On February 1, Beijing time, people familiar with the matter said that Nvidia has begun accepting orders for its China-specific AI chip H20 through dealers, and the price has also been released. H20 is the most powerful of the three China special edition chips. According to people familiar with the matter, Nvidia has set prices for orders from Chinese H20 dealers in recent weeks between US$12,000 and US$15,000 (approximately 85,000 to 107,000 yuan) per unit. However, some dealers have begun to increase prices significantly, raising the starting price of H20 to 110,000 yuan.
At the same time, NVIDIA dealers are still selling H20 servers, which are pre-configured with 8 H20 chips and sell for 1.4 million yuan. In comparison, a server equipped with eight H800 chips cost about 2 million yuan when it was launched a year ago. However, the computing power of H20 is lower than that of H800. Nvidia once dominated China's AI chip market, with a share of more than 90%, but the company is facing challenges from domestic rivals.
Nvidia resellers have told customers that they can begin delivering H20 chips in small quantities in the first quarter of 2024, followed by larger quantities starting in the second quarter. Media reported last month that Nvidia planned to start mass production of H20 in the second quarter of this year. The chip was originally scheduled to launch in November last year, but was later delayed. People familiar with the matter said at the time that the delay was because the server maker was having problems integrating the chips.
Nvidia also plans to launch two other chips, L20 and L2, specifically for the Chinese market. The current status of these two chips cannot yet be determined. Currently, H20, L20 and L2 have not appeared on Nvidia’s official website.
In order to show the importance of the Chinese market to Nvidia, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited the company's offices in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing last month before the Lunar New Year holiday and attended the company's annual meeting.
As of press time, Nvidia had declined to comment.