Nvidia planning 3 GPUs for sale in China to circumvent US restrictions: Reports

Chipmaker Nvidia is reportedly working on producing three new graphics processing units (GPUs) for sale in China in order to circumvent the new export restrictions imposed by the Biden administration.  

The new chips — namely the H20, L20, and L2 — could go on sale in China from November 16 after the new US restrictions come into force, according to a news report from Chinastarmarket, which cites sources in the industrial supply chain put in place by Nvidia to manufacture these new GPUs.

The new GPUs could help Nvidia circumvent the new restrictions by the US government to thwart China’s access to advanced technology, including a limit on total chip performance at 4,800 TPP and a performance density of 5.92.

While the total chip performance limitation blocks the sale of high-powered GPUs — such as A100 and the H100, which are sold in China as the A800 and the H800 with modified bidirectional bandwidth rate — the performance density threshold of a chip was set by the Biden administration to block the loophole of Chinese enterprises and organizations buying GPUs with less performance power and stringing them together to build compute capacity for AI-based workloads.

“Performance density is total performance power of a chip divided by its die area,” semiconductor research and consulting firm, Semianalysis, wrote in a blog post.

As per the latest export restrictions, any chip with a performance density of 5.92 or above stands for an absolute export ban. Companies need to apply for a license for chips with performance densities between 3.2 and 5.92.