As per the latest reports from the Financial Times, small batches of Nvidia’s H200 chips have reached China. According to the report, ByteDance and Tencent have each received around 10,000 H200 processors in recent months, while a few other Chinese companies are poised to secure similar shipments soon.
Although the US had cleared the companies to purchase 100,000 H200 chips each, Beijing wants them to keep the hardware outside mainland China to support the growth of domestic chipmakers. China seems to think that the inflow of foreign, better chips and hardware will encourage more Chinese firms to opt for it. Moreover, it will also nullifyse manufactureChinese manufacturers have already made, havingR&D. Beijing has even told the companies to im these chips to Hong Kong. This way, the chips will never enter mainland China.
US tech experts have been reiterating this for a while now. Keeping China in an isolated void in terms of advancewhen it comes tol only frustrate it and further push the Astry to expand its advanced chip manufacturing. The H200S the USA is shipping to China is built on a 5nm process. This is not the bleeding-edge, top-of-the-line process, but it is still much better than anything China can make on its own. However, if the isolation continues, experts believe China will have no choice but to manufacture its own advanced process, which it has with the new Lisuan G100 card built on a 6nm process and supposed to rival the Nvidia RTX 4060.
