The latest blow from the United States to China: Nvidia and AMD will not be able to sell advanced chips

The United States has just dealt another blow to China’s technological development. The Joe Biden administration has expanded the existing restrictions against the Asian giant that aim to prevent the export of certain technologies. With this last move, Nvidia and AMD will have to stop selling some of their most advanced chips to the country ruled by Xi Jinping.

According to Reuters, the measure will affect image and voice recognition. These are two tasks driven by artificial intelligence (AI) that are increasingly present in consumer applications found on Chinese users’ smartphones, although they are also used in military scenarios with satellite images and in video surveillance activities.

Advanced chips for supercomputing

The Department of Commerce, the authority in charge of applying the restrictions, has not provided details about the new criteria; you’ve only mentioned that they’re meant for “keep advanced technologies out of the wrong handsNvidia and AMD, on the other hand, have commented on what they think their AI products will be affected by the latest US move.

Nvidia, which has seen its shares fall 6.6% after the news, says it will no longer be able to sell its A100 and H100 products to China. In the case of the former we are talking about a GPU designed for high-performance computing with 54 billion transistors specialized in data centers in the field of AI.

In the case of the H100, we are also looking at a colossal 4nm photolithography system from TSMC and 80 billion transistors “designed to speed up the training of artificial intelligence models”. To get an idea, Nvidia is developing its own supercomputer called Eos that will consist of 4,600 H100 GPUs that will offer 18.4 exaflops.

AMD, which also experienced a drop in its shares, in its case 3.7%, will not be able to export its third-generation MI250 GPU with CDNA 2 architecture. Currently, this type of accelerator is part of Frontier, the most powerful supercomputer in the world and the first to break the exascale barrierbecause it has been developed precisely for this.

The truth is that, in addition to the trade war, China and the United States are also battling in the field of supercomputing. Statista points out that Asians are the country with the most supercomputers and Westerners the ones with the most petaflops. With the recent restrictions, things will get very complicated for China in this scenario.

According to the New York Times, if Nvidia and AMD want to sell the restricted products to China, they will have to apply for a new export license. The problem? According to the US media such licenses are often refused, so there is little chance that they will manage to overcome this new obstacle.

In response to the restrictions, China’s Ministry of Commerce said they would “hamper international scientific and technological exchanges and economic cooperation, and have an impact on the stability of global industrial and supply chains and the recovery of the world economy.” “.

It remains to be seen what real impact these measures will have on China and what its reaction will be. For now, the United States would also be considering using its power and influence to hit prevent ASML, the world’s largest manufacturer of photolithographic equipment, from selling you some of its products to the Asian country.

Images | Timothy Dykes (Unsplash) | amd