China said to urge firms to shun Nvidia H20 chips tied to security risks, Bloomberg News reports

Malay Mail

5 days ago

LONDON, Aug 12 — Chinese authorities have urged local companies to avoid using Nvidia's H20 processors, particularly for government-related purposes, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Authorities have sent notices to a range of firms discouraging use of the less-advanced semiconductors, with the guidance taking a particularly strong stance against the use of Nvidia's H20s for any government or national security-related work by state enterprises or private companies, the report said.
Reuters could not immediately confirm the report. Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.
Nvidia said in July that its products have no 'backdoors' that would allow remote access or control after China raised concerns over potential security risks in the chipmaker's H20 artificial intelligence chip.
US President Donald Trump suggested on Monday that he might allow Nvidia to sell a scaled-down version of its next-generation advanced GPU chip, Blackwell, in China, despite deep-seated fears in Washington that China could harness US AI capabilities to supercharge its military.
The most advanced chip Nvidia is currently allowed to sell to China is the H20, which is based off the company's older Hopper architecture platform. The Trump administration green-lighted exports of H20 AI to China last month.
The Trump administration last week also confirmed an unprecedented deal with Nvidia and AMD to give the US government 15 per cent of revenue from sales of some advanced chips in China.
China's renewed guidance on avoiding chips also impacts AI accelerators from Advanced Micro Devices, the Bloomberg report said, adding that it was unclear whether any notices from Chinese authorities specifically mentioned AMD's MI308 chip.
AMD did not respond to a request for comment outside regular business. — Reuters