Nvidia confirms: A800 chip is specially supplied to China as a low-profile version, which can replace A100

In order to make money, Huang opened a back door for China again?

US chipmaker Nvidia has confirmed that it is supplying China with a new advanced chip, the A800, as a replacement for the A100 graphics chip that was previously banned from export to China by the Ministry of Commerce.

At present, Nvidia has responded to Reuters' previous report on the matter, confirming that Chinese computer sellers are promoting products using this new chip and stating that supplying A800 to China does not violate relevant US export control regulations.

The chip, called the A800, represents one of the most advanced processors an American semiconductor company has ever supplied to China and is subject to new U.S. trade rules.

Previously, Nvidia said that the new US export restrictions could cause it to lose $400 million in revenue.

In early October this year, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce formulated stricter and broader export control regulations, further prohibiting U.S. companies from exporting advanced microchips and equipment for producing advanced chips to Chinese chip manufacturers.

This is another major move by the United States to hinder the development of China's semiconductor industry, in addition to the "CHIP Act".

At the end of August this year, both Nvidia and AMD announced that their advanced chips, including Nvidia's data center chips A100 and H100, have been included in the export control list by the US Department of Commerce. The newly announced Nvidia A800 can be used instead of A100.

The A800 chip could reportedly cost thousands of dollars each.

An Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement:

“The Nvidia A800 GPU went into production in the third quarter of this year as another alternative to the Nvidia A100 for Chinese customers. The A800 meets the U.S. government’s clear test for export control reduction and cannot be programmed to outperform.”

Nvidia and a Commerce Department spokesman declined to comment on whether the ministry had been consulted about the export of new chips to China.

At least two major server makers' Chinese websites now offer the A800 chip in their product listings. One of the products previously used the A100 chip in promotional materials.

Among them, the specifications of A800 are detailed on OmniSky's website.

The new chip has a data transfer rate of 400GB per second compared to the A100, which is 600GB per second. This represents a significant drop in performance in data centers, and it is clear that this is a deliberate performance limitation made by Nvidia.

In addition, the A800 supports a memory bandwidth of up to 2TB/s, while other parameters remain unchanged.

Wayne Lam, an analyst at CCS Insight, said that judging from the specifications, the A800 is basically a "repackaged" A100, which is done to circumvent the trade restrictions of the Ministry of Commerce.

He also said that "8" is an auspicious number in China, and it is not ruled out that Nvidia's naming is related to this.

"China is an important market for Nvidia, and as a company, there are strong business reasons to reconfigure product specifications to circumvent trade restrictions," Lam said.

Lam believes that if A800 is used in large numbers in data centers, there will undoubtedly be a significant performance degradation, but a degradation is better than being completely useless.

Server makers Inspur and H3C, which both offer servers with the A800 chip, did not respond to requests for comment. OmniSky, a chip distributor that posted A800 performance specifications online, also did not respond.