As the United States contemplates stricter trade restrictions to stop advanced chip technology from reaching China, Nvidia, a prominent American chip manufacturer, is reportedly developing a new version of its artificial intelligence chips to adhere to these regulations.
Nvidia is working on a variant of its Blackwell AI chips tailored for the Chinese market in collaboration with a local distribution partner, Inspur. This chip, provisionally named the “B20,” is expected to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2025, according to sources familiar with the situation. Nvidia has chosen not to comment on the project.
The company currently has three chips designed to meet U.S. export restrictions, including the H20, which it has reduced prices for to remain competitive against local rival Huawei. Reports indicate that sales of the H20 are increasing, with projections suggesting that Nvidia could sell over one million of these chips in China this year, amounting to about $12 billion, despite existing trade limitations. This sales figure is nearly twice what Huawei anticipates for its Ascend 910B chip.
However, analysts from Jeffries have raised concerns that Nvidia’s H20 chips might face limitations under impending U.S. trade regulations. They anticipate that during the annual review of semiconductor export controls in October, the H20 may be banned from sales to China. Such a ban could occur in three potential ways: through a specific product ban, by lowering the computing power threshold, or by imposing restrictions on memory capacity.
Additionally, the U.S. government may widen export controls to chips sold to other nations in the region, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, or extend them to overseas Chinese corporations, although implementing these measures might prove more complex, analysts noted.