US-China Tech War: Biden Administration Blocks Exports Of Nvidia's High-End AI Chips To Beijing

President Joe Biden led US government has asked chipmaker Nvidia to restrict export of its cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) processors to China.

Nvidia in a regulatory filing on Wednesday (31 August) said the US government has told it to stop selling two of its chips, designed for artificial intelligence network, to Chinese companies.

The company said the Biden administration is imposing a new license requirement on any products containing company's A100 and forthcoming H100 integrated circuits used in the machine learning processes that enhance AI systems.

The order comes into effect immediately for semiconductor chips destined for China and Russia, extending to any future products that can match the A100 in performance.

"The license requirement also includes any future NVIDIA integrated circuit achieving both peak performance and chip-to-chip I/O performance equal to or greater than thresholds that are roughly equivalent to the A100, as well as any system that includes those circuits," the company said.

Nvidia said that the US government has indicated that the new license requirement will address the risk that the products may be used or diverted for a ‘military end use’ or ‘military end user’ in China and Russia.

The company added that it did not sell products to customers in Russia.

The US move to restrict access of high-end processors to China has been condemned by the Chinese authorities.

Chinese foreign ministry official Wang Wenbin on Thursday (1 September) said that the US was attempting to impose a “technological blockade” on China, adding that the ban showed the Washington was trying to maintain its “technological hegemony”.

Chinese commerce ministry representative Shu Jueting said the move undermined the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese firms and the stability of global industrial and supply chains, reports Financial Times.

The move is part of the US' efforts to restrict tech exports to China over fears they could be used for military purposes.

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