NVIDIA Developing Flagship AI Chip Targeting Chinese Market

No Violation of US Export Controls to China
Temporary Name is 'B20'

Semiconductor design company Nvidia is reportedly developing a flagship artificial intelligence (AI) chip for the Chinese market that will not be subject to U.S. export restrictions on China, according to major foreign media on the 22nd (local time).

According to sources familiar with the matter, Nvidia is preparing to launch and distribute a new AI chip targeting the local market in collaboration with Inspur, one of the major distribution partners in China. The chip has been tentatively named 'B20,' and sources say it is expected not to violate current U.S. export control policies. Nvidia and Inspur have declined to comment on the matter.

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

Last year, the U.S. tightened controls on the export of advanced semiconductors to China under the pretext of preventing innovations in supercomputing that could aid the Chinese military. In response, Nvidia developed three customized chip products for the Chinese market.

In particular, Nvidia's AI chip 'H20,' created to circumvent U.S. export regulations, is expected to sell over one million units in China this year. Although the computational power of the H20 is about one-fifth that of Nvidia's flagship AI chip 'H100,' it has gained explosive popularity in China as an alternative due to the inability to obtain advanced semiconductors because of U.S. restrictions.

Nvidia has recently solidified its position as the industry leader by consecutively releasing new products with rapid innovation. In March, it unveiled the chip architecture 'Blackwell' and the 'B200' chip based on it. Compared to the previous generation H100, the B200 offers more than 30 times the inference performance while reducing cost and energy consumption to one twenty-fifth.

Last month, even before Blackwell was officially released, Nvidia attracted market attention by unveiling the next-generation AI graphics processing unit (GPU) 'Lovelace' as its successor product. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was reserved about the details of the Lovelace GPU but announced that it would adopt the 6th generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM) called 'HBM4.' Huang also revealed that Nvidia will soon launch its own central processing unit (CPU) 'Grace' and plans to introduce the Lovelace Ultra GPU in 2027.

Meanwhile, last week on the New York Stock Exchange, Nvidia's stock closed at $117.93, down 2.61% from the previous session.