China has been making moves to decouple from the US but US businesses and even the Trump administration unfortunately still don’t wanna let go — just like someone who can’t get over being dumped.
Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has banned the country’s biggest technology companies including ByteDance and Alibaba from buying Nvidia’s AI chips, as Beijing steps up efforts to boost its domestic industry and compete with the US — CAC told companies this week to end their testing and orders of the RTX Pro 6000D, Nvidia’s tailor-made product for China.
After receiving the CAC order, the companies told their suppliers to stop the work. The ban goes beyond earlier guidance from regulators that focused on the H20, Nvidia’s other China-only chip widely used for AI. It comes after Chinese regulators concluded that domestic chips had attained performance comparable to those of Nvidia’s models used in China.
Beijing is putting pressure on Chinese tech companies to boost the country’s homegrown semiconductor industry and break their reliance on Nvidia so it can compete against the US in an AI race.
“The message is now loud and clear. Earlier, people had hopes of renewed Nvidia supply if the geopolitical situation improves. Now it’s all hands on deck to build the domestic system.”
Nvidia started producing chips tailored for the Chinese market after former US President Joe Biden banned the company from exporting its most powerful products to China, in an effort to rein in Beijing’s progress on AI. Beijing’s regulators have recently summoned domestic chipmakers such as Huawei and Cambricon, as well as Alibaba and search engine giant Baidu, which also make their own semiconductors, to report how their products compare against Nvidia’s China chips. They concluded that China’s AI processors had reached a level comparable to or exceeding that of the Nvidia products allowed under export controls.
“The top-level consensus now is there’s going to be enough domestic supply to meet demand without having to buy Nvidia chips.”
Nvidia introduced the RTX Pro 6000D in July during Huang’s visit to Beijing, when the US company also said Washington was easing its previous ban on the H20 chip. China’s regulators, including the CAC, have warned tech companies against buying Nvidia’s H20, asking them to justify having purchased them over domestic products. The RTX Pro 6000D was the last product Nvidia was allowed to sell in China in significant volumes.
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Byron Wan
@Byron_Wan
Nvidia should just stop doing business in China.
State Administration for Market Regulation says Nvidia is suspected of violating commitments it made during its acquisition of Israeli chip designer Mellanox Technologies, under terms outlined in its 2020 conditional approval
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