Trade restrictions imposed by Washington do not prevent Nvidia from continuing to sell GPUs in China. The new GPUs stay just below the performance limit to avoid limitations.

According to local tech media, Nvidia could launch three new GPUs in China next week. The GPUs have the brand names H20, L20 and L2 and are said to have been developed specifically for the Chinese market. Due to strict US trade restrictions on exporting chip technology to China, it is no longer easy for Nvidia to sell its GPUs to Chinese customers, but several roads lead to Beijing.

Last month, Washington decided to tighten the screws again and further restrict the export of AI hardware. The export restrictions initially only applied to the most advanced GPUs, including Nvidia’s A100 and H100 series. Now so-called “mid-range” chips such as the A800 and H800 are no longer allowed to be delivered to China. To determine whether a GPU can be shipped to China or not, the new regulations will now focus solely on computing power.

Under the bar

Nvidia still considers China to be an important sales market and so the GPU specialist is forced to adjust its offering again. The three graphics processors were developed in such a way that they fall just below the performance limits. The H20 offers 96 GB of memory, 4 Tbit/s bandwidth and 296 teraflops FP8. That’s almost a sixth of the capacity of the H100 series. The L20 and L2 are even more modest, with 48GB at 239 teraflops for the former and 24GB at 193 teraflops for the L2.

With strict restrictions, the USA is trying to make it as difficult as possible for its geopolitical competitors to develop high-quality technology. Not only CPUs and GPUs are on the banned list, but also the machines needed to produce chips. As long as chipmakers like Nvidia continue to find ways to overcome the restrictions, Washington will only tighten them further. Despite all the measures, Chinese technology companies seem to be implementing their plans, although there is still a significant backlog.