Nvidia to launch cheaper Blackwell AI chip for China after US export curbs, sources say
Nvidia
will launch a new artificial intelligence chipset for China at a significantly lower price than its recently restricted H20 model and plans to start mass production as early as June, sources familiar with the matter said.
The GPU or graphics processing unit will be part of Nvidia's latest generation Blackwell-architecture AI processors and is expected to be priced between $6,500 and $8,000, well below the $10,000-$12,000 the H20 sold for, according to two of the sources.
The lower price reflects its weaker specifications and simpler manufacturing requirements.
It will be based on Nvidia's RTX Pro 6000D, a server-class graphics processor and will use conventional GDDR7 memory instead of more advanced high bandwidth memory, the two sources said.
They added it would not use Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co's advanced Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology.
The new chip's price, specifications and production timing have not previously been reported.
The three sources Reuters spoke to for this article declined to be identified as they were not authorised to speak to media.
An Nvidia spokesperson said the company was still evaluating its "limited" options. "Until we settle on a new product design and receive approval from the U.S. government, we are effectively foreclosed from China's $50 billion data center market."
TSMC declined to comment.
Market share plunge
China remains a huge market for Nvidia, accounting for 13% of its sales in the past financial year. It's the third time that Nvidia has had to tailor a GPU for the world's second-largest economy after restrictions from U.S. authorities who are keen to stymie Chinese technological development.
After the U.S. effectively banned the H20 in April, Nvidia initially considered developing a downgraded version of the H20 for China, sources have said, but that plan didn't work out.
Nvidia CEO
Jensen Huang
said last week the company's older Hopper architecture - which the H20 uses - can no longer accommodate further modifications under current U.S. export restrictions.
Reuters was unable to determine the product's final name.
Chinese brokerage GF Securities said in a note published on Tuesday that the new GPU would likely be called the 6000D or the B40, though it did not disclose pricing or cite sources for the information.
According to two of the sources, Nvidia is also developing another Blackwell-architecture chip for China that is set to begin production as early as September. Reuters was not immediately able to confirm specifications of that variant.
Nvidia's market share in China has plummeted from 95% before 2022, when U.S. export curbs that impacted its products began, to 50% currently, Huang told reporters in Taipei this week. Its main competitor is Huawei which produces the Ascend 910B chip.
Huang also warned that if U.S. export curbs continue, more Chinese customers will buy Huawei's chips.
The H20 ban forced Nvidia to write off $5.5 billion in inventory and Huang told the Stratechery podcast on Monday that the company also had to walk away from $15 billion in sales.
The latest export restrictions introduced new limits on GPU memory bandwidth - a crucial metric measuring data transmission speeds between the main processor and memory chips. This capability is particularly important for AI workloads that require extensive data processing.
Investment bank Jefferies estimates that the new regulations cap memory bandwidth at 1.7-1.8 terabytes per second. That compares with the 4 terabytes per second that the H20 is capable of.
GF Securities forecast the new GPU will achieve approximately 1.7 terabytes per second using GDDR7 memory technology, just within the export control limits.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
&w=3840&q=100)
Business Standard
29 minutes ago
- Business Standard
China's soft spot in trade war with Trump: Risk of huge job losses
US President Trump taunted China in his first term, claiming his tariffs had led to the loss of five million jobs there. In a 2019 tweet, he said his trade policies had put China 'back on its heels.' Economists sharply disputed how much pain Trump's tariffs caused, but the message underscored the centrality of jobs to China's export-reliant economy. Four months into Trump's second term, the United States and China are again negotiating over tariffs, and the Chinese labour market—especially factory jobs—is front and centre. This time, China's economy is struggling, leaving its workers more vulnerable. A persistent property slowdown that worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic has wiped out jobs and made people feel poorer. New university graduates are pouring into the labour pool at a time when the unemployment rate among young workers is in the double digits. 'The situation is clearly much worse,' said Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for the Asia-Pacific region at investment bank Natixis. As employment opportunities in other sectors disappear, she said, the importance of preserving China's 100 million manufacturing jobs has grown. Natixis said that if US tariffs stayed at their current levels of at least 30 per cent, exports to the United States would fall by half, resulting in a loss of up to six million manufacturing jobs. If the trade war resumes in full, job losses could surge to nine million. China's economy has struggled to recover from the pandemic, expanding more slowly than during Trump's first term, when growth topped 6 per cent a year. Although the Chinese government has set a target of around 5 per cent growth this year, many economists predict the actual figure will fall short. In early 2018, China reported its urban jobless rate had fallen to a 15-year low and that the country had created a record number of new jobs. Since then, government crackdowns and tighter regulations have subdued industries like technology and online education—once-thriving sectors that generated numerous jobs. Over those years, unemployment climbed, especially among young people. The jobless rate among 16-to-24-year-olds was 15.8 per cent in April, a slight improvement from the previous month. However, the figure is expected to surge again when 12 million new college graduates enter the workforce this year. In 2023, when youth unemployment reached a record 21.3 per cent, the Chinese government suspended the release of the figures. At the time, one prominent economist claimed the real figure was closer to 50 per cent. Beijing resumed publishing the data last year using a revised methodology that lowered the reported rate. At the same time, even those with jobs are in a more precarious position. Fewer companies are offering full-time roles, relying instead on gig workers for services like food delivery and manufacturing. While those jobs offer flexibility, they typically pay less and come with few protections or benefits. In late April, Yu Jiadong, a senior official at China's Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said the government had prepared measures to maintain employment stability, particularly for Chinese exporters.
&w=3840&q=100)
Business Standard
30 minutes ago
- Business Standard
Ukraine revamps minerals sector, eyes billions in investment from US deal
Ukraine is overhauling its minerals sector, which has been pounded by three years of war, in the hope of unlocking potential and attracting billions of dollars of investment from a minerals deal with the U.S., its ecology minister said. The country has deposits of 22 of 34 minerals deemed as critical by the European Union for industries such as defence, high-tech appliances and green energy, as well as ferro alloy, precious and non-ferrous metals used in construction, and some rare earth elements. However, much of the sector is underdeveloped, weighed down by Soviet-era bureaucracy and lack of investment. After months of fraught negotiations, Kyiv and the United States agreed a minerals deal in April that was heavily promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump. It created a fund, which became active on May 23, that will receive money from new mining licences in Ukraine and invest in minerals projects. Ecology Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk told Reuters in an interview that Ukraine hoped the fund would significantly increase the mineral industry's potential, noting extraction was a capital-intensive and long-term task. "Currently, our natural resources sector's share of gross domestic product is 4%, but the potential is much greater," she said late on Monday, without giving projections. "We really hope the agreement will draw more attention to this sector and make foreign investment more understandable and more attractive." With the conflict still ongoing, about half of the country's mineral wealth and a fifth of its territory are now under Russian occupation. Ukraine has lost most of its coal deposits, as well as some lithium and manganese deposits and other minerals. Hrynchuk estimated that the sector had suffered losses of about 70 trillion hryvnias ($1.7 trillion) due to the occupation of Ukrainian territory and combat action along a more than 1,000 km (621 miles) frontline. Ukraine updated its strategy for its resources sector at the end of last year and was now focusing on improving access to information and data on geological exploration, reducing bureaucracy and finalising the lists of critical and strategic minerals crucial for the economy, she said. The work is also part of Ukraine's push to move closer to the European Union, which Kyiv hopes to join in 2030. UNDERDEVELOPED AND UNEXPLORED Hrynchuk said the government was working with the European Commission and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development on a multi-year project to digitise up to 80% of Soviet-era geological data. That task is about 40% complete, she said. The government was also working to review an existing 3,000 mining licenses. Hrynchuk estimated that about 10% of them could be dormant. "We are not interested in taking away assets if there is a potential for them to work," she said. "We are interested for those assets which are... valuable for the state and have not been working for 10 years or more, to make appropriate managerial decisions about them. And to launch them back into circulation." The licence review will be done this year and next, she said. Despite wartime challenges, the government continued to auction mining licenses and last year raised 2.4 billion hryvnias from auctioning 120 mining licenses. It hopes to get a similar amount into the state coffers this year and has already awarded 32 licenses, with the majority for building sector materials, including clay, sand, marble, granite, but also amber. Investors, who at present are predominantly domestic, were mostly interested in licenses for oil and gas exploration, as well as minerals such as titanium, graphite and manganese, she said. The U.S. minerals deal was agreed despite a clash between President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Trump during their meeting in the White House in February. Final documents to enable the joint investment fund to operate were exchanged last week, but projects will take time to materialise, Ukrainian officials said. The minerals deal, which U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent termed as a full economic partnership, hands the United States preferential access to new Ukrainian minerals accords and will help to fund Ukraine's reconstruction.
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
After kill switches in solar panels, is China fitting data-collection technology on Pirelli tires, U.S. warns?
Live Events FAQs (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel Clandestine war over AI or Artificial Intelligence and data between USA and China seems to be elevating high-tech day by day. Now, apprehensions are being raised over China plausibly fitting data-collection technology on Pirelli tires, as per a report on Donald Trump administration has warned Pirelli that sales of vehicles fitted with its data-collecting technology could be restricted due to concerns over the influence on the tyremaker of its Chinese investor, Reuters reported quoting U.S. is cracking down on Chinese technology in the automotive industry, banning key software and hardware from Chinese-controlled companies in connected vehicles on U.S. roads. Software prohibitions take effect in the 2027 model year, those on hardware in Pirelli, whose largest shareholder with a 37 per cent stake is Chinese state group Sinochem, has developed technology allowing data from its so-called Cyber Tyres to be collected and transferred in real time to the informal advisory to Pirelli was outlined in a letter dated April 25 by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, Bloomberg added that the letter, sent in response to a request for an advisory opinion by Pirelli, said automakers that incorporate Cyber Tyre technology into their vehicles would likely need to apply for a specific authorization to sell them in the and its second-largest investor Camfin, the vehicle of Italian businessman Marco Tronchetti Provera, have entered a dispute with Sinochem over the tyremaker's governance, claiming Sinochem's leading shareholding position was hindering the group's ability to expand its business in the makes around 25 per cent of its revenue in North America, which it mostly serves through plants in Mexico, South America and Europe, although it also runs a smaller facility in the U.S. state of week CEO Andrea Casaluci said in an interview with Italian daily Corriere della Sera that Pirelli was in a risky situation after Sinochem rejected a proposal by the company to solve its governance issues.A1. The full form of AI is Artificial Intelligence.A2. Italy's Pirelli, whose largest shareholder with a 37 per cent stake is Chinese state group Sinochem.
