Nvidia to resume sale of H20 chips to China

US semiconductor company Nvidia said on Tuesday that it will resume sales of H20 chips to China.

It also announced a new, fully compliant GPU, or graphics processing unit, for Chinese market.

The development came after Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang promoted artificial intelligence in both Washington and Beijing earlier this month — emphasizing the benefits that AI will bring to businesses and society worldwide.

In Beijing, Huang met with government and industry officials to discuss how AI will raise productivity and expand opportunity. He is scheduled to attend the opening ceremony of the China International Supply Chain Expo on Wednesday.

Huang said Nvidia is filing applications to sell the H20 GPU to China again as the US government has assured the company that licenses will be granted, and that Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon.

Huang also announced a new, fully compliant RTX PRO GPU that "is ideal for digital twin AI for smart factories and logistics".

Huang said that the world had reached an inflection point — AI has become a fundamental resource, like energy, water and the internet.

He emphasized the company's commitment to supporting open-source research, foundation models and applications, which democratize AI and will empower emerging economies in every region, including Latin America, Europe, Asia and beyond.

Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Zhongguancun Modern Information Consumer Application Industry Technology Alliance, a telecom industry association, said the resumption in sales of H20 chips was good news to both Nvidia and Chinese companies that seek to purchase such chips.

"This is a win-win result," Xiang said, adding that China is the world's largest semiconductor market that no company can ignore and give up.

The Chinese mainland consumes more than half of the world's semiconductors, which are then assembled into tech products and reexported or sold in the domestic market, according to research firm Daxue Consulting.

Huang said at a tech forum in May that the US government's export controls on AI chips to China were "a failure".

"All in all, the export control was a failure. The fundamental assumptions that led to the AI diffusion rule in the beginning, have been proven to be fundamentally flawed," Huang said.

Nvidia's market share in China, Huang said, has plunged to 50 percent from 95 percent at the start of former US president Joe Biden's administration.

masi@chinadaily.com.cn