news

cailianshe reported on september 22 (reporters fu jing and wang biwei)rumors that nvidia's (nvda.us) china-specific chip h20 may be discontinued have been circulating in the industry in recent months, and the fate of this chip has once again become a focus of attention. recently, a dealer told cailianshe reporters that it is no longer possible to place orders for h20 chips, and a terminal manufacturer said that some domestic dealers no longer accept h20 orders.

distributor wang yu told cailianshe that nvidia stopped accepting h20 orders last month, but there was no explicit notice. "to be precise, we are waiting for the latest news. production is unlikely to start. although there is no clear instruction, it is basically like this. maybe some customized needs of customers can still be met."

li xiaolin, a terminal manufacturer, also told cailianshe reporters, "we need to place orders with nvidia through distributors. recently, several distributors have said they will no longer accept h20 orders, while some have said they have spot goods and can accept orders."

however, when a reporter from cailianshe inquired about h20, channel dealer li ming said, "i can still take it."

previously, a reporter from cailianshe sent an interview outline to nvidia china to verify whether h20 had stopped accepting orders, but received no response. it is worth mentioning that nvidia responded to cailianshe’s report on the evening of september 20.the company responded to the media with a "no comment".

perhaps affected by the above news, nvidia's stock price fluctuated last friday, opening down 2 points and closing down 1.59% to us$116.00.

nvidia seized the opportunity in the big model wave and consolidated its king status. in 2023, due to policy restrictions, nvidia launched three special chips to china based on h100, among which h20 has the strongest performance.

li xiaolin revealed that nvidia began accepting h20 chip orders in february this year, officially started shipping in april, and shipped in large quantities in may.

however, cailianshe reporters noticed that several practitioners, including wang yu, used the word "chicken ribs" to describe the h20 chip.

public information shows that the nvidia h20 chip was launched to comply with us export restrictions and is an ai accelerator designed specifically for the chinese market. the h20 is based on the nvidia hopper architecture, has 96gb of hbm3 memory, and provides 4.0tb/s of memory bandwidth. in terms of computing power, the h20 has an fp8 performance of 296 tflops and an fp16 performance of 148 tflops. compared with the h100, its gpu core count is reduced by 41% and its performance is reduced by 28%.

many practitioners also told cailianshe reporters that the h20 chip actually received relatively little attention.

zhang na, who is close to many large model manufacturers, mentioned, "i feel that the market attention to computing power leasing is relatively low, and h20 is not so 'obvious'." li xiaolin also told reporters, "the price of h20 is not low, and it will sell for more than one million. the large manufacturers have almost stockpiled all the goods, and small manufacturers may have demand."

even so, many parties in the industry have reported that a large number of h20s have arrived recently, and the arrivals this year have exceeded the full-year expectations.

according to a report by sina finance in early september, "chip experts said that bytedance is expected to have more than 100,000 nvidia chips on hand; its h20 chip orders have increased to 320,000-330,000 chips, and 140,000-150,000 chips have been delivered so far."

zhang na said, "i understand that several manufacturers have recently received a large number of shipments, and the number is more than they expected. before the new year, the market generally expected that h20 shipments this year would be about 400,000, but it is estimated that the final shipments of 600,000 to 700,000 are possible." zhang na said, "i don't know if this sudden change is because the h20 order cut-off news came out, and everyone wants to 'go big.'"

due to the surge in demand for ai computing power and policy factors, some of nvidia's gpus were once considered luxury goods due to their high prices. in the interview, li xiaolin also mentioned nvidia's luxury goods "allocation" strategy based on the h20 chip.

li xiaolin said that because chips such as gb200 and a100 are very popular, many large manufacturers have purchasing needs. in addition, the production capacity of high-end chips is very limited, so it is often necessary to match goods when purchasing, and h20 is one of the common matching goods. "it is difficult to say whether some companies purchase h20 in large quantities because of matching goods."

in july this year, many media reported that investment bank jefferies released a report saying that the h20 chip may be suspended from sale, which may cause nvidia a loss of $12 billion. "the report believes that when the united states reviews its semiconductor export policy in october, h20 products may face a sales ban. the ban can take many forms, including bans on specific products, reducing the computing power of chips, or limiting their memory capacity."

it is worth noting that many industry chain people, including internet manufacturers, large model manufacturers, and chip suppliers who talked to cailianshe reporters all clearly stated that the rumor that h20 will be discontinued has been around for a long time, and everyone is generally concerned about whether it will be discontinued in the short term.

zhang na said, "friends from several large and small factories, anyway, anyone related to hardware, have heard of this news."

"the industry has been discussing this for a long time. perhaps a policy will be issued before the end of the year, and nvidia is still working on it," said wang yu.

"there have been rumors in the industry for a long time, but nvidia has been suppressing it," said li ming.

li xiaolin further told the cailian reporter, "some dealers are not accepting orders now, perhaps because they are betting on whether h20 will be discontinued in the near future. if it is discontinued, they will increase the price to sell it."

in 2022 and 2023, the united states released policies on computing chips in september and october respectively, which caused a huge stir at the time. now, it is almost time for the policy to be released in previous years, and the fate of this special chip may soon be revealed.

(wang yu, li xiaolin, li ming and zhang na in this article are all pseudonyms)