US authorities consider new export restriction on computing power in AI chips

According to two people with knowledge of the situation, US authorities are considering strengthening an export control regulation aimed at reducing the amount of computational power that chips can have in order to reduce the flow of artificial intelligence chips to China. A comprehensive set of regulations was released by the Biden administration in October of last year with the intention of freezing China’s semiconductor sector in place while the US spends billions of dollars in subsidies for its own chip business. Two individuals indicated that an update to those guidelines may appear by the end of July, but one emphasised that such US initiatives involving China frequently have delays. The US Department of Commerce declined to respond. Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said on Wednesday at an investors conference, “Over the long-term, restrictions prohibiting the sale of our data center GPUs to China, if implemented, would result in a permanent loss of opportunities for US industry to compete and lead in one of the world’s largest markets and impact on our future business and financial results.” The Biden administration is reportedly mulling additional limitations on the sale of AI technology to China, according to the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. One of the regulations from October restricted the sale of chips in China that can offer the computing power required to develop artificial intelligence technologies similar to ChatGPT. This restriction immediately had an impact on sales of products from Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and would probably have an impact on future offerings from Intel Corp. Nvidia, whose dominant position in the AI chip industry helped make it worth $1 trillion earlier this year, would be severely hurt by the potential regulatory tightening. “We do not anticipate that such additional restrictions, if adopted, would have an immediate material impact on our financial results,” Nvidia’s Kress said on Wednesday. Questions have arisen about how effective the October rule will be in slowing Chinese companies’ development of AI systems. Nvidia has made special chips for the Chinese market that comply with the October restrictions, but Reuters reported last month that major Chinese companies such as Tencent Holdings plan to use Nvidia’s export-compliant chips to cut the time it takes to train huge AI systems by more than half. The current rule around AI chips involves two restrictions. One restriction focuses on how fast chips can communicate with each other, which is important because AI systems such as ChatGPT require thousands of chips to be chained together. The other restriction focuses on how much computing power the chip can have. The H800 chip that Nvidia created for the Chinese market, for example, has as much computing power at some settings used in AI work as the company’s chip for the rest of the world, but its chip-to-chip speeds are limited, according to a specification sheet seen by Reuters. Intel declined to comment. AMD declined to comment. Previously, AMD has said the rules will not have an impact on its financial results. Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.