China state media says Nvidia’s H20 chips are unsafe: Reuters
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The news: China’s state media has said that Nvidia’s H20 chips pose security problems for the country and suggested that the country has the option “not to buy" the chips, Reuters reports.
The context: An article posted on WeChat by an account affiliated with the Chinese state broadcaster, CCTV, said that the H20 chips are not technologically advanced or environmentally friendly, the outlet reports.
“When a type of chip is neither environmentally friendly, nor advanced, nor safe, as consumers, we certainly have the option not to buy it,” the article concluded.
Nvidia developed H20 chips for the Chinese market after the Biden administration imposed export bans on advanced AI chips in 2023, before current US President Donald Trump banned their sales earlier this year as the trade war began heating up. Trump reversed the ban in July.
Last month China’s cyberspace watchdog said that it asked Nvidia to explain whether the H20 chips had any backdoor security risks which would permit bypassing of regular security controls to allow remote access or control. Nvidia says its product do not have ‘backdoors’ that would allow this kind of access.
The news comes after a report by the Financial Times found that China wants the US to ease export controls on a critical component for AI chips as part of a trade deal ahead of a possible summit between Trump and President Xi Jinping. Sources cited by the FT say that officials told experts in Washington that Beijing wants the Trump administration to relax export restrictions on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips.
The sources: Reuters, Financial Times
