Nvidia GeForced out of China as Beijing demands tech titans embrace homegrown silicon
(2025/09/18)
- Reference: 1758154343
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/09/18/nvidia_china_ai_ban/
- Source link:
Nvidia has reportedly been cut off from the Chinese market after regulators in Beijing ordered the nation's top tech companies to suspend testing and cancel orders of the GPU giant's accelerators.
China's Cyberspace Administration ordered Alibaba, ByteDance, and unnamed others not to order Nvidia's RTX Pro 6000D Blackwell GPUs, unnamed sources familiar with the matter [1]told the Financial Times this week.
The card, a nerfed version of Nvidia's RTX Pro 6000 GPUs designed to limbo under performance caps on AI accelerator exports to China, has been [2]rumored to be in development for more than a year now.
[3]
As we've previously [4]written , US export rules mean Nvidia must limit the card to approximately 581 teraFLOPS of FP4 and 1.4TB/s of memory bandwidth. While faster at 4-bit precision, the card’s performance will be roughly equivalent with an H20 at high precision with less than half the bandwidth. The lack of high-speed chip-to-chip interconnectivity also limits the unit’s usefulness for AI training.
[5]
[6]
Despite the performance limits, the FT reports that Chinese companies were lining up to purchase tens of thousands of the Blackwell-based accelerators and had even begun working with server suppliers to validate them for deployment, presumably for use in inference or model fine-tuning.
Alibaba scores huge AI silicon sale Alibaba’s T-Head chipmaking outfit has [7]reportedly won telco China Unicom as a customer for its AI chips.
The carrier [8]claims to have 1.2 billion subscribers, and is a member of OpenStack’s million-core club.
Unicom is said to have also shopped with other Chinese chipmakers for its AI needs.
– Simon Sharwood
The ban comes just weeks after Chinese authorities issued letters to top Chinese tech firms discouraging the use of Nvidia's H20 accelerators, particularly for sensitive government workloads.
Shipments of Nvidia's H20 and AMD's MI308, cut-down versions of the companies' H200 and MI300X accelerators respectively, were banned by the Trump administration back in April. However, by July both Nvidia and AMD had worked out a deal convincing Trump to allow them to resume shipments in exchange for a 15 percent cut of the revenues.
However, as Nvidia CFO Colette Kress [9]noted during Nvidia's second quarter earnings call that Washington had agreed to allow it to resume sales to China, but the chip designer awaits publication of regulations that will allow it to resume sales.
[10]
The Chinese government's decision to restrict imports of Nvidia hardware reportedly comes in response to a growing number of domestic alternatives, many of which already outperform the H20. Huawei's Ascend 910C and CloudMatrix 384, which we [11]looked at in detail in July, are examples.
[12]Trump backpedals as Hyundai factory ICE raid enrages South Korea
[13]China turns the screws on Nvidia with antitrust probe
[14]Absolutely fabless: Trump derails TSMC's China chip-building effort
[15]Alibaba looks to end reliance on Nvidia for AI inference
In a press conference in London on Wednesday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang expressed his frustration with Chinese regulators.
"We can only be in service of a market if a country wants us to be," he said, according to a statement. "I'm disappointed with what I see, but they have larger agendas to work out between China and the United States. And I'm patient about it. We'll continue to be supportive of the Chinese government and Chinese companies as they wish."
While Nvidia's share price slipped slightly on the news and closed down 2.6 percent, the ban is unlikely to have a material impact on Nvidia's financials moving forward. While optimistic about resuming sales of H20s and bringing its Blackwell architecture to China, the company is counting on sales in the region for its Q3 forecasts. ®
Get our [16]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/12adf92d-3e34-428a-8d61-c9169511915c
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/nvidia_said_to_be_prepping/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aMuD2pM9t-ZF6drTGXaGZQAAAtI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/28/nvidia_us_chipmakers_ai_requirements_china/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aMuD2pM9t-ZF6drTGXaGZQAAAtI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aMuD2pM9t-ZF6drTGXaGZQAAAtI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-17/alibaba-s-ai-chip-effort-quickens-with-big-client-china-unicom
[8] https://www.chinaunicom.com.hk/en/ir/operating.php
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/27/nvidia_q2_china/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aMuD2pM9t-ZF6drTGXaGZQAAAtI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/29/huawei_rackscale_boogeyman/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/16/us_hyundai_immigration/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/15/china_nvidia_antitrust/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/03/trump_tsmc_china/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/29/china_alibaba_ai_accelerator/
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
China's Cyberspace Administration ordered Alibaba, ByteDance, and unnamed others not to order Nvidia's RTX Pro 6000D Blackwell GPUs, unnamed sources familiar with the matter [1]told the Financial Times this week.
The card, a nerfed version of Nvidia's RTX Pro 6000 GPUs designed to limbo under performance caps on AI accelerator exports to China, has been [2]rumored to be in development for more than a year now.
[3]
As we've previously [4]written , US export rules mean Nvidia must limit the card to approximately 581 teraFLOPS of FP4 and 1.4TB/s of memory bandwidth. While faster at 4-bit precision, the card’s performance will be roughly equivalent with an H20 at high precision with less than half the bandwidth. The lack of high-speed chip-to-chip interconnectivity also limits the unit’s usefulness for AI training.
[5]
[6]
Despite the performance limits, the FT reports that Chinese companies were lining up to purchase tens of thousands of the Blackwell-based accelerators and had even begun working with server suppliers to validate them for deployment, presumably for use in inference or model fine-tuning.
Alibaba scores huge AI silicon sale Alibaba’s T-Head chipmaking outfit has [7]reportedly won telco China Unicom as a customer for its AI chips.
The carrier [8]claims to have 1.2 billion subscribers, and is a member of OpenStack’s million-core club.
Unicom is said to have also shopped with other Chinese chipmakers for its AI needs.
– Simon Sharwood
The ban comes just weeks after Chinese authorities issued letters to top Chinese tech firms discouraging the use of Nvidia's H20 accelerators, particularly for sensitive government workloads.
Shipments of Nvidia's H20 and AMD's MI308, cut-down versions of the companies' H200 and MI300X accelerators respectively, were banned by the Trump administration back in April. However, by July both Nvidia and AMD had worked out a deal convincing Trump to allow them to resume shipments in exchange for a 15 percent cut of the revenues.
However, as Nvidia CFO Colette Kress [9]noted during Nvidia's second quarter earnings call that Washington had agreed to allow it to resume sales to China, but the chip designer awaits publication of regulations that will allow it to resume sales.
[10]
The Chinese government's decision to restrict imports of Nvidia hardware reportedly comes in response to a growing number of domestic alternatives, many of which already outperform the H20. Huawei's Ascend 910C and CloudMatrix 384, which we [11]looked at in detail in July, are examples.
[12]Trump backpedals as Hyundai factory ICE raid enrages South Korea
[13]China turns the screws on Nvidia with antitrust probe
[14]Absolutely fabless: Trump derails TSMC's China chip-building effort
[15]Alibaba looks to end reliance on Nvidia for AI inference
In a press conference in London on Wednesday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang expressed his frustration with Chinese regulators.
"We can only be in service of a market if a country wants us to be," he said, according to a statement. "I'm disappointed with what I see, but they have larger agendas to work out between China and the United States. And I'm patient about it. We'll continue to be supportive of the Chinese government and Chinese companies as they wish."
While Nvidia's share price slipped slightly on the news and closed down 2.6 percent, the ban is unlikely to have a material impact on Nvidia's financials moving forward. While optimistic about resuming sales of H20s and bringing its Blackwell architecture to China, the company is counting on sales in the region for its Q3 forecasts. ®
Get our [16]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/12adf92d-3e34-428a-8d61-c9169511915c
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/nvidia_said_to_be_prepping/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aMuD2pM9t-ZF6drTGXaGZQAAAtI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/28/nvidia_us_chipmakers_ai_requirements_china/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aMuD2pM9t-ZF6drTGXaGZQAAAtI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aMuD2pM9t-ZF6drTGXaGZQAAAtI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-17/alibaba-s-ai-chip-effort-quickens-with-big-client-china-unicom
[8] https://www.chinaunicom.com.hk/en/ir/operating.php
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/27/nvidia_q2_china/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aMuD2pM9t-ZF6drTGXaGZQAAAtI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/29/huawei_rackscale_boogeyman/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/16/us_hyundai_immigration/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/15/china_nvidia_antitrust/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/03/trump_tsmc_china/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/29/china_alibaba_ai_accelerator/
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Wang Cores
I do love how the businessmen are content to be ball-gagged and made into gimps so long as they get a pinky promise they will stay in rule the US.
Trump will retaliate and FORCE the Chinese to buy nVidia
that one in the corner
How DARE they not buy these GPUs, they are great GPUs. Tariffs will have to be raised until the Chinese have no choice.
Ummm...
Cue Tim the Enchanter...
Yorick Hunt
... pissing himself laughing at the carnage XD
Sycophanting both sides and crawling up every autocrats arse coming back to bite ya, Jensen?
Not sure I have a fiddle small enough.