China’s top AI chip company Cambricon Technology, listed on the tech-focused Star Market on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, rally for the second straight trading day and surges by the daily limit of 20% to hit 80.78 yuan apiece at the close of the morning session on Friday, after the US imposed fresh restrictions of Nvidia’s top AI chip exports to China.
Nvidia said in a filing on Wednesday that the US government has told it about a new license requirement for future exports to China, including Hong Kong, to reduce the risk that the products may be used by the Chinese military. The restriction would affect the high-performance AI chips for servers, A100 and H100 products, which are graphics processing units sold to businesses, it said. “The license requirement also includes any future Nvidia integrated circuit achieving both peak performance and chip-to-chip I/O performance equal to or greater than thresholds that are roughly equivalent to the A100, as well as any system that includes those circuits.”
The company said on Thursday said, while sales of both chips are still restricted in those markets, the US government will allow it to continue developing its H100 AI chip in China. “The US government has authorized exports, reexports, and in-country transfers needed to continue NVIDIA Corporation’s, or the Company’s, development of H100 integrated circuits,” Nvidia said.
The H100 is Nvidia’s upcoming enterprise AI chip that was previously expected to ship by the end of the year. Part of its development takes place in China. The A100 is an older model that has been shipping for three years. They are both graphics processors that can be used for supercomputing and artificial intelligence.
AMD also said Wednesday that it received new license requirements from the Department of Commerce, but did not expect them to materially affect its business because of lower China exposure.
