US Reported to Block AMD Exports of AI Chip Tailored for China
BEIJING, March 5 (TMTPost)-- Another U.S. semiconductor company is confronting new export restrictions from the Biden administration.
Credit：TMTPost
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) didn’t obtain the green light from for its artificial intelligence (AI) chips tailored for the Chinese market, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter on Tuesday. In order to comply with the latest export curbs, AMD had designed MI309, an AI processor that has lower performance than its premium MI300, for Chinese customers, but officials at the U.S. Department of Commerce still believes the chip is too powerful to sell without an export license from Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security, according to the report. The regulator’s stance suggests AMD had to apply for an export license of the alternative product of MI300, a new lineup launched in December.
AMD didn’t comment on the report. The Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security did respond to the request for comment. It’s unclear which Chinese customer was striving to buy the AMD chips. The identity of customer was said to have impact on AMD’s ability to secure a license if the chipmaker decided to seek an license.
The reported export curbs on AI offerings to China came from a rule that the U.S. government imposed months ago . The U.S. Department of Commerce introduced a rule entitles “Implementation of Additional Export Controls: Certain Advanced Computing Items; Supercomputer and Semiconductor End Use; Updates and Corrections”, on October 18, 2023. The department said the rule reinforces the controls launched in October 2022 to restrict China’s both purchase and manufacture certain high-end chips critical for military advantage. The agency believes the rules are necessary to maintain the effectiveness of these controls, close loopholes, and ensure they remain durable. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the rule targets foreign entities including Chinese ones’ access to U.S. data centers to train AI models. "We can't have non-state actors or China or folks who we don’t want accessing our cloud to train their models," Raimondo told Reuters in an interview on Friday. "We use export controls on chips. Those chips are in American cloud data centers so we also have to think about closing down that avenue for potential malicious activity," the Secretary said.
China opposes US politicizing, instrumentalizing and weaponizing trade and tech issues, and will closely follow the developments and firmly safeguard our legitimate rights and interests, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said in October. Arbitrarily placing curbs or forcibly seeking decoupling to serve political agenda violates the principles of market economy and fair competition, undermines the international economic and trading order, disrupts and destabilizes global industrial and supply chains and will eventually hurt the interests of the whole world, Wang said.
The rule was supposed to come into effect following a 30-day public comment period. But Nvidia Corporation, the AI chip leader,disclosed on October 25 that the U.S. government informed the licensing requirements of the rule applicable to products having a “total processing performance” of 4800 or more and designed or marketed for data centers, is effective immediately.
Nvidia has modified some of flagship products including A100 and H100 for exports to China, including an alternative A800 chip, as the U.S. regulators last year banned it from selling its most advanced chips to China. But even A800, the weakened version of Nvida’s cutting-edge A100 processor, is not allowed for export without first obtaining a license according to the new restrictions.
TMTPost learned in December that Nvidia will launch a new set of chips under the name of HGX H20, L20 PCle, L2 PClel for China market, though all of them are weakened version. Compared with H100, the HGX H20 has limitations on bandwidth and computing speed, and its overall computing power is about 80% less than that of H100, namely, the comprehensive computing performance of H20 is equal to 20% of H100.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in December that has been working very closely with the U.S. government to make sure products for China comply with new rules about export controls. Huang noted Intel, Huawei and the growing number of semiconductor startups are posing serious challenges to Nvidia’s domination, and Nvidia has a lot of competitors in and outside China. But the executive said he is not phased by such competition and believes it’s good for the advancement of the technology.