China tells companies not to use Nvidia H20 chips in fresh guidance: Bloomberg
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The news: China has urged local companies to avoid using Nvidia’s H20 chips, according to sources cited by Bloomberg, after Chinese state media recently cast doubt on the security of the processors.
The context: Chinese authorities have sent notices to a range of firms discouraging the use of the less-advanced semiconductors, particularly urging against use of H20s for government or national security-related work by state enterprises or private companies, the report said.
Nvidia said in a statement to Bloomberg that “the H20 is not a military product or for government infrastructure.” China has ample supplies of domestic chips and “won’t and never has relied on American chips for government operations.”
The FT reports that tech companies including Alibaba and ByteDance were asked by regulators such as the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to explain why they need to order Nvidia’s H20 chips instead of using domestic alternatives.
Last week Chinese state media said that the H20 chips are not technologically advanced or environmentally friendly: “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 has repeatedly denied that its chips hold any such vulnerabilities.
Beijing’s push is also set to impact AI accelerators from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), but it remains unclear whether AMD’s MI308 chip has been named by Chinese authorities specifically.
Both AMD and Nvidia gained approval from the Trump administration to resume sales of their lower-end AI chips to China on the proviso that they give the US government a 15% cut of the associated revenue.
