/industry-wired/media/agency_attachments/2024/12/04/2024-12-04t130344212z-iw-new.png)
/industry-wired/media/agency_attachments/2024/12/04/2024-12-04t130332454z-iw-new.jpg)
/industry-wired/media/post_attachments/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/No-Chip-for-China-The-US-Government-Orders-Nvidia.jpg)
The US ban on Nvidia & AMD not to sell AI chips to China over national security concerns
The US government has ordered graphics chip giant Nvidia not to sell its artificial intelligence chips to China over national security concerns. Nvidia, the world’s largest maker of artificial intelligence chips, is at the heart of a new round of U.S. tech sanctions targeting China. Nvidia has nearly a 95% share of that market. US government newly passed CHIPS and Science Act is meant to ensure the continuation of its technological hegemony.
Nvidia manufactures the A100 in Taiwan, a current geopolitical flashpoint between the US and China. The US has also restricted AMD’s MI250 Accelerator AI chip sales to China. AMD and NVIDIA have been ordered to stop shipping certain products to China. Ban on Nvidia and AMD sales marks a major escalation of US efforts to restrict China’s military technology capabilities as tensions bubble over Taiwan. Without American chips from companies such as Nvidia and AMD, Chinese organizations will be unable to cost-effectively.
US ban on Nvidia and AMD AI chip sales:
Nvidia’s A100 chipset powers data centers used for AI, data analytics, and high-performance computing. The Nvidia company said the ban, which affects its A100 and H100 chips designed to speed up machine learning tasks, could interfere with the completion of developing the H100, the flagship chip Nvidia announced this year. Nvidia said the restriction would affect the A100 and H100 products, which are graphics processing units sold to businesses.
Nvidia was the first to come up with a language to make GPUs do AI tasks, giving it a huge head start over rivals like AMD and Intel. AMD, meanwhile, said the U.S. government ordered it to stop sending its top AIchip, the MI250 chip that’s used in data centers for high-performance computing, to China but said the new restrictions will not block shipments of its MI100 chip to China.
Big data center AI customers in China have been buying Nvidia’s gaming graphics cards as a substitute, though that requires significant modifications to deploy. The announcement signals a major escalation of the US crackdown on China’s technological capabilities as tensions bubble over the fate of Taiwan. Wall Street reacted negatively to news of the AI chip restrictions, causing the share prices of both Nvidia and AMD to fall.
The US seeks to use its technological prowess as an advantage to hobble and suppress the development of emerging markets and developing countries. This includes preventing China's acquisition and use of US technology in the context of its military-civil fusion program to fuel its military modernization efforts, conduct human rights abuses, and enable other malign activities. Considering the tensions between the US and China over Taiwan and AI tech's rapid development and deployment in research and business.