what just happened The US government has imposed restrictions on the sale of high-end Nvidia and AMD AI chips to some Middle Eastern countries. The controls covering Team Green’s A100 and H100 GPUs were put in place to prevent the products from being resold to China.
Nvidia wrote in a statement submission that the US government has informed the company of a licensing requirement for a subset of the A100 and H100 products intended for certain customers and regions, including some countries in the Middle East. It didn’t specify which countries in the region would be affected by the restrictions, and Nvidia said the controls would “not affect a significant part of our revenue”.
A person familiar with the matter told Reuters that AMD also received a letter informing the company of similar limitations. Team Red said the move will not have a material impact on its earnings.
Last year, the US further tightened sanctions against China by ordering Nvidia and AMD to halt sales of their powerful AI-focused GPUs to the country (and Russia), a restriction intended to prevent US manufacturers’ top-of-the-line hardware Businesses used by China are being diverted to military users and finding their way into the country’s supercomputers. In response, Nvidia produced the A800, which went into production in the third quarter of last year as another alternative to the A100 GPU. The chip has a connection speed of 400 GB/s, compared to 600 GB/s on the A100.
China continues to acquire A100 and H100 GPUs through a thriving black market, selling them for around double their MSRP and with no guarantees. The restrictions on Middle Eastern countries are believed to be an attempt to prevent the chips from being sold to China. The US also wants to limit ties between companies in the region and Chinese AI firms, which may use foreign third parties to train their AI models.
It was recently reported that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are buying up thousands of Nvidia chips, including the H100, with the aim of becoming a world leader in this area. Saudi Arabia alone has purchased at least 3,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs.