[Text/Observer Network Chen Sijia] In recent years, the U.S. government has implemented a series of chip export restrictions against China in an attempt to suppress the development of China's chip industry. However, American technology companies have found that the containment and suppression of the United States cannot stop China's technological progress, and Chinese companies are trying to bypass the United States.
According to Hong Kong's "South China Morning Post" report on September 28, Nvidia CEO Huang Renxun recently stated that China is only "a few nanoseconds" behind the United States in the chip field and has strong potential in chip R&D and manufacturing. He called on the U.S. government to allow U.S. technology companies to compete in markets such as China in order to "increase the influence of the United States".
In an episode of the podcast show released on 26th, Huang Yinglong said that the chip industry is a "dynamic, entrepreneurial, high-tech modern industry", China has a rich talent reserve and intense internal competition, and has great potential in chip development and manufacturing. he said: "China lags behind the U.S. yen seconds, so we must compete."
Huang Renxun believes that the United States should allow its technology industry to compete globally, including the Chinese market, thereby "spreading technology around the world" and "maximizing the economic success and geopolitical influence of the United States."
He also added that he believes China will remain open to foreign investment, “this is in the interests of China to develop an active competition between foreign companies investing in China, competing in China and interacting with them.”
With the rapid development of AI technology, NVIDIA’s graphics processor (GPU) business has risen high. But in recent years, the U.S. government has imposed strict export controls to suppress Chinese chip development. Earlier this year, the U.S. government banned NVIDIA from exporting H20 chips to China until NVIDIA agreed to pay up 15% of its sales in China.
H20 is a "reduced version" AI chip designed by Nvidia specially for the Chinese market in compliance with U.S. export controls. Its performance is only 15%-30% of the flagship product H100. It is based on Nvidia's older Hopper architecture.
However, in the face of suppression from the United States, Chinese companies are working hard to launch domestically produced AI chips that can replace Nvidia and seize the market share that Nvidia once dominated. For example, last week, Huawei announced the product iteration roadmap of Ascend AI chips in the next three years. Through the "super node + cluster" computing power solution, it can meet the continuously growing computing power demand in an integrated way.
The South China Morning Post pointed out that Internet giants such as Ali, Tencent, Baidu and ByteDance have also increased their investment in chip research and development and design, striving to gain greater independent controllability in the supply chain.
On September 16, local time, Reuters exclusively that NVIDIA launched several "discounted special edition" chips to China, but more and more Chinese buyers are not willing to pay. For example, NVIDIA's latest AI chip RTX6000D, tailored for the Chinese market, is in low demand, and its major customers - several Chinese tech giants refuse to order.
In addition, NVIDIA also faces security vulnerabilities and monopoly risks.
On July 31, in order to maintain the network security and data security of Chinese users, the Chinese side interviewed Nvidia and asked it to explain the security risks of the backdoor vulnerability of the H20 computing power chip sold to China and submit relevant supporting materials. Yuyuan Tantian, a new media account owned by China Central Radio and Television Station, issued an article naming the H20 chip as "not environmentally friendly, not advanced, and not safe" and not a "good choice".
On December 9 last year, the Chinese regulatory authorities launched an investigation into Nvidia for allegedly violating the anti-monopoly law. Nearly a year later, on September 15, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued another statement on its website saying that Nvidia violated the anti-monopoly law and decided to conduct further investigations in accordance with the law.
On September 17, local time, Huang Yi responded to a recent Chinese further investigation into NVIDIA’s implementation, saying the United States needed “to ensure that people can access this (AI chip) technology from all over the world, including China.”
Huang Renxun emphasized the importance of China's AI industry. He pointed out: "The Chinese market is very important and big. The technology industry is full of vitality. We have been serving the Chinese market for 30 years."
Regarding the issue of chip sales, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on September 18 that China has always opposed discriminatory practices against specific countries on economic, trade, scientific and technological issues. China is willing to maintain dialogue and cooperation with all parties to maintain the stability of the global production and supply chain.