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Cailianshe News, July 22 (Editor: Huang Junzhi)Three people familiar with the matter told the media that Nvidia, the "AI leader", is developing a new flagship AI chip for the Chinese market that will comply with current US export control regulations.

According to them, Nvidia will work with Inspur Group, one of its distributors in China, to distribute the chip, tentatively named "B20". However, the report did not mention the performance or parameter information of the AI ​​chip.

In March this year, Nvidia released a new generation of Blackwell architecture series chips, which will be mass-produced later this year. Among them, B200 integrates 208 billion transistors, which is 2.6 times the 80 billion transistors of the previous generation chip. Moreover, B200 is 30 times faster than its predecessor in some tasks, such as providing answers for chatbots.

“Wracking your brains” for the Chinese market

As early as October 2022, the US government issued comprehensive restrictions aimed at curbing the development of China's chip industry. Later, according to media reports, Nvidia developed a new advanced chip for the Chinese market in less than a month, with the aim of continuing to provide services in the Chinese market without violating regulations.

Then in October 2023, the United States issued new regulations to further control the export restrictions of AI-related chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China, and added a number of Chinese entities to the export control "Entity List". Then earlier this year, the United States upgraded its chip export ban to China, comprehensively restricting the sale of Nvidia, AMD and more advanced AI chips and semiconductor equipment to China.

Because of this, Nvidia's business in China has been hit hard, and the company has been "racking its brains" about it.

But the Chinese market is very important to Nvidia. The company's CEO Huang Renxun said at the first quarter earnings conference that due to various restrictions, China's data center business has been significantly reduced, and the company will continue to serve Chinese customers to the best of its ability.

"We have customers we respect, and we will do our best to serve every one of them. Our business in China has indeed declined a lot from past levels. Competition in China is now more intense due to restrictions. These are facts. But NVIDIA will continue to do its best to serve customers in the Chinese market and will do its best to do its best," he said.

In fact, since the United States tightened its control over the export of cutting-edge semiconductors to China, Nvidia has designed several AI chips specifically for the Chinese market, such as HGX H20, L20 PCle and L2 PCle. However, the results have not been satisfactory.

Therefore, it remains to be seen whether this latest special AI chip can help NVIDIA "regain confidence" in the Chinese market.

(Huang Junzhi, Cailianshe)