last July during her visit to China, despite certain attempts to stabilize relations between the two countries.
China, which for several years has been seeking to reduce its dependence on foreign chips, is therefore working hard to achieve this. This new announcement could boost Chinese start-ups like Shanghai Biren Intelligent Technology Co which would have designed a chip surpassing the performance of one of the high-end chips banned by the American government.
2023-10-16 10:34:26
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