U.S. Restricts Exports of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 to China

[btarunr]

The GeForce RTX 4090 gaming graphics card, both as an NVIDIA first-party Founders Edition, and custom-design by AIC partners, undergoes assembly in China. A new U.S. Government trade regulation restricts NVIDIA from selling it in the Chinese domestic market. The enthusiast-segment graphics card joins several other high performance AI processors, such as the "Hopper" H800, and "Ampere" A800. If you recall, the H800 and A800 are special China-specific variants of the H100 and A100, respectively, which come with performance reductions at the hardware-level, to fly below the AI processor performance limits set by the U.S. Government. The only reasons we can think of why these chips are on the list is if end-users in China have figured out ways around these performance limiters, or are buying in greater scale to achieve the desired performance. The fresh trade embargo released on October 17 covers the A100, A800, H100, H800, L40, L40S, and RTX 4090.



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[KrazyT]

Are these restrictions really effectives ?
I mean, can Chinese people buy RTX 4090 in Europe or Asia ?
Do nVidia will have compensation, after all, they cannot sell a product to a whole country, it's a loss of money, no ?

 

[Deleted member 234997]

China must not have bought Cyberpunk 2077 as much as other western countries.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

"The GeForce RTX 4090 gaming graphics card, both as an NVIDIA first-party Founders Edition, and custom-design by AIC partners, undergoes assembly in China."
and then,
"A new U.S. Government trade regulation restricts NVIDIA from selling it in the Chinese domestic market."
I'm confused.

So if the product is being assembled in China, it pretty much means the finished product is already there. I fail to see how restrictions would have any purpose beyond keeping it out of the hands of ordinary Chinese consumers. This makes no sense from a technological perspective if the intent is to prevent them from acquiring enough of the technology for it to be meaningfully useful in military applications. Besides, I'm sure they can figure out how to reverse engineer it.

 

[Crackong]

From what I heard the ban isn't targeting particular product but targeting the absolute computing power and the computing power density of the product.

The AD102 isn't powerful enough to hit the 'absolute computing power' line but it is small enough to hit the 'computing power density' part of the red line.

Therefore there will be export restriction added on the chip itself and it cannot be export directly (as a product) to China for 'Manufacturing a 4090'

But, once it is exported to somewhere (let's say Taiwan), it has been assembled to be a 4090 card, now, because the card itself (as a 'product) is big enough, in terms of 'computing power density' it is now clear to be exported to China.

From what I saw the 'absolute computing power' line is about 4800 units and the 4090 is now 2600 units.

So China PC DIYer will get 4090 , 5090 or maybe 6090 cards up until the 'absolute computing power' line is breached.

 

[TomWeng]

China must not have bought Cyberpunk 2077 as much as other western countries.

To disappoint you, I pre-ordered Cyberpunk 2077 for $40.
And this laptop cost me $3,000.

 

[Dristun]

Chinese DIYers will still get the cards they want with a little markup for extra logistics involved because those cards are going to get immediately re-exported from dozens of other countries once the official ban is in place. Big scale buyers that build farms and so on are the primary target here, bans create more troubles for them.

 

[AusWolf]

What's the point?

 

[the54thvoid]

Some posts removed or edited. I appreciate it's a political policy, but try to keep replies sensible and avoid drawing in wider politics.

 

[silentbogo]

I'm a bit confused, and wondering how that's gonna hit production for the rest of the world, since most ODMs like ASUS and MSI have nearly all of their production capacity in China. ASUS had plans to move everything to India, but that's quite recent development, so we are at least few years away from that.
Even though I'm used to the fact that I either cannot afford, or even buy a hi-end GPU, but at some point(maybe when I'll get old, wrinkly and retired or something) I would like to get me a xxx90 or a xxx-titan at some point.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

"The GeForce RTX 4090 gaming graphics card, both as an NVIDIA first-party Founders Edition, and custom-design by AIC partners, undergoes assembly in China."
and then,
"A new U.S. Government trade regulation restricts NVIDIA from selling it in the Chinese domestic market."
I'm confused.

They use component and product tracking through production and assembly.
There's a known quantity of GPU ASICs going from TSMC to chinese assembly factories and a known quantity of graphics cards going out of there.
Sure, the chinese authorities can stop the graphics cards from leaving the factory, but at that point it would be the last time nvidia sends their chips for breach of contract, and they'd lose all the income from assembly operations.


Regardless, I wouldn't count on assembly operations staying in China for much longer.

 

[silentbogo]

Sure, the chinese authorities can stop the graphics cards from leaving the factory, but at that point it would be the last time nvidia sends their chips for breach of contract, and they'd lose all the income from assembly operations.

We all remember how effectively that worked out during the last crypto-mining boom

MSI Cargo Containers Chock-Full of RTX 3090 Graphics Cards Allegedly Stolen, $336,500 Value at MSRP

Now this is the first one such article I've ever written, which goes to show just how strange and crazy this pandemic time is. MSI has allegedly been the victim of a well-coordinated theft that managed to divert no less than 40 cargo units holding NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 3090 graphics...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[R-T-B]

What's the point?

If I had to guess, it's to lower the sheer quantity of cards available to government AI farms. It certainly will make acquiring the cards in bulk trickier.

 

[AusWolf]

If I had to guess, it's to lower the sheer quantity of cards available to government AI farms. It certainly will make acquiring the cards in bulk trickier.

With the H, A and L cards, I sort of get it. But why the 4090? Can't people just buy a 4080 instead and call it a day? This will only drive up used 4090 prices in China.

 

[DarrenW]

The graphics card prices are skyrocketing here in China, and 4090 is out of stock in JD.
I contribute thousands of work units at Folding@Home. Now I can‘t get any high performance gpu at a normal price. Great.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Why? What's going on?

 

[Kaleid]

Old east vs west nonsense. In this case China is becoming too strong economically.

 

[Easo]

Going to ask the same what I did before - this is only delaying the inevitable, what then when said inevitable happens?

 

[Jism]

China has enough technical capacity, to start their own fabs, tech and chips. Not today, but in a decade it could be very real.

You don't stop a superpower like that by enforcing them to stay on the old batch of chips. Sooner or later they will find their own ways. And then in 20 years perhaps China might actually be ahead of the western world. And then?

 

[Arpeegee]

Why not just ban all Nvidia GPUs altogether since they utilize CUDA and the U.S. obviously wants to cripple their server development. I view most of this as unserious and just showboating, more dramatic efforts could be taken if we were serious.

Like others have pointed out it's too late anyways, in a decade or so they should have comparable compute power thanks to our patriotic companies giving them the blueprints in order for them to hawk their products in China. Money over everything.

 

[R0H1T]

It's kinda amusing to see the US go half arsed in banning the sale of such products to China, if they wanted they could probably take every such product off the table! But then China would likely cripple Apple, Intel, QC, AMD & of course Nvidia even more

Can't live with them, can't live without them

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

They use component and product tracking through production and assembly.
There's a known quantity of GPU ASICs going from TSMC to chinese assembly factories and a known quantity of graphics cards going out of there.
Sure, the chinese authorities can stop the graphics cards from leaving the factory, but at that point it would be the last time nvidia sends their chips for breach of contract, and they'd lose all the income from assembly operations.

Right, but what they could do is sell them to a company based out of, IDK kazakstahn or something, who could then turn around and "resell" them to the chinese government, bypassing the restriction and creating a regulation headache since said country is not friendly to the US nor her watchdogs.

Regardless, I wouldn't count on assembly operations staying in China for much longer.

While production is moving to vietnam, it took 50 years to buildup china's industry, and vietnam is a lot smaller. I wouldnt count on china being removed from the supply pool for at least another decade, if not two.

 

[MarsM4N]

I don't think they're selling a lot of 4090's in China anyways (to gamers). All the Chinese I see on Steam play only hentai XXX games, for which you don't need a 4090 for smooth gameplay.

Also most Chinese play in online cafe's or play mobile, for financial reasons. And with the imposed "daily gaming limit" of 1-1.30 hrs(?) it doesn't make a lot of sense to own a PC for gaming anyways.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I don't think they're selling a lot of 4090's in China anyways (to gamers). All the Chinese I see on Steam play only hentai XXX games, for which you don't need a 4090 for smooth gameplay.

Also most Chinese play in online cafe's or play mobile, for financial reasons. And with the imposed "daily gaming limit" of 1-1.30 hrs(?) it doesn't make a lot of sense to own a PC for gaming anyways.

But I gotta have that 8k raytraced DLSS booty! And IIRC the time limit only applies to minors.

 

[Deleted member 185088]

Poor Chinese they won't experience fake frames.