Nvidia has reportedly started production of a new graphics card dedicated to AI, reserved for the Chinese market. Called H20, it strives to scrupulously respect the conditions of the American embargo on GPUs exported to China.
Little by little, Nvidia is acquiring a catalog of graphics cards reserved exclusively for the Chinese market… and tailor-made to respect the conditions of the American embargo imposed on GPUs that can be used for training AI models. After the GeForce RTX 4090D, a modified version of the RTX 4090 that we talked about a few days ago, the firm will now begin production of a certain “H20”. Dedicated to the worlds of servers and businesses, the latter would begin to be manufactured for China during the second quarter of 2024, reports WCCFTech.
The upcoming production of this new graphics card would follow the appearance, this fall, of rumors suggesting that Nvidia would be working on the development of a complete range of GPUs dedicated to AI and dedicated to the Chinese market. This project would therefore begin to take shape. As a reminder, these chips would serve, in China, as alternatives to the H100, L40 and L4 GPUs… which fell under the American embargo.
Nvidia is organizing to minimize the impact of the American embargo on its activity in China
On a technical level, the H20 chip would therefore be a castrated version of Nvidia’s H100 GPU. It would be limited to support for 96 GB of RAM operating at a maximum of 4 Tb/s, while developing 296 TFLOPs of computing power for 400 W of TDP. The H100 chip would nevertheless remain much more powerful: 6.69 times faster than the H20 in certain contexts of use, we read. Perfect for cajoling the American authorities.
Initially expected for the end of 2023, these various chips specially designed for China will therefore arrive during 2024. A delay due to the rise in tensions observed in recent months between Beijing and Washington. For the rest, we learn that the production of these new GPUs would be managed by Wistron, one of Nvidia’s main subcontractors.
While waiting for their arrival, Chinese companies specializing in AI are making do with what they have, notably grabbing the latest stocks of GeForce RTX 4090 available in China. Since nature abhors a vacuum, Nvidia has every interest in responding to demand quickly, because other players could rush into the breach. We know, for example, that Huawei is already starting to offer chips in China that are certainly much less sophisticated, but offer an attractive price/performance ratio. Some analysts also expect the group to emerge a winner from this embargo imposed by Washington on GPUs.
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