The US government restricts the export of AI chips to China and Russia

The US government restricts the export of AI chips to China and Russia. This can seriously slow down the development of NVIDIA products.

The US government has just introduced new restrictions on the export of supercomputer and artificial intelligence chips to Russia and China. NVIDIA said in a SEC filing that the government has informed it of a new commitment regarding one of its current GPUs (A100) and future GPUs (H100) that are conceived and designed to improve machine learning tasks.

The US government restricts the export of AI chips to China and Russia

The government has apparently indicated to NVIDIA that this new license will manage the possible risk that the affected products could be used for military purposes by the two countries. As noted by The New York Times, artificial intelligence and machine learning are used in a wide variety of areas, including the development of weapons and surveillance systems.

A spokesman for the US Department of Commerce told Reuters:

While we are not going to identify very specific changes at this time, we are taking a comprehensive approach to implementing the additional actions needed in technology, end-use and end-users to protect the national security of nations. United States and foreign policy interests.

The new requirement comes after yet another export regulation was introduced in mid-August that prevents China from accessing advanced chip design software needed to manufacture next-generation processors.

This can seriously slow down the development of NVIDIA products.

NVIDIA acknowledged in this document that this limitation may slow down the completion of the H100 chip. The company does not sell its products in Russia, but it is expected to earn about $400 million from sales to Chinese companies in the third quarter. This is money that the company could use to develop its future products. The manufacturer could lose all of its possible sales if its Chinese customers refuse to buy its alternatives, or if the government refuses to grant it licenses for its biggest customers.

As for AMD, a spokesperson told Reuters that while this new license condition prevents the company from exporting its MI250 chips to China, it doesn’t believe it will have a big impact on its business.