U.S. Tightens Chip Export Rules to China

Solomon Thompson / 9 months ago

In a significant move, the U.S. Department of Commerce is adjusting its chip export license requirements. This revision is set to tighten the reins on the sale of advanced chipmaking tools, AI accelerators, and high-performance semiconductor chips to China. The new regulations, detailed in a 166-page document available since March 29, outline the specific chip types allowed for export.

These updates will demand licenses for exporting components and computers with performance over 70 TeraFLOPS. Notably, this affects the RTX 4090D graphics card, with its 73.5 TFLOPS computing power, and the NVIDIA H20 data center accelerator, boasting 74 TFLOPS.

The Impact

The revision not only adopts a stricter stance towards China, Macau, and other countries in the “D5” group but also plans a case-by-case review for AI chip exports to China. Beijing has criticized these changes, arguing they complicate economic and trade cooperation and harm the global semiconductor industry.

The rules, effective from April 4, mark a significant shift in U.S. policy towards chip exports to China, potentially reshaping the semiconductor landscape.

These regulatory adjustments aim at enhancing oversight on the technological trade, reflecting the ongoing tensions in U.S.-China economic relations and their broader implications for the global tech industry.