High-performance computer components have been banned from China for some time now. The US government doesn’t want the country to modernize its military with American technology. These sanctions have come in several waves, the first banning the A100/H100, then the A800/H800, and now NVIDIA’s RTX 4090 is among them.
However, with each new wave, the company designs components that barely comply with the restrictions, so as to continue selling in China. This situation is starting to seriously annoy the government, which is warning the company.
NVIDIA is starting to get on the US government’s nerves – what a scoundrel that Jensen Huang is!
Basically, it’s simple: with each new sanction, NVIDIA adapts its hardware to comply. Initially, this concerned the A100/H100, and in response, NVIDIA proposed the A800/H800. Then these cards were banned, and now we learn that the chameleon is working on new solutions. As we reported here, Jensen Huang’s company is working on the HGX H20/L20/L2. And to get around the restrictions on the 4090, an RTX 4090 D is also in the pipeline.
In short, this situation is annoying the American government, which is seeing the effect of its restrictions mitigated. This forced Gina Raimondo, US Secretary of Commerce, to speak out:
If you redesign a chip around a particular cut line that enables them to do AI, I’m going to control it in the very next day.
In other words, Gina isn’t very happy. To put it crudely, if NVIDIA continues to play with limits, she’ll be taking a serious look at these new products.
So all that remains to be seen is how the company will react. Will it cancel its latest cards? To be continued.