US revises export restrictions to ban more GPUs in China

The US is tightening their GPU/AI export restrictions, and it could ban Nvidia’s China-only RTX 4090D

The US Government is taking the threat of China seriously, and have taken new actions to further curb the shipment of AI accelerators and GPUs to China. Now, the US’ restrictions may even ban Nvidia’s China-only RTX 4090D GPU.

Reuters has reported that the US’ new export restrictions will come into force on April 4th. This includes a new performance restriction that will limit the export of products “exceeding 70 Weighted TeraFLOPS” in performance (according to icdeal). This new performance limit should impact Nvidia’s H20 and RTX 4090D products.

This is not the first time that the US has changed its GPU/AI Accelerator export restrictions to tackle China-specific products. US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has previously warned companies about investing in China-only chip redesigns. What is Nvidia’s RTX 4090D? It’s a redesigned RTX 4090 graphics card that skirts around the US’ export restrictions. It makes sense for the US to change their rules and ban this product, as they do not want other companies to follow suit and create more China-only AI products.

Nvidia will be unhappy with the US’ decision to ban more of their products from the Chinese market. That said, this is not the first time that they created GPUs to skirt around US restrictions. Nvidia has continued to push the limits of the US’ AI/GPU export restrictions, so they shouldn’t be surprised that the US have once again pushed back with tighter restrictions.

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