Thursday, October 19th 2023
U.S. Restricts Exports of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 to China
The GeForce RTX 4090 gaming graphics card, both as an NVIDIA first-party Founders Edition, and custom-design by AIC partners, undergoes assembly in China. A new U.S. Government trade regulation restricts NVIDIA from selling it in the Chinese domestic market. The enthusiast-segment graphics card joins several other high performance AI processors, such as the "Hopper" H800, and "Ampere" A800. If you recall, the H800 and A800 are special China-specific variants of the H100 and A100, respectively, which come with performance reductions at the hardware-level, to fly below the AI processor performance limits set by the U.S. Government. The only reasons we can think of why these chips are on the list is if end-users in China have figured out ways around these performance limiters, or are buying in greater scale to achieve the desired performance. The fresh trade embargo released on October 17 covers the A100, A800, H100, H800, L40, L40S, and RTX 4090.
Source:
CNBC
41 Comments on U.S. Restricts Exports of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 to China
I mean, can Chinese people buy RTX 4090 in Europe or Asia ?
Do nVidia will have compensation, after all, they cannot sell a product to a whole country, it's a loss of money, no ?
and then,
"A new U.S. Government trade regulation restricts NVIDIA from selling it in the Chinese domestic market."
I'm confused. :confused:
So if the product is being assembled in China, it pretty much means the finished product is already there. I fail to see how restrictions would have any purpose beyond keeping it out of the hands of ordinary Chinese consumers. This makes no sense from a technological perspective if the intent is to prevent them from acquiring enough of the technology for it to be meaningfully useful in military applications. Besides, I'm sure they can figure out how to reverse engineer it.
The AD102 isn't powerful enough to hit the 'absolute computing power' line but it is small enough to hit the 'computing power density' part of the red line.
Therefore there will be export restriction added on the chip itself and it cannot be export directly (as a product) to China for 'Manufacturing a 4090'
But, once it is exported to somewhere (let's say Taiwan), it has been assembled to be a 4090 card, now, because the card itself (as a 'product) is big enough, in terms of 'computing power density' it is now clear to be exported to China.
From what I saw the 'absolute computing power' line is about 4800 units and the 4090 is now 2600 units.
So China PC DIYer will get 4090 , 5090 or maybe 6090 cards up until the 'absolute computing power' line is breached.
And this laptop cost me $3,000.
:)
Even though I'm used to the fact that I either cannot afford, or even buy a hi-end GPU, but at some point(maybe when I'll get old, wrinkly and retired or something) I would like to get me a xxx90 or a xxx-titan at some point.
There's a known quantity of GPU ASICs going from TSMC to chinese assembly factories and a known quantity of graphics cards going out of there.
Sure, the chinese authorities can stop the graphics cards from leaving the factory, but at that point it would be the last time nvidia sends their chips for breach of contract, and they'd lose all the income from assembly operations.
Regardless, I wouldn't count on assembly operations staying in China for much longer.
www.techpowerup.com/275713/msi-cargo-containers-chock-full-of-rtx-3090-graphics-cards-allegedly-stolen-usd-336-500-value-at-msrp
I contribute thousands of work units at Folding@Home. Now I can‘t get any high performance gpu at a normal price. Great.:(
You don't stop a superpower like that by enforcing them to stay on the old batch of chips. Sooner or later they will find their own ways. And then in 20 years perhaps China might actually be ahead of the western world. And then?
Like others have pointed out it's too late anyways, in a decade or so they should have comparable compute power thanks to our patriotic companies giving them the blueprints in order for them to hawk their products in China. Money over everything.
Can't live with them, can't live without them :shadedshu:
Also most Chinese play in online cafe's or play mobile, for financial reasons. And with the imposed "daily gaming limit" of 1-1.30 hrs(?) it doesn't make a lot of sense to own a PC for gaming anyways.