Nvidia promotes slower chip for China to avoid US ban • TechCrunch

Two months after the United States suffocateChina has discovered a low-processing alternative to its second largest market by accessing two cutting-edge chips made by Nvidia, the US semiconductor giant.

A spokesperson for Nvidia said in a statement that the Nvidia A800 CPU is “another Nvidia A100 processor replacement product” for customers in China. The A800 passes strict US government export control testing and cannot be programmed to bypass. The new slide was actually the first. mentionedBy Reuters on Monday.

The A100 processor is well-known for powering supercomputers, artificial Intelligence, and high-performance data centres for industries ranging in biotechnology, finance, and manufacturing. Alibaba Cloud computing business He was one of her clients. The A100 and Nvidia AI H100 chips were placed on an US export control listing “to address the risk that covered products could be used or diverted to a’military purpose’ or’military users’ in China and Russia.”

Nvidia reported previously that the ban in the USA could have an impact on Potential sales to China of up $400 million were reported in the third quarter. This suggests that the new tranche is an attempt by the financial institution to repair the financial loss. According to a spokesperson for Nvidia, the A800 GPU was put into production in the third quarter.

Chip distributors in China actually are called Like OmniskyThey already market the A800 through their product catalogs. The chip appears to have been designed to bypass US export regulations while still implementing core computing capabilities. The A100 and A800 share most of their major specifications except interconnection speeds. While the A800 runs at 400Gbps, the A100 runs at 600Gbps. performance threshold That I put American ban

According to AnalyticsThe Center for Strategic and International Studies is a bipartisan think-tank. “By focusing only on chips with very fast interconnection speeds the White House is trying limit controls to chips that are wired together in supercomputing facilities or data centers that train and run large amounts of artificial intelligence. .

Nvidia isn’t alone in slowing down chips to evade US sanction. Alibaba and Biren, a Chinese chip design company, are improving the performance of the latest Nvidia processors. According to the Financial Times. Because Alibaba and Biren, as other semiconductor companies contract with Taiwan’s TSMC to manufacture their products. Due to US export restrictions, chip sales by US companies using US technology could be restricted.