• Home
  • Politics
  • Health
  • World
  • Business
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • More
    • Sports
    • Entertainment
    • Lifestyle
What's Hot

Trump Announces First Post-Tariff Trade Deal

May 8, 2025

100 Funny Father’s Day Quotes for Hilariously Relatable Humor (and Plenty of Love Too)

May 8, 2025

Top 10 Benefits Of Acupuncture

May 8, 2025
Facebook Twitter Instagram
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
Friday, May 9
Patriot Now NewsPatriot Now News
  • Home
  • Politics

    Security video shows brazen sexual assault of California woman by homeless man

    October 24, 2023

    Woman makes disturbing discovery after her boyfriend chases away home intruder who stabbed him

    October 24, 2023

    Poll finds Americans overwhelmingly support Israel’s war on Hamas, but younger Americans defend Hamas

    October 24, 2023

    Off-duty pilot charged with 83 counts of attempted murder after allegedly trying to shut off engines midflight on Alaska Airlines

    October 23, 2023

    Leaked audio of Shelia Jackson Lee abusively cursing staffer

    October 22, 2023
  • Health

    Disparities In Cataract Care Are A Sorry Sight

    October 16, 2023

    Vaccine Stocks—Including Pfizer, Moderna, BioNTech And Novavax—Slide Amid Plummeting Demand

    October 16, 2023

    Long-term steroid use should be a last resort

    October 16, 2023

    Rite Aid Files For Bankruptcy With More ‘Underperforming Stores’ To Close

    October 16, 2023

    Who’s Still Dying From Complications Related To Covid-19?

    October 16, 2023
  • World

    New York Democrat Dan Goldman Accuses ‘Conservatives in the South’ of Holding Rallies with ‘Swastikas’

    October 13, 2023

    IDF Ret. Major General Describes Rushing to Save Son, Granddaughter During Hamas Invasion

    October 13, 2023

    Black Lives Matter Group Deletes Tweet Showing Support for Hamas 

    October 13, 2023

    AOC Denounces NYC Rally Cheering Hamas Terrorism: ‘Unacceptable’

    October 13, 2023

    L.A. Prosecutors Call Out Soros-Backed Gascón for Silence on Israel

    October 13, 2023
  • Business

    Trump Announces First Post-Tariff Trade Deal

    May 8, 2025

    Electric Vehicle Sales Nosedive As GOP Takes Buzzsaw To Biden’s Mandate

    May 7, 2025

    Tyson Foods Announces It Will Bend The Knee To Trump Admin’s New Rules

    May 7, 2025

    Federal Reserve Holds Interest Rates Steady Despite Pressure From Trump

    May 7, 2025

    ‘Wait Them Out’: John Kennedy Tells Larry Kudlow One Lie He Suspects China’s Telling US

    May 7, 2025
  • Finance

    Ending China’s De Minimis Exception Brings 3 Benefits for Americans

    April 17, 2025

    The Trump Tariff Shock Should Push Indonesia to Reform Its Economy

    April 17, 2025

    Tariff Talks an Opportunity to Reinvigorate the Japan-US Alliance

    April 17, 2025

    How China’s Companies Are Responding to the US Trade War

    April 16, 2025

    The US Flip-flop Over H20 Chip Restrictions 

    April 16, 2025
  • Tech

    Cruz Confronts Zuckerberg on Pointless Warning for Child Porn Searches

    February 2, 2024

    FTX Abandons Plans to Relaunch Crypto Exchange, Commits to Full Repayment of Customers and Creditors

    February 2, 2024

    Elon Musk Proposes Tesla Reincorporates in Texas After Delaware Judge Voids Pay Package

    February 2, 2024

    Tesla’s Elon Musk Tops Disney’s Bob Iger as Most Overrated Chief Executive

    February 2, 2024

    Mark Zuckerberg’s Wealth Grew $84 Billion in 2023 as Pedophiles Target Children on Facebook, Instagram

    February 2, 2024
  • More
    • Sports
    • Entertainment
    • Lifestyle
Patriot Now NewsPatriot Now News
Home»Finance»4 Ways China Gets Around US AI Chip Restrictions
Finance

4 Ways China Gets Around US AI Chip Restrictions

June 28, 2024No Comments7 Mins Read
Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
The Future of the China-US Chip War
Share
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email

The recently concluded Computex 2024 in Taipei gathered the world’s most renowned computer manufacturers, and invited an unprecedentedly large number of CEOs of chip manufacturers to be its keynote speakers. The themes of the exhibition were artificial intelligence (AI), green energy sustainability, and innovation, with particular emphasis on the arrival of the 3 nm process era in AI. The 3 nm GPU products introduced at the keynote include Nvidia’s Rubin platform, Intel’s Lunar Lake, AMD’s MI350 series, and even ARM’s v9.2 architecture based on 3 nm.

In the AI field, the difference of computing power between 7 nm and 3 nm chips lies in the number of transistors. Comparing Nvidia’s 7 nm A100 with the company’s 4nm B200, the number of transistors increases significantly from 54.2 billion to 208 billion, nearly quadrupling. In terms of half-precision floating point (FP16) computation, the B200 delivers 2,250 TFLOPS, while the A100 delivers 312 TFLOPS, a more than seven-fold increase. Taking into account the performance of peripheral components and ecosystems, the actual computing power of the 3 nm chipset far surpasses the multiplier mentioned above.

The goals of the Biden administration’s technology policy – described as a “small yard, high fence” approach – are to impede, cripple, and delay China’s development of precisely this kind of advanced chip technology. By doing so, Washington seeks to halt China’s progress in AI and high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities and thereby buy time for the U.S. and its allies to expand their lead in cutting-edge technology. But so far, the measures have seen only limited success.

Four Holes in the “High Fence”

Under U.S. sanctions, China has encountered significant challenges in its advanced chip manufacturing. To address the challenges in acquiring AI chips, China has responded in four ways: first, stockpiling significant quantities of AI chips; second, upgrading its local foundry processes and design tools; third, illegally importing chips through third parties; and fourth, utilizing offshore AI services.

Prior to U.S. restrictions on the export of AI chips to China on October 7, 2022, China’s major AI companies and cloud service vendors had already accumulated or ordered a considerable number of AI chips. While the actual quantity delivered to China is unknown, it is plausible that China has sufficient chips available to develop needed AI models until the end of 2024. In order to extend the duration of advanced chip supply, China employs advanced chips exclusively for model training that requires the most computing power.

See also  Asian shares fall back amid selling of China property shares

Due to the U.S. export restrictions, U.S. chip companies are unable to export their advanced Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to China. Consequently, China’s leader Xi Jinping frequently calls for “self-reliance” in chip supply and “autonomous and controllable” technology advancement. Recently China has allocated an additional $48 billion with the objective of strengthening domestic chip-making capabilities, despite the corruption found in the previous chip funds, which totaled $50 billion. 

Notwithstanding the fact that previous endeavors did not achieve the desired results, there has been some advancement. Currently, there are many homegrown AI chip suppliers in China, such as Hisilicon’s Ascend 910B (7 nm) and Kunpeng-920 (7 nm), Baidu’s Kunlun Gen 2 (7 nm), Alibaba’s T-head (12 nm), Tencent’s Zixiao (12 nm), Taishan’s V120 (7 nm), etc. Hisilicon’s new AI chipset has emerged as a viable alternative to the U.S. companies’ chips. Chinese-made chips have historically lagged behind their Western counterparts in terms of performance and stability, which has hindered the development of large-scale AI models in China. However, they can still build models by aggregating many chips together.

In addition, China subsidizes many small chip design companies, enabling them to design single-function AI chips for diverse applications. These chips can only be manufactured locally through the use of SMIC’s 7nm process. However, since SMIC’s limited capacity is fully occupied by Huawei’s demand, some IC design companies have been compelled to downgrade their processors and seek assistance from Taiwan’s TSMC. TSMC has declined such requests.

As is the case with the West’s restrictions on Russia’s access to dual-use components, imports from a third party have also become a loophole in semiconductor export restrictions on China. The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce banned the export of Nvidia’s A100 and H100 chips to China in October 2022. This prohibition was extended to the A800 and H800 chips in the following year. However, the results of these restrictions have been unsatisfactory. Some of the chips have been privately imported into China through shell companies. This is the reason why the U.S. government is concerned about the Middle East’s significant purchases of AI chips. While there is no evidence that the Chinese government is involved in facilitating the smuggling, such a possibility cannot be ruled out.

See also  Samsung Reports a 10-fold Increase in Profit as AI Drives Rebound in Memory Chip Markets

An alternative approach for Chinese companies to evade the restriction is to rent cloud services located in the United States. The U.S. government has not yet proposed any effective measures against this vulnerability. Even if this loophole is fixed, it remains unclear whether Chinese AI companies will be able to use cloud services in other places, such as Europe or the Middle East. 

China’s Continuing Advancements in AI Chips

The results indicate that the Biden administration’s “small yard, high fence” policy has presented challenges for China in obtaining advanced AI chips. For example, TSMC started to produce 16 nm semiconductors in 2015, while Huawei started to produce 14 nm in 2019, with a gap of four years. TSMC started to produce 7 nm chips in 2018, and SMIC started in 2023, with a gap of five years. However, judging from the many obstacles in designing, manufacturing, and talent restriction set up by the Biden administration, the effect of the policy on widening the technological gap between China and the West is not very significant, especially as the policy fails to slow down China’s ambition to make progress in semiconductor fabrication processes beyond 7 nm. 

If, as reported in the media, China has already commenced production of 5 nm chips, then the wall has already been breached. China’s only remaining vulnerability now is the higher cost of homemade 7 nm chips, which are not commercially viable in the long run without Chinese government subsidies.

Another concern for the West is China’s aggressive investment in mature processes over the past few years. China’s global share of mature processes is projected to grow from 26 percent in 2022 to 45 percent in 2027, surpassing Taiwan to become the world’s largest producer. Mature processes can generate sufficient profits for China to subsidize the advanced processes. 

See also  US and Vietnam ink historic partnership in Biden visit, with eyes on China

This strategy of subsidizing the losses of advanced processes with the profits from mature processes is the semiconductor industry’s version of “encircling the cities from the countryside,” a geographical strategy introduced by Mao Zedong to conquer the cities (in this metaphor, advanced processes) by establishing bases in rural areas (mature processes) and bolstering its military power from the countryside until the opportune time to capture the cities. 

Enlarging “Digital Solidity”

To sum up, it would be unrealistic to focus only on sanctioning advanced processes in order to widen the technology gap between the West and China. Instead, measures against both advanced and mature processes used in China should be considered simultaneously in order to effectively defend U.S. national interests in technology. 

With respect to advanced processes, the U.S. has already taken many restrictive measures. Further restrictions could start by restricting China’s use of the ARM v9.2 3 nm architecture. On the mature process side, since China has already localized the semiconductor fabrication tools it needs, increasing tariffs on consumer electronics could limit China’s competitiveness and global market share in mature processes and reduce China’s ability to subsidize the advanced processes with mature process products. 

All these will require the United States to persuade its allies to take more joint actions, which is one of the aims of the “Digital Solidity” concept promoted by the U.S. Department of State.

China Chip Restrictions Ways
Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email

Related Posts

Trump’s Tariffs Trigger Turmoil In China As Country’s Economic Tailspin Intensifies Per New Data

May 6, 2025

American Manufacturers Overwhelmed With Orders After Trump’s Tariff Crackdown On China

May 5, 2025

Trump Closes Tariff Loophole That Let China Flood America With Knockoff Goods, Drugs

May 2, 2025

China Erupts: Furious Workers Riot As Factories Collapse Under Trump’s Tariffs

May 1, 2025
Add A Comment

Leave A Reply Cancel Reply

Top Posts

‘DWTS’ Judge Carrie Ann Inaba Says It’s ‘A Gift’ To Feel Pain After Emergency Surgery

April 4, 2023

REPORT: David Foster And Katharine McPhee’s Son’s Nanny Dead In ‘Horrible Tragedy’

August 15, 2023

No, that isn’t the real AOC you may have seen on Twitter

May 31, 2023

Growth in Southeast Asia’s Digital Economy Slows Slightly in 2024

November 6, 2024
Don't Miss

Trump Announces First Post-Tariff Trade Deal

Business May 8, 2025

President Donald Trump announced Thursday the U.S. has reached a trade agreement with the U.K.,…

100 Funny Father’s Day Quotes for Hilariously Relatable Humor (and Plenty of Love Too)

May 8, 2025

Top 10 Benefits Of Acupuncture

May 8, 2025

Electric Vehicle Sales Nosedive As GOP Takes Buzzsaw To Biden’s Mandate

May 7, 2025
About
About

This is your World, Tech, Health, Entertainment and Sports website. We provide the latest breaking news straight from the News industry.

We're social. Connect with us:

Facebook Twitter Instagram Pinterest
Categories
  • Business (4,110)
  • Entertainment (4,220)
  • Finance (3,202)
  • Health (1,938)
  • Lifestyle (1,626)
  • Politics (3,084)
  • Sports (4,036)
  • Tech (2,006)
  • Uncategorized (4)
  • World (3,944)
Our Picks

Disney’s ‘Indiana Jones 5’ Dead as a Doornail with 2nd-Place Finish, ‘Sound of Freedom’ Soars

July 10, 2023

Brawl Erupts in Kosovo Parliament After Lawmaker Throws Water on PM

July 18, 2023

Noncompete agreements violate US labor law, official says

June 1, 2023
Popular Posts

Trump Announces First Post-Tariff Trade Deal

May 8, 2025

100 Funny Father’s Day Quotes for Hilariously Relatable Humor (and Plenty of Love Too)

May 8, 2025

Top 10 Benefits Of Acupuncture

May 8, 2025
© 2025 Patriotnownews.com - All rights reserved.
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.