US Adds Even More NVIDIA GPUs To China Ban List: RTX 6000 Ada, RTX A6000 & L4

The US Government continues to widen the ban list for GPU exports to China and has now added more NVIDIA chips to the list.

NVIDIA recently imposed export restrictions on various AI companies including NVIDIA from selling AI chips including GPUs to China. This list included a wide range of HPC and Professional GPUs such as the H100, A100, L40, L40S & even the more consumer-oriented GeForce RTX 4090. Even AI chips that were designed to comply with the previous US restrictions such as the Hopper H800 & Ampere A100 were banned. But it looks like The US Government isn't stopping there and is reportedly going to include more GPUs to the export ban list.

According to Benchlife, the latest regulations and import rules have now included the A30, A40, L4, L40, RTX 6000 Ada, and RTX A6000 GPUs which further limits China's access to these GPUs. The first phase of these bans was already implemented and effective as of 23rd October 2023 while the bans on the more prosumer-oriented cards such as the GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX A6000 are expected to take effect tomorrow the 17th of November. There are also reports that the restriction will also be imposed on the GeForce RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti GPUs.

A100, A800, H100, H800, L40S, A800 Active, and RTX 6000 Ada: effective October 23, 2023

A30, A40, L4, L40, RTX A6000 (Ampere), and GeForce RTX 4090: effective November 17, 2023. (Some of these products are eligible for the new Notified Advanced Computing (“NAC”) License Exception.)

So far, the list of GPUs included in the export ban to China include:

The difference however is that the 2nd phase products such as the GeForce RTX 4090 and the RTX prosumer cards will fall under the "NAC" License Exception which allows the vendor to get approval for exports directly from the US government. As pointed out by Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights, there are two types of exceptions.

1/ Red- Requires a license from the DoC to export and re-export these. These have a TPP (Total Processing Performance) above 4800 and nearly anything with a Performance Density above 6. These are reviewed with a “presumption of denial”.

2/ Yellow “Moderate Performance”– Vendor gives USG advanced notice and waits up to 25 days for approval. These have a TPP of 1600 to 4800 but are primarily governed by Performance Density between 1.6-6.

3/ Green– Don’t bother the DoC; it’s OK to sell these all day long. These solutions would be below 1600 TPP and increment up with varying Performance Density.

via Moore Insights

For the Data Center chips, the "NAC" eligibility only applies for chips between 1600-4800 TPP or Total Processing Performance. Anything above 4800 TPP falls under the Licesnecd zone and is non-eligible for NAC exceptions. For non-datacenter chips, the NAC-eligible zone starts above 4800 TPP. This means if vendors can get approval from the US Government, they can still continue to export the restricted GPUs in China and other regions where the new rules have been applied.

The early panic that the consumer-tier GPUs will completely be banned from China and other regions has not been helpful either. We have seen various retailers resorting to scalping tactics and are now using the impending restrictions to hike the prices of various products. NVIDIA has reportedly offered a huge supply of AD102 GPUs, used to make RTX 6000 Ada & RTX 4090 graphics cards, to its AIB partners in China which should last several months but despite that, retailers are limiting supply in retail and creating a fake shortage to make it seem like the cards are now a rarity and the stock you are getting now might be the last of its kind.

We have seen some NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs being listed for over $8000 US, 5 times its MSRP in the China retail market. Despite all of this, NVIDIA is still making new GPUs for China in accordance with the US import/export laws. The company also reallocated a large chunk of its AI GPUs that were supposed to ship to Chinese customers to other regions where these chips are hotly in demand.

News Source: I_Leak_VN