Nvidia’s selling a nerfed GPU in China to get around export restrictions

Nvidia released a reduced version of its flagship product. A100 GPU for high-end applicationsTo get around the restrictions of the US government Recently imposedTo limit the ability of companies to sell AI training equipment in countries like Russia and China. The A800 card should also have this feature. Massive computing power as the originalHowever, it can only communicate with cards in a cluster computing cluster at 400 gigabytes instead of 600Gbps. According to The Wall Street Journal, that means the A800 should be just as good for simple tasks but will be significantly less effective when it’s part of something like a supercomputer.

A spokesperson for Nvidia who has not been identified Submitted Reuters that the card is an “alternative product to the Nvidia A100 GPU for customers in China” that “meets the U.S. Government’s clear test for reduced export control and cannot be programmed to exceed it.” While the exact specifications the US tests against aren’t public, the WSJ does say they involve interconnect speeds, as well as “other performance thresholds.”

Nvidia’s note about not being able to be programmed to exceed the limits is important. The company revealed that its new cards would include limiters back in 1996, when GPUs were scarce. couldn’t be hackedThe cards are allegedly less attractive for crypto mining because they have a lower value. Famously, it wasn’t long before people were You can get around these limitations.

The US has been placing strict restrictions on what chips American companies are allowed to sell to China. The Biden administration announced October that it would be limiting the types of chips American companies can sell to China. AnnouncementThe country has new restrictions on the type of chips and manufacturing equipment that could be sold, which means export licenses are required for all manufacturers. Nvidia, AMD were both announced in September. Both warned investorsTheir businesses could be affected by restrictions on exporting high-quality products.

The government has said the limits are an attempt to limit China’s technical and military capabilities. Eric Schmidt, a former Google CEO, is one example of a technolog. Have you been warned? that the US isn’t capable of keeping up, though other researchers have Resisting the arms race framing. However, it is possible that chips such as the A100 could be used to support military or other criminal purposes. James Vincent, my colleague, said it. It should be noted, they could be used to create “automated targeting systems for drones or the Facial recognition systemsChina uses to Surveill its population.”

Whether or not the A800’s slower interlink speeds will be enough to hinder or meaningfully slow down that work, it does seem like Nvidia thinks it’s enough to meet the government’s requirements. For the company, at least, that’s good news — it estimated that the restrictions could affect up to $400 million in quarterly sales “if customers do not want to purchase the Company’s alternative product offerings or if the [US Government] does not grant licenses in a timely manner.”