According to sources close to The Information, NVIDIA has reportedly halted manufacturing of the H20 "Hopper" GPU for the Chinese market. NVIDIA has instructed its key suppliers, including Samsung Electronics and Amkor Technology of Arizona, to halt production of their components required for the H20 chip. Team green is preparing a transition to a more powerful "Blackwell" series for the Chinese market. NVIDIA has designed a new SKU called B30A, based on the B300 "Blackwell Ultra." Designed as a single-die design, it utilizes the same base die as the dual-die B300 and embeds a single one into the package, achieving half the performance to comply with export regulations.

The H20 chip was under scrutiny from the Chinese government, which urged domestic companies not to use it. Chinese authorities, including the nation's internet watchdog, reportedly raised national security concerns, suggesting the chips could contain hidden "backdoor" vulnerabilities that pose an information security risk. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has publicly addressed the concerns, stating the company's chips do not contain backdoors. However, we are yet to see if Chinese authorities will allow domestic firms like ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent to purchase the new B30A GPUs and use them in the most critical infrastructure, or if the damage has already been done and domestic alternatives, such as Huawei Ascend accelerators, prevail. Both can coexist, as NVIDIA chips are valued for their software stack, while Huawei chips are valued for their lower cost. The ultimate endgame of accelerators is wait and see, as Chinese AI labs need all the compute they can get.