US Orders Nvidia, AMD to Stop Selling Top AI Chips to China

Nvidia and AMD have been ordered to stop selling some of their high-performance chips to China that can be used for artificial intelligence (AI). The move would affect Nvidia’s A100 and H100 chips designed to speed up machine learning tasks and prevent shipment of AMD’s MI250 chips to China. The restrictions will have an impact on Nvidia’s business in China and would cost up to $400 million (roughly Rs. 3,180 crore) in potential sales. It will be a setback for the advanced work of Chinese firms including image and speech recognition.

As per a report by Reuters, Nvidia and AMD have been told by the US government to halt the exports of certain high-performance chips to China.

In a regulatory filing, Nvidia said that the restrictions would cover Nvidia’s A100 circuit and the completion of the forthcoming H100 integrated circuit alongside the company’s business in China. It is also expected to affect image recognition projects carried out by the Chinese companies. The new rules would cost $400 million worth of business for Nvidia.

As per the filing, new rules will address the risk that the covered products may be used in, or diverted to, a ‘military end use’ or ‘military end user’ in China and Russia.

New licence requirements will hit shipments of MI250 artificial intelligence chips, Reuters reported, quoting an AMD spokesman as saying. Export of MI100 integrated circuits will not be affected by the move, he added. The company said it does not believe the new rules will have a material impact on its business.