Beijing doesn't want Nvidia's H20s anywhere near sensitive government workloads
- Reference: 1755024234
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/08/12/china_nvidia_h20/
- Source link:
According to a Bloomberg [1]report citing unnamed persons familiar with the matter, Chinese authorities have sent letters to several firms discouraging the use of Nvidia's H20 GPUs for AI applications, particularly by those involved in government or national security-related work.
In April, the US Commerce Department [2]halted sales of Nvidia's H20 — essentially a nerfed version of the company's more powerful H200 GPUs with reduced floating point performance and interconnect bandwidth. AMD's own China-spec GPU, the MI308, also saw a temporary block.
[3]
However, by July, Nvidia and AMD revealed that they'd [4]reached a deal with the US government to resume shipments of the accelerators. This deal, it was [5]revealed this week, involved cutting Uncle Sam a check for 15 percent of H20 and MI308 revenues.
[6]
[7]
Trump, on Monday, also suggested that Nvidia could convince him to allow shipments of a Blackwell-based accelerator in China if its performance was "negatively" enhanced by something like 30-50 percent.
However, since announcing plans to resume H20 shipments in July, the chip has become a source of [8]controversy as the Chinese government has raised concerns over the potential inclusion of location tracking tech, backdoors, and remote kill switches. Nvidia has denied these allegations.
[9]
But while Nvidia denies the existence of any such capability today, it could be required to add such features in the future. Legislation that would mandate the inclusion of location verification tech is already gaining traction among lawmakers in the US House and Senate.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has previously [10]dismissed the idea that Chinese military or government supercomputers would use its chips. In an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria earlier this summer, Huang argued that the Chinese military won't use his chips for the same reason that Uncle Sam wouldn't conceive of using theirs.
It's also worth noting that US government's end use rules already prohibit China from deploying advanced semiconductors in its military supercomputers, though enforcing those rules once the chips are outside regulators' control remains a [11]challenge .
[12]
"The H20 is not a military product or for government infrastructure. China has an ample supply of domestic chips to meet its needs. It won't and never has relied on American chips for government operations, just like the US government would not rely on chips from China," Nvidia said in a statement to the media. "Banning the sale of H20 in China would only harm US economic and technology leadership with zero national security benefit."
[13]Nvidia gives its tiniest workstation GPUs a Blackwell boost
[14]Trump seeing green as he weighs deal to allow Nvidia Blackwell GPU sales to China
[15]Nvidia and AMD reportedly chipping in to Washington's coffers with 15 percent fee for China sales
[16]Nvidia security boss pledges 'no backdoors'
The letters Chinese authorities allegedly sent seem to reinforce this argument as they recommend avoiding the H20 for government or national security applications.
As such, the letters may have less to do with encouraging the use of more sophisticated domestic accelerators like Huawei's CloudMatrix rack systems, which we've previously [17]explored in depth, and more to do with convincing the US not to reinstate a sales ban or pursue kill switch mandates. ®
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[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-12/china-urges-firms-not-to-use-nvidia-h20-chips-in-new-guidance?taid=689acddfa73ccf000107dbd3&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_content=business&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&embedded-checkout=true
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/16/trump_responds_to_nvidias_us/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aJu5b97OWsXPNMCfV7LIrQAAAQU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/16/amd_china_chips/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/11/trump_seeing_green_as_he/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aJu5b97OWsXPNMCfV7LIrQAAAQU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aJu5b97OWsXPNMCfV7LIrQAAAQU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/06/ai_chips_to_china_charges/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aJu5b97OWsXPNMCfV7LIrQAAAQU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/14/nvidia_ceo_china/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/31/china_us_nuclear/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aJu5b97OWsXPNMCfV7LIrQAAAQU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/11/nvidia_workstation_cards_blackwell_updates/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/11/trump_seeing_green_as_he/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/11/nvidia_amd_china_export_tax/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/06/ai_chips_to_china_charges/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/29/huawei_rackscale_boogeyman/
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
5 to 7 years
15% export tax? Ridiculous and foolish. A deal to invest in US R&D and not transfer the R&D to China would have been a much better idea. Once NVidia opens the their China R&D center it will be 5-7 years before most of the R&D has has shifted there and the CCP backed competitor takes the lead in the international market. C;f;, Apple, Tesla, etc.
That's why I think export controls (outside of weapons) are vastly overused. Aim for the long term.
Re: 5 to 7 years
> That's why I think export controls (outside of weapons) are vastly overused.
The U.S: president only has the power to declare export taxes based on a state of emergency.
So he declares the chips in question being shipped to China as a national security emergency.
Then he reaches a "deal" withe the chip producers and for 15% export tax they may now be exported to China.
What now happened to them that made them no longer a national security threat that prompted the capability of the president to declare this tax in the first place?
There is not a trace of logic in this whole mess...
If anything, this will mean Chinese models will be more optimized and therefore run on generally less energy-hungry hardware than their U.S. counterparts, e.g. exactly what gave the deepseek models their edge over the competition in the area of locally run models.
China has plenty of alternatives for HPC and AI
From InnoSilicon, to Huawei, to Moore Threads, to the most recent entrant Lisuan.
¿Are these as good as nVIDIA's offerings? Nope.
¿Are these as good as AMD's offerings ? Nope.
¿Are these as good as Intel's Offerings? Nope.
¿Are these as good as Broadcomm's offerings? Nope
¿Are these alternatives good enough for the tasks at hand (HPC and AI)? ¡Well yes! Yes, they are good enough.
Bull plop.
That's like an F1 team not using Magnesium alloys.
The machines will be air gapped and run by dissidents on bicycle powered generators, but they will be used for multiple CCP government projects.