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The US government reportedly wants to expand restrictions on hardware exports to China. This is said to affect the company Nvidia in particular, which has launched variants of its GPU accelerators A100 and H100 that have been modified especially for the Chinese market. It all started with the A800, which slowed the Nvlink interconnect from 600 to 400 GB/s. As a result, the GPUs communicate more slowly with each other, which slows down the training of large AI models, for example. From a transfer rate of more than 400 GB/s between chips, the US export restrictions on server chips for Chinese customers have so far taken effect. Nvidia itself does not list the A800 or its successor, the H800, on its Chinese website. In the case of the H800, it is again a Chinese dealer who gives a look at the specifications: Here, too, only the Nvlink interconnect should be throttled – from 900 to 400 GB/s. The GPU accelerator is available both as an SXM module for special server mainboards and in the form of a PCI Express card. New rules possible from July The Wall Street Journal claims to have learned from government circles that the US Department of Commerce could further restrict exports to China as early as July 2023. Fast GPU accelerators would then primarily be available in the gray market: according to The Register, Hong Kong importers, for example, are already selling A100 cards at twice the price of the equivalent of almost 20,000 US dollars – in small quantities and without any guarantees. Marketwatch quotes Nvidia’s chief financial officer, Collette Kress, as saying that the company would hardly notice any expansion of export restrictions in the short term. Longer-term bans are less amused: “Long-term, restrictions prohibiting the sale of our data center GPUs to China would result in a permanent loss of opportunities for US industry to compete and lead in one of the world’s largest markets to be and affect our future business and financial results.” After the WSJ report, Nvidia’s shares suddenly fell by five percent. Since then, it has risen again slightly to just under 380 euros. (mma) Home
