September 22, 2022
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang has said he still sees a large market for Nvidia’s data center chips in China, and that despite recent U.S. trade restrictions on two of its top chips to China, there is plenty of scope for sales to China.
According to Huang, the restrictions issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce earlier this month will affect both chip performance and the processor’s connectivity to other chips. In addition, in extreme cases where customers have a particular need to purchase the limited chips, Nvidia will be able to seek a license from U.S. trade officials, leaving the company plenty of room in the Chinese market because the vast majority of its customers are not affected by the specification.
The U.S. government had previously called on Nvidia to stop exporting to China its fastest chips, which are used in data centers to accelerate artificial intelligence tasks such as processing natural language processing, the A100 and H100. However, both chips are part of larger chip lines with a large number of products still available for sale in China, and Nvidia has a very large turnover to innovate and serve its customers.
Huang raised security concerns about trade restrictions, claiming that both fair trade and national security are needed. He concluded that the goal of the ban is not to diminish or impede its business, but to identify who would require capabilities above that limit and to allow the U.S. to decide whether this technology should be available to others.
The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.
