“There are several local Chinese companies that produce fleas to compete with Nvidia,” said Brady Wang, associate director of Counterpoint Research.
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While the United States is tightening controls on NVIDIA sales in China, manufacturers of the country’s interior artificial intelligence as Huawei benefit, according to semiconductor analysts.
The Commerce Department said last week That the H20 graphics processing units of NVIDIA – designed to comply with previous American restrictions – would now require export licenses, just like the additional chips of Dmla. Nvidia says he has already interrupted GPU exports, which has led to a quarterly load of around 5.5 billion dollars.
But the loss of the American AI Darling could be a gain for local Chinese AI chip players while China continues to seek its own NVIDIA alternative, said semiconductor analysts in CNBC.
“There are several local Chinese companies that produce fleas to compete with Nvidia,” said Brady Wang, associate director of Counterpoint Research.
The examples of these local AI chip manufacturers include Huawei technological power and partially belonging to the State and publicly published Cambricon, which designs GPUs.
Cambricon shares have increased by more than 10% in the last five days of negotiation in the midst of new NVIDIA controls. The stock has increased by more than 400% in the last 12 months.
These local competitors now have a greater impetus and a greater opportunity to grow and improve their solutions, said Wang, adding that it expects the demand for their GPUs to increase.
Can China fill the gap?
Analysts underlined Huawei as a clear leader in China race to find a competitor from Nvidia. THE US-BLACKLITED The company has worked alone “Ascension 910“The GPU series, the last of which Ascendant 910c.
“With the H20 of NVIDIA and other restricted GPUs, national alternatives such as the Huawei Ascend series gain ground,” said Doug O’Laughlin, industry analyst at the independent company of the semiconductor research company.
A recent report Semianalysis indicates that although Huawei remains “a generation behind in the fleas”, the company “makes waves” with the equipment that uses them.
“Although there are still shortcomings in the maturity of software and the overall preparation of the ecosystem, hardware performance closes quickly,” added O’Laughlin.
However, experts note that export controls have also hampered China’s ability to produce advanced GPUs on the same scale as NVIDIA can via manufacturers of contractual chips such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing CompanyThe largest contractual chip manufacturer in the world.
“Huawei turned out to be a flea designer who is only competitive … But they find it difficult to find enough supply of their foundries,” said Phelix Lee, actions analyst focused on semiconductors for Morningstar.
Given that Tamias de TSMC manufacturing equipment includes American technology, the company complies with American commercial restrictions on Huawei and the shipping of advanced fleas in China. This left Chinese companies increasingly dependent on domestic foundries such as International semiconductor manufacturing company.
Nevertheless, SMIC is under its own export controls, which prevents it Some of the most advanced Tamiaux manufacturing equipment in the world.
Given these conditions, said Lee, it remains “very skeptical” that Chinese foundries could provide enough GPU H20 alternatives to meet the demand of Chinese technological companies as soon as.
Do export controls work?
However, experts say that Chinese flea manufacturers will not need to respond immediately to this H20 request thanks to export stocks and export exemptions and previous swarming.
Last month, information reported That Chinese companies had placed orders for at least $ 16 billion in H20 server chips in the first three months of the year. Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for CNBC comments.
According to the Wang de Counterpoint, it is not known how long will exist existing stocks of different companies, but they offer Chinese chip manufacturers more time to increase their manufacturing of GPU.
In the short term, “I believe that the impact of controls is limited … at an average term to longer, it will depend on the progression of this local GPU development,” he said.
Meanwhile, according to the semianalysis report, the Huawei Ascend chip shows how China’s export controls did not prevent companies like Huawei from accessing the critical foreign tools and compliers necessary for advanced GPUs.
“Although the Ascend chip can be manufactured at SMIC, it is a world chip that has Korea HBM, primary production of TSMC plates, and is manufactured by 10 s of billions of equipment manufacturing of the United States, Netherlands and Japan,” said the report.
The semiianalysis report has added that the SMIC production capacity has the potential to grow massively, given continuous access to foreign tools and the lack of effective sanctions and application.
TSMC is would have Under the US trade in survey after a chip she made for the China -based Sophgo corresponded to one in the artificial intelligence processor of the Huawei Ascend 910b.
Given the progress of the Huawei GPU and the export control reports, a number of experts have expressed a doubt that the American export controls on Nvidia will achieve their planned objective.
“American controls on GPUs and semiconductors’ manufacturing equipment have mainly damaged American companies, including NVIDIA, while having a marginal impact on the capacity of Chinese companies to develop border IA models,” said Paul Triolo, partner and vice-president of China Group.
Instead, export controls have encouraged Chinese semiconductor industry to become more innovative while “designing American technology,” he added.
Next month, Nvidia could face additional restrictions on what it can export, under “Diffusion rules AI“For the first time proposed by the Biden administration.