Nvidia's Blackwell Architecture Chips Aimed at China Despite US Trade Restrictions

Nvidia's Blackwell Architecture Chips Aimed at China Despite US Trade Restriction

Nvidia is planning to introduce a new GPU for the Chinese market, navigating US trade restrictions on AI accelerators. The new chip, named B20, is designed to comply with US Commerce Department performance limits, according to sources.

Nvidia's Strategic Moves

The B20 chip will be based on Nvidia's latest Blackwell architecture, announced at GTC in the spring. Blackwell chips are touted to be 2.5x to 5x faster in raw floating point precision compared to the previous Hopper architecture. Nvidia has selected Chinese system builder Inspur as the primary distributor, with shipments expected in the second quarter of next year. However, Inspur's position on the US Entities List due to alleged sales to the Chinese military may complicate matters.

Challenges and Regulatory Environment

Current export controls are likely to limit the capabilities of Nvidia's new chips. The H20, the most powerful chip Nvidia can sell in China without a license, already pushes the boundaries of allowed export limits. US export controls set last October impose caps on "total processing performance" and "performance density," affecting many Nvidia datacenter cards and even briefly blocking the consumer-focused RTX 4090 until a special Chinese market model was introduced.

Performance and Limitations

Despite these restrictions, Nvidia has managed to develop cards like the 96GB H20, boasting 296 teraFLOPS of FP8 performance. The B20 accelerator is expected to have similar FP8 performance limits but could offer significant improvements in other areas. Blackwell's support for FP4 data types could result in higher advertised teraFLOPS figures. Performance gains, particularly in running pre-trained large language models, would depend heavily on memory bandwidth, with the H20 capable of 4TB/s. Nvidia has not commented on the B20's details.

Potential US Policy Changes

US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has expressed a clear stance against companies pushing the limits of export controls, hinting at more stringent measures. The Biden Administration is expected to introduce tighter restrictions to curb Chinese AI development. Future controls may target memory bandwidth and capacity, crucial for the performance of AI models. Limiting these specs could impact Nvidia's business significantly, as China represents about 17 percent of its annual revenues.

Broader Implications

Any new restrictions won't halt the development of domestic Chinese accelerators from companies like Moore Threads and Huawei. The Biden administration is considering a foreign direct product rule to control products utilizing American technology, further impacting international tech dynamics.