US blocks flow of flagship AI chips to China
Washington instructs suppliers Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices to stop sending their artificial intelligence chips, with the most powerful computing capabilities, to Beijing.
(Reuters Archive)
The United States has beefed up its effort to
cut off the flow of advanced technology to China by instructing
Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices to stop
sending their flagship artificial intelligence chips there.
While the news shocked the chip sector by the time markets
closed on Thursday, sending the Philadelphia semiconductor index
down 1.9 percent and Nvidia and AMD down 7.6 percent and 3 percent respectively, the letters from the US officials appeared to target a narrow but critical part of China’s computing industry.
The regulations appear to focus on chips called GPUs with
the most powerful computing capabilities, a critical but niche
market with only two meaningful players, Nvidia and AMD.
Their
only potential rival – Intel Corp – is trying to break
into the market but has not released competitive products.
Originally designed for video games, the usage of GPUs, or
graphic processing units, have been expanded to a wider array of
applications that include handling artificial intelligence work
like image recognition, categorising cat photos or scouring
digital satellite imagery for military equipment.
Because all
the chip suppliers are American, the US controls access to the
technology.
Some national security experts saw the US move as a long
time coming.
GPUs “have been totally uncontrolled to China and to Russia,
so in a lot of ways I see this action as kind of catching up to
where the controls probably should have been if we were really
serious about trying to slow China’s AI growth,” said Emily
Kilcrease, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American
Security.
READ MORE: Why China’s big chip breakthrough has rattled the US
A100, H100, MI250 chips affected
The US Department of Commerce, which declined to comment
on the specifics of whatever new rules it may be developing,
appears to have targeted the effort narrowly.
The only products Nvidia said would be affected are its A100
and H100 chips.
Those chips cost tens of thousands of dollars
each, with full computers containing the chips costing hundreds
of thousands of dollars.
Similarly, AMD said that only its most powerful MI250 chip — a version of which is being used at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, one of several US supercomputing sites that supports nuclear weapons — is affected by the new requirement.
Less powerful chips such as AMD’s MI210 and below are not
affected.
What the affected chips share is the ability to carry out
calculations for artificial intelligence work quickly, at a huge
scale, and with high precision.
Less powerful AI chips can work
quickly at lower levels of precision, which is sufficient for
tagging photos of friends and where the cost of an occasional
mistake is low — but are insufficient for designing fighter
jets.
The only major market rival to AMD and Nvidia’s chips is
Intel’s still-unreleased Ponte Vecchio chip, whose first
customer is Argonne National Lab, another US installation that
supports nuclear weapons.
“While we understand the US government is continuing to
look at new restrictions, no new export control rules have been
published and there are currently no changes to our business,”
Intel told the Reuters news agency in a statement. “We are closely monitoring
the process.”
READ MORE: What is the Chip 4 alliance?
Source: Reuters
Washington instructs suppliers Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices to stop sending their artificial intelligence chips, with the most powerful computing capabilities, to Beijing.
(Reuters Archive)
The United States has beefed up its effort to
cut off the flow of advanced technology to China by instructing
Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices to stop
sending their flagship artificial intelligence chips there.
While the news shocked the chip sector by the time markets
closed on Thursday, sending the Philadelphia semiconductor index
down 1.9 percent and Nvidia and AMD down 7.6 percent and 3 percent respectively, the letters from the US officials appeared to target a narrow but critical part of China’s computing industry.
The regulations appear to focus on chips called GPUs with
the most powerful computing capabilities, a critical but niche
market with only two meaningful players, Nvidia and AMD.
Their
only potential rival – Intel Corp – is trying to break
into the market but has not released competitive products.
Originally designed for video games, the usage of GPUs, or
graphic processing units, have been expanded to a wider array of
applications that include handling artificial intelligence work
like image recognition, categorising cat photos or scouring
digital satellite imagery for military equipment.
Because all
the chip suppliers are American, the US controls access to the
technology.
Some national security experts saw the US move as a long
time coming.
GPUs “have been totally uncontrolled to China and to Russia,
so in a lot of ways I see this action as kind of catching up to
where the controls probably should have been if we were really
serious about trying to slow China’s AI growth,” said Emily
Kilcrease, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American
Security.
READ MORE: Why China’s big chip breakthrough has rattled the US
A100, H100, MI250 chips affected
The US Department of Commerce, which declined to comment
on the specifics of whatever new rules it may be developing,
appears to have targeted the effort narrowly.
The only products Nvidia said would be affected are its A100
and H100 chips.
Those chips cost tens of thousands of dollars
each, with full computers containing the chips costing hundreds
of thousands of dollars.
Similarly, AMD said that only its most powerful MI250 chip — a version of which is being used at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, one of several US supercomputing sites that supports nuclear weapons — is affected by the new requirement.
Less powerful chips such as AMD’s MI210 and below are not
affected.
What the affected chips share is the ability to carry out
calculations for artificial intelligence work quickly, at a huge
scale, and with high precision.
Less powerful AI chips can work
quickly at lower levels of precision, which is sufficient for
tagging photos of friends and where the cost of an occasional
mistake is low — but are insufficient for designing fighter
jets.
The only major market rival to AMD and Nvidia’s chips is
Intel’s still-unreleased Ponte Vecchio chip, whose first
customer is Argonne National Lab, another US installation that
supports nuclear weapons.
“While we understand the US government is continuing to
look at new restrictions, no new export control rules have been
published and there are currently no changes to our business,”
Intel told the Reuters news agency in a statement. “We are closely monitoring
the process.”
READ MORE: What is the Chip 4 alliance?
Source: Reuters
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