Nvidia Says US Advanced Timeline for Export Curbs of AI Chips to China, Other Countries

Chip designer Nvidia said new US export curbs that block the sale of its high-end artificial intelligence chips to China came into effect on Monday as regulators advanced the timeline.

The restrictions were supposed to come into play 30 days from October 17 when the Biden administration unveiled measures to stop countries, including China, Iran and Russia, from receiving advanced AI chips designed by Nvidia and others. 

Nvidia does not expect a near-term impact on its earnings from this move, it disclosed in a filing on Tuesday, but did not say why the US government had accelerated the timing. 

AMD, also impacted by the curbs, did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment, while the US Department of Commerce declined to comment.

The restrictions disallow exports of Nvidia’s modified advanced AI chips A800 and H800 — both of which it had created for the Chinese market to comply with previous export rules. 

The Nvidia A100, H100, and L40S chips are also impacted by the curbs.

Earlier this year, Nvidia has announced its AI collaboration with Reliance and Tata Group. The company’s partnership with Reliance will work to create language models, generative apps and a cloud infrastructure platform for AI development in India. For this, Nvidia will provide the computing power required for the efforts, while Reliance unit Jio will manage and maintain the AI infrastructure and oversee customer engagement, the companies said.

The partnership will give Reliance access to the latest version of Nvidia’s Grace Hopper Superchip, its AI chips that are optimized to perform AI inference functions that effectively power apps like ChatGPT.

© Thomson Reuters 2023