Suppliers of parts for Nvidia’s H200 have paused production after Chinese customs officials blocked shipments of the newly approved artificial intelligence processors from entering China, according to a report.
Nvidia had expected more than one million orders from Chinese clients, the report said, adding that its suppliers had been operating around the clock to prepare for shipping as early as March.
Chinese customs authorities this week told customs agents that Nvidia’s H200 chips were not permitted to enter the country, Reuters reported.
Sources have also said government officials summoned domestic tech firms to warn them against buying the chips unless it was necessary.
It’s all just show anyway. All the Nvidia chip restriction did is teach Chinese devs to do more with less, and now they’re running circles around other labs that have 100X the hardware. They don’t need the H200s.
You ask me? If the US wants to seed AI development: restrict Nvidia GPU sales in the US. It’d force labs to get smarter with less, and branch out to more diverse hardware, instead of monopolizing and scaling up.
It’s not just show though. The restriction keeps the pressure that helped the Chinese advances. They also need it in order to accelerate the development of domestic hardware. So the restriction has a necessary purpose.