On October 24, local time, GPU manufacturer NVIDIA (NVIDIA) stated in a latest 8K document submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,The U.S. government has notified NVIDIA to immediately stop shipments of A100, A800, H100, H800 and L40S products.
Documents show that the U.S. government issued a letter to NVIDIA titled “Implementing Additional Export Controls:Certain Advanced Computing Projects; Supercomputers and Semiconductor End Uses; Updates and Corrections" notice, signed on October 18, 2023, requires that export restrictions applicable to "products with a combined performance of 4800 or above and that are designed or sold for data centers" are "effective immediately."
The previous U.S. government requirement was to take effect 30 days later, on November 17.
In other words, in theory, according to the original rules, NVIDIA can still continue to export A800/H800 and other related products to China before the rules officially take effect on November 17.
According to the latest requirements of the US government, "products with a comprehensive performance of 4800 or above and designed or sold for data centers" will need to "immediately stop exports."
The explanation given by NVIDIA is that the shipment of the company's A100, A800, H100, H800 and L40S products will be affected.
However, NVIDIA said that "given the strong global demand for the company's products, the company does not expect the accelerated implementation of licensing requirements to have a meaningful short-term impact on its financial results."
On the evening of October 17, the U.S. government announced the "Interim Final Rules", which upgraded the export restriction rules for high-performance computing chips to China.
(1) ECCN3A090a is aimed at the highest performance chip. The integrated circuit contains one or more processing units that meet any of the following standards: a) the comprehensive computing performance (Total Processing Performance, TPP) reaches 4800, or b) the comprehensive computing performance reaches 1600, and the "Performance Density" (Performance Density, PD) reaches 5.92.
(2) ECCN3A090b is aimed at sub-high-performance chips. The integrated circuit contains one or more processing units that meet any of the following standards: a) the comprehensive computing performance reaches 2400 but lower than 4800, and the performance density reaches 1.6 but lower than 5.92; b) the comprehensive computing performance reaches 1600, and the performance density reaches 3.2 but lower than 5.92.
PD here refers to the TPP indicator divided by the chip area (unit: mm2). The chip area referred to here includes all areas occupied by logic operation chips, and also includes logic chips manufactured using non-planar transistor architecture process nodes. In addition, the regulations also require the export of specific chips with performance slightly below the limit to be reported to BIS, and BIS will decide whether this export requires a license.
BIS has also introduced an exemption to allow the export of chips used in consumer applications such as laptops, smartphones, and gaming applications.
but,Licensing notification requirements are still in place for a small number of high-end gaming chips (this should refer to products such as NVIDIA ARTX4090). The purpose is to increase shipment visibility (not to completely ban sales) and prevent the abuse of these chips from undermining U.S. national security.
According to the 8-K document disclosed by NVIDIA on October 17, local time, some of NVIDIA's high-performance computing chips exceeded certain performance thresholds (including but not limited to A100, A800, H100, H800, L40, L40S and RTX4090). Any system that contains one or more covered related chips (including but not limited to NVIDIA DGX and HGX systems) will be included in the new licensing requirements.
Licensing requirements include future NVIDIA chips, boards that meet aggregate processing performance and/or performance density thresholds or fall under the ECCN 3A090 or 4A090 classification systems.
Licensing requirements apply to a party exporting products of category ECCN3A090 or 4A090 to a party headquartered in or with an ultimate parent company headquartered in the D5 group of countries, including China.
NVIDIA said at the time that the licensing requirements may impact the company's ability to complete product development in a timely manner, support existing customers of covered products, or provide covered products to customers outside the affected regions, and may require the company to move certain operations to one or more identified countries.
If a customer requires a product covered by the new licensing requirements, the Company may seek a license for the customer, but there can be no assurance that U.S. BIS will grant any exception or license, or that U.S. BIS will act on the request in a timely manner.