Intel announces that it will sell its data center AI processor 'Habana Gaudi 2' in China, where export restrictions from the US continue



Due to concerns that China may use high-performance chips for military purposes such as AI-equipped weapons and cyber attack tools, the US government has

restricted the export of high-performance chips to China by semiconductor manufacturers such as NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel. On the other hand, on July 11, 2023, Intel announced that it would deploy its data center AI processor ' Habana Gaudi 2 ' in China.

Intel woos China with nerfed Habana Gaudi 2 AI chips • The Register
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/13/intel_guadi_china/



Intel Brings Gaudi 2 AI Accelerators to China as an Alternative to NVIDIA A800 Chips

https://wccftech.com/intel-brings-gaudi2-ai-accelerators-to-china-as-an-alternative-to-nvidia-a800-chips/

As the U.S. faces growing tensions with China, it has banned semiconductor manufacturers such as Nvidia, AMD, and Intel from exporting data center chips above a certain threshold to China or Russia.

US government orders NVIDIA and AMD to 'restrict export of AI chips to China' - GIGAZINE



Meanwhile, Chen Baoli, general manager of Intel's data center and AI group in China, announced at a press conference on July 11, 2023 that the company will launch the Habana Gaudi 2 AI processor for data centers in the Chinese market.

The 'Habana Gaudi 2', released in spring 2022, is a high-performance AI processor manufactured using a 7nm process node, equipped with 24 tensor cores, 96GB of HBM2e memory, and boasting a data transfer speed of 2.45TB per second. According to Intel, it has approximately twice the performance of the AI processor ' NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPU ' sold by NVIDIA.



On the other hand, it has been reported that NVIDIA is offering the ' A800 ', a downgraded version of the A100, in China to meet export control standards. US export control standards prohibit the export of chips with data transfer speeds exceeding 600GB per second. Therefore, the data transfer speed of the A800 is limited to 400GB per second, compared to 600GB per second for the A100.

It is revealed that NVIDIA is producing a new chip 'A800' in China that can circumvent export restrictions - GIGAZINE


by htomari

According to foreign media DigiTimes, Intel's new Habana Gaudi 2 chips for sale in China may be downgraded to some extent to comply with US export control standards, just like the A100 chips.

However, it has been reported that the US Department of Commerce plans to further expand export restrictions on AI chips to China in June 2023, and if the rules are expanded, even the A800 will be prohibited from sale unless it receives government approval. Therefore, it is unclear whether 'Habana Gaudi 2' will be able to be sold as planned by Intel.

The US is considering expanding export controls on AI chips to China due to the risk that China could use chips from NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, etc. for weapons and cyber attacks - GIGAZINE



In the future, companies in China such as Inspur , H3C Technologies , and xFusion plan to release server products equipped with 'Habana Gaudi 2'.

in Hardware, Posted by log1r_ut