During AMD's Advancing AI event in San Jose, California, the huge Chinese market for AMD's Instinct MI300X accelerator and its potential to finally rediscover growth seemed impossible to give up. But first.
There are three things you need to know today:
The iPhone is down a staggering 24% in China this year
Apple faces a $2 billion fine from the European Union for app abuse.
Former Twitter executive sued Musk for a payment of 1$2.8 billion in severance packages.
advanced micro devices inc.It is the latest global tech company to try to overcome the ** barriers that the United States has erected around China. Legally, of course. But things didn't go well, and even AMD's improved AI accelerator built specifically for China was rejected by the Ministry of Commerce.
The Santa Clara-based AMD headquarters, just steps away from Nvidia, the core of AI chips, went head-to-head with its California neighbor late last year with its flagship Mi300 chip. In addition, it wants to compete in the Chinese market, where Nvidia has released several less powerful versions of its best AI accelerator to comply with U.S. export controls.
That's where AMD's tuned Mi309 comes into play. It's unclear how well this chip will perform, but apparently the Commerce Department still can't get AMD to give the chip to China without permission. Ever since Nvidia launched the A800 for the Chinese market in 2022 (a sanctions-compliant version of its flagship A100), I've been asking people in China if their rivals, Intel Corporation or AMD, would do the same. It took a while.
People in the country's AI engineering ecosystem told me at the time that they were more inclined to use Nvidia's chips, and that no one was willing to offer a really interesting alternative, especially when it came to training AI models in large data centers. For its part, AMD said that the U.S. restrictions on the shipment of advanced AI chips to China will not have a significant impact on its revenue.
Following the A800, NVIDIA introduced the H800 chip to major customers in China last year. In this country, eight is considered a lucky number, hence the name. But the Commerce Department has blocked both efforts.
In October, the U.S. adjusted its export rules again to control all of Nvidia's chips made in China. So, recently, NVIDIA has introduced more downgraded chips, including the H20 and a few others. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said she was also looking into the issues.
That's what AMD is grappling with. You might ask why AMD hasn't learned more from Nvidia's setbacks, or why Nvidia continues to customize chips for China when Washington has signaled its intention to freeze China's AI progress. I've been asked these questions many times, but I don't have a definitive answer, it's just that the Chinese market is too tempting to give up.
While enthusiasm remains, transparency is subtly diminishing. NVIDIA's A800 specs have been made public, and Chinese server manufacturers have promoted them in their marketing materials. All these links have since disappeared and I couldn't find the specs for the H800 or H20 from nvidia's Chinese customers. The same goes for the Mi309.
U.S. measures could ultimately backfire, as one of the effects is to protect China's domestic AI accelerator market. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang echoed the same sentiment and sees Huawei Technologies*** as a formidable competitor.
Huawei, based in Shenzhen, is China's de facto national tech champion and is developing its own artificial intelligence chips as well as chip manufacturing expertise. Its ** slogan "Advance Pervasive Intelligence" and has a commercial network and state support to make its products accessible without NVIDIA and AMD.
I'm watching to see if Huawei's AI-chip manufacturing threat grows enough to convince the U.S. to ease the restrictions it imposes on its own semiconductor designers. Until then, AMD may have to continue to limit its hardware.