“There are several local Chinese companies that produce chips to compete with NVIDIA,” said Brady Wang, associate director of Counterpoint Research.
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As the United States squeezes the controls on NVIDIA’s sales to China, the growing artificial intelligence chips manufacturers of the country as Huawei will benefit, semiconductor analysts say.
The Department of Commerce Said last week That the NVIDIA H20 graph processing units, designed to meet the previous US restrictions. AMD. Nvidia says that exports of the GPUs have already arrested, resulting in a quarterly position of approximately $ 5.5 billion.
But the loss of American AI Darling could be a gain for local Chip players in China, since China continues to look for Nvidia’s own alternative, said CNBC semiconductor analysts.
“There are several local Chinese companies that produce chips to compete with NVIDIA,” said Brady Wang, associate director of Counterpoint Research.
The examples of these local AI chips manufacturers include Huawei technological power and technologies changed from partial state and public list, which designs GPU.
Cambricon actions increased approximately 10% in the last five days of negotiation in the middle of the news of the latest NVIDIA controls. The action has increased around 400% in the last 12 months.
These local competitors now have a greater impulse and the opportunity to grow and improve their solutions, Wang said, added that he hopes that the demand for their GPU will increase.
Can China fill the void?
Analysts pointed to Huawei as a clear leader in China’s career to find a Nvidia competitor. He Blacklisten The company has been working on their own “Ascend 910“The GPU series, the last of which is the supposed Ascend 910c.
“With the NVIDIA H20 and other restricted advanced GPUs, national alternatives such as the Huawei Ascend series are gaining ground,” said Doug O’Lauchlin, an industrial analyst at the Independent Semiconductor Research Company semi -analysis.
TO Recent report From semi -analysis states that, although Huawei remains “a generation behind chips,” the company is “making waves” with the hardware that uses them.
“While there are still gaps in the maturity of the software and the general preparation of the ecosystem, hardware performance is quickly closing,” O’Laughlin added.
However, experts point out that export controls have also hindered China’s ability to produce advanced GPUs to the same scale that NVIDIA can through contract chips manufacturers such as Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing companyThe world’s largest contract chips manufacturer.
“Huawei has proven to be a competitive designer of Fables Chips … but they fight to find enough supply of their foundations,” said Phelix Lee, a capitalist centered on semiconductors for Morningstar.
Because the TSMC chips team includes American technology, the company has met the United States commercial restrictions in Huawei and the sending of advanced chips to China. That has left Chinese companies that depend more and more national foundations such as Semiconductor manufacturing international corporation.
Neverberthes, SMIC is under its own export controls, which Avoid accessing Some of the most advanced chipped teams in the world.
Given these conditions, Lee said, it is still “very skeptical” that Chinese chips foundations could provide enough GPU H20 alternatives to meet the demand of Chinese technology companies in the short term.
Are export controls working?
However, experts say that Chinese chip manufacturers won need to immediately fill out this H20 demand thanks to previous exemptions and exemptions and export lagoons.
Last month, information reported That Chinese companies had made orders for at least $ 16 billion in H20 server chips in the first three months of the year. Nvidia did not respond immediately to a request for comments from CNBC.
According to the counterpoint Wang, it is not clear how much the existing stocks of the different companies will last, but they provide Chinese chip manufacturers more time to expand their manufacture of GPU.
In the short term, “I think the impact of the controls is limited … in the medium in the long term, it will depend on the progress of this local GPU development,” he said.
Meanwhile, according to the semi -sis report, the Huawei Ascend chip shows how China’s export controls have failed to prevent companies such as Huawei from accessing foreign critical and subcomponent tools necessary for advanced GPUs.
“While the Ascend chip can be manufactured in SMIC, this is a global chip that has HBM of Korea, the production of primary wafers of TSMC, and is manufactured by 10 of billions of wafering manufacturing equipment from the United States, Netherlands and Japan.”
The semi -analysis report added that SMIC’s production capacity has the potential to grow greatly, given continuous access to foreign tools and the lack of effective sanctions and application.
TSMC is reportedly According to the United States Department of Commerce Department after a chip made for Sophgo based in China, one that was found in the Artificial Intelligence processor Ascend 910b of Huawei.
Given the progress of the Huawei GPU and the reports of export control solutions, several experts have expressed doubts that the export controls of the United States in NVIDIA will reach their planned purpose.
“American controls on GPUs and semiconductor manufacturing equipment have mainly damaged US companies, including NVIDIA, while having a marginal impact on the capacity of Chinese companies to develop border models,” said Paul Group.
Instead, export controls have encouraged the Chinese semiconductor industry to be more innovative while “designing US technology,” he added.
The next months, Nvidia can face additional restrictions on what you can export, underneath. “Rules of dissemination of AI“Proposed for the first time by the Biden administration.
