TMTPost --  The U.S. government may impose further curb on artificial intelligence (AI) chips-related exports to China.

Credit：China Daily

The Biden administration is mulling further restrictions on China’s access to chip technology used for AI, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The measures being discussed would limit China’s ability to use a cutting-edge chip architecture known as gate all-around, or GAA, according to the report. GAA is a transistor architecture that helps improve chip performance and reduces power consumption. GAA overcomes the challenges of the FinFET (Fin Field-Effect Transistor) architecture for it takes the latter’s design and turns it sideways so that the channels are horizontal instead of vertical. Instead of surrounding the channel on three sides as in the FinFET architecture, GAA surrounds it on all four sides, to allow better control of the transistor switch. A new set of very precise processes are used to fabricate GAA transistors. This supports transistor scaling with lower variability, and increased performance and lower power.

It is reported that the U.S. officials are still determining the scope of a potential rule, so it’s unclear when they will make a final decision. Whatever the scope will be, the U.S. goal is to make it more difficult for China to assemble the sophisticated computing systems needed to build and operate AI models, the report said. It added that it is unclear whether the ban would restrict China's ability to develop its own GAA chips or seek to block U.S. chipmakers and other overseas companies from selling their products to Chinese firms.

The report indicated the new restrictions would impact chip giants including Nvidia Corporation. It said chipmakers like Nvidia, Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) along with manufacturing partners Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and Samsung Electronics Co. are looking to start mass-producing semiconductors with the GAA design within the next year.

Nvidia and Intel declined to comment. The other companies did not respond to the report, neither did the U.S. Department of Commerce. The report marks the latest threat for Nvidia as the AI chip behemoth has been striving to maintain its competitiveness in China amid ongoing U.S. curbs.

Nvidia is the semiconductor designer that dominates the market for AI chips, which empower AI systems including the large language model behind ChatGPT. The U.S. has imposed months ago a new export control on AI offerings to China. The U.S. Department of Commerce introduced a rule entitles “Implementation of Additional Export Controls: Certain Advanced Computing Items; Supercomputer and Semiconductor End Use; Updates and Corrections”, on October 18. The rule was supposed to come into effect following a 30-day public comment period. But Nvidia disclosed on October 25 that the U.S. government informed the licensing requirements of the rule applicable to products having a “total processing performance” of 4800 or more and designed or marketed for data centers, is effective immediately.

Nvidia has modified some of flagship products including A100 and H100 for exports to China, including an alternative A800 chip, as the U.S. regulators last year banned it from selling its most advanced chips to China. But even A800, the weakened version of Nvida’s cutting-edge A100 processor, is not allowed for export without first obtaining a license according to the new restrictions.

In a regulatory filling late February, Nvidia first underlined Huawi as a top competitor in artificial intelligence (AI), chips and various areas. The Santa Clara, California-based company said Huawei competes in supplying chips designed for AI such as graphics processing units (GPUs), central processing units (CPUs) and networking chips. It also identified Huawei as a cloud service company designing its own hardware and software to improve AI computing.

At an earnings call about Nvidia's first fiscal quarter last month, senior executives warned that the company's business in China is substantially lower than in the past due to the U.S. restrictions. "Our data centre revenue in China is down significantly from the level prior to the imposition of the new export control restrictions in October," CFO Colette Kress told analysts. "We expect the market in China to remain very competitive going forward."  Analysts regarded the H20’s performance as a major factor of Nvidia’s business in China, while they believe that the prospect in the long run will depend on how it compete with Huawei.