Nvidia A800

2022: Processor Announcement

On November 8, 2022, US chipmaker Nvidia confirmed that it had begun selling a new converted chip in China that complies with the new US export control rules.

The chip, named A800, represents the first effort by an American semiconductor company to create advanced processors for the PRC that comply with the new US trade rules. Nvidia said the export restrictions could cost it hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

Nvidia A800

American rules established in early October 2022 effectively banned the export of advanced chips and equipment for their production by Chinese chipmakers, part of an effort to curb the Chinese semiconductor industry.

In late August 2022, Nvidia and AMD reported that their advanced chips, including the Nvidia A100 data center chip, had been added to the Commerce Department's export control list. Nvidia can A800 be used instead of the A100, and both are GPUs.

The Nvidia A800 GPU, which went into production in the third quarter, is another alternative product to the Nvidia A100 GPU for customers in China. A800 meets a clear U.S. government criterion for reducing export controls and cannot be programmed to exceed it, an Nvidia spokesman said in a statement.

Nvidia declined to comment on whether it had consulted the Commerce Department about the new chip. A Commerce Department spokesman declined to comment.

The distributor's website in China details the characteristics of the A800. A comparison of the capabilities of the chip with the A100 shows that the data transfer rate between the chips is 400 gigabytes per second on the new chip, compared to 600 gigabytes per second on the A100. The new rules limit the speed to 600 gigabytes per second or higher.

A800 looks like a repackaged A100 GPU designed to avoid the Commerce Department's recent trade restrictions, said Wayne Lam, an analyst at CCS Insight.

China is a significant market for Nvidia and it makes sense for businesses to reconfigure their product to avoid trade restrictions, "Lam said.

Lam said the A800 communication capabilities associated with inter-chip data sharing represented a clear performance decline for data centers, where thousands of chips are used together.

Nvidia said about $400 million in chip sales in China could suffer in the fiscal third quarter ended October 2022 due to restrictions on high-end chips. Having a converted chip can soften the financial blow.^[1]

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