By directing Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to stop shipping their flagship artificial intelligence chips including Nvidia’s A100 and H100 chips and AMD’s MI250 chip to China, the U.S. authorities appeared to be targeting a small but vital segment of China’s computer industry.
According to some national security experts, the U.S. move has been a long time in coming, because the regulations appear to focus on chips called Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) with the strongest computing capabilities, such as performing artificial intelligence calculations quickly and with incredible accuracy. Originally designed for video games, however, they have been expanded to address artificial intelligence tasks such as image recognition, cat photo classification, and combing digital satellite imagery for military equipment.
According to Emily Kilcrease, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, these GPUs are completely unregulated in China and Russia, so the action is a way to offset the constraints that should have existed if America was serious about slowing China’s AI growth.
The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.