Shipment Restriction of U.S. on China Jolting Semi Biz

The chip shipment restriction of the U.S. on China has impacted the semiconductor business. This step has already affected Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices as Washington steps up efforts to curb Chinese technological and military advancements.

Recently, Nvidia’s two premium AI computing chips and one type of its powerful AI computing system were affected by a new U.S. regulation. The company shared that they are planning to arrange export control licenses and also wants to have a conversation with customers in China about the issue, informed a news website.

Currently, the world’s top chipmakers — Intel, TSMC and Samsung — are racing to produce 3-nm chips using the latest chip production technologies. Chips with smaller nanometer sizes are more powerful but also more challenging to develop.

Research by Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology says that the Chinese military is still heavily relying on American technologies and advanced chip production capacity in Taiwan and South Korea for procuring its AI chips

Of the 97 individual AI chips that it could identify in the records, almost all were made by Nvidia, Xilinx (now an AMD company), Intel or Microsemi, the report said. By comparison, the Georgetown team could not find any public records of PLA units or state-owned defense enterprises placing orders for high-end AI chips designed by Chinese companies such as HiSilicon (Huawei), Sugon, Sunway, Hygon or Phytium.

AMD meanwhile alerted its China operations on Wednesday that the U.S. chipmaker will suspend some shipments of high-end GPUs to China, according to two people familiar with the matter. AMD has received notification of new licensing requirements from the U.S. Department of Commerce that prevent it from shipping MI250 integrated circuits to China and Russia.