The U.S. initially blocked the export of the highest level of chips produced by firms such as Nvidia and AMD

The Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) chip market has been subject to ongoing export restrictions imposed by the US in October 2022, which forbid the sale of certain U.S. products to China.

The U.S. initially blocked the export of the highest level of chips produced by firms such as Nvidia and AMD. Under the initial October controls, the firms were still able to export other models to China, like Nvidia’s A800 and H800.

One year later, on October 17, 2023, the U.S. government announced an expansion of controls to “reinforce” the earlier ones, meaning all chip models would be embargoed from the Chinese market.

One of Nvidia’s top gaming chips, the L40S chip, is also impacted by the latest export controls, which were immediately effective on October 24.

Nevertheless, on November 9, local Chinese media outlet STAR Market Daily reported that Nvidia has plans to release three new chips for China. The report cited people familiar with the matter and stated the chips are called the HGX H20, L20 PCIe and L2 PCIe.

Nvidia reportedly could announce the new chips as early as November 16.

According to a quarterly report from Nvidia earlier this year, China is one of its biggest markets, along with Taiwan and the US.

Moreover, Chinese firms have been turning to domestic firms to fulfil their needs for AI chips.

On November 7, Reuters reported that the Chinese technology firm Baidu had ordered AI chips from Huawei in August.

As per the report, Baidu ordered 1,600 of Huawei’s 910B Ascend AI chips for 200 servers. Huawei’s 910B chips are supposed to be an alternative to Nvidia’s A100.

The report stated that by October, Huawei delivered more than 60 per cent of Baidu’s chip order, which is nearly 1,000 chips and has a total value of around 450 million yuan ($61.83 million). The remaining chips are expected by the end of the year.