The US continues to restrict the export of artificial intelligence chips to China. This restriction does not prohibit companies from selling products to China, only that the products to be sold cannot exceed certain specifications. Nvidia and Intel have been selling to China for a while with slower solutions. Now AMD has announced that it will do the same.AMD will sell slow GPUs to China
In September last year, the US further tightened export sanctions against China by enacting rules restricting Nvidia and AMD from selling their high-performance AI-focused GPUs/accelerators to the country (and Russia). This means that China can no longer import Nvidia A100 or H100 GPUs, while AMD’s MI250 Instinct card is also banned.
On AMD’s latest earnings call, company CEO Lisa Su said: “China is definitely a very important market for us across our portfolio. When we think about the accelerator market, our plan is of course to be fully compliant with US export controls. However, our customers in China looking for AI solutions We believe there is a product development opportunity for our company and we will continue to work in this direction.”AMD is also expected to follow in the footsteps of other companies to develop alternative versions of its chips for the Chinese market, possibly starting with the Instinct MI300X later this year. Given that the US is considering further restrictions on the export of AI chips to the country, it may be wise for AMD to wait before developing a China-specific AI product. We also see this cautious approach on the Nvidia side, and the company said that tightening the rules will have serious effects.
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