While the total chip performance limitation blocks the sale of high-powered GPUs — such as the A100 and the H100, which are sold in China as the A800 and the H800 with modified bidirectional bandwidth rates — the performance density threshold of a chip was set by the Biden administration to block the loophole of Chinese enterprises and organizations buying GPUs with less performance power and stringing them together to build compute capacity for AI-based workloads.
Performance density, according to experts, is the total performance power of a chip divided by its die area.
As per the latest export restrictions, any chip with a performance density of 5.92 or above stands for an absolute export ban. Companies need to apply for a license for chips with performance densities between 3.2 and 5.92.
Due to these restrictions, Nvidia expects to see a drop in revenue from its Chinese market, the company said during its earnings call in November.
“We expect that our sales to these destinations will decline significantly in the fourth quarter, though we believe will be more than offset by strong growth in other regions. The US government designed the regulation to allow the US industry to provide data center compute products to markets worldwide, including China,” Colette Kress, chief financial officer at Nvidia, was quoted as saying in a transcript from The Motley Fool.
However, the top executive said that though China accounted for 20% of its revenue, gauging the impact of the restrictions would be difficult presently.
