Apparently, Nvidia’s willingness to play “regulatory leapfrog” with the US authorities, who regularly tighten export restrictions on the supply of computing accelerators to China, has its reasonable limits. The B20 accelerators with the Blackwell architecture prepared for this country may be delayed on their way to Chinese customers due to fears of new US sanctions.
Image source: Nvidia
When the US government imposed restrictions on the export of certain performance levels of computing accelerators to China in October 2022, Nvidia was quick to offer its Chinese customers the A800 and H800 accelerators, based on the Ampere and Hopper architectures, respectively, adapted to these requirements. A year later, they too were hit with a new wave of US sanctions, and then the company offered Chinese customers the H20, L20, and L2 accelerators adapted to the new requirements. Wanting to provide Chinese customers with access to the latest Blackwell architecture, it is rumored to be preparing to announce the B20 accelerators, but due to the uncertainty about future US export control policies, it is in no hurry to begin shipping them to China.
This was reported by the publication this week South China Morning Post citing its own sources. Nvidia initially planned to begin shipping B20 accelerators to Chinese customers in the fourth quarter of this year, but is now in no hurry to do so due to concerns about the introduction of new sanctions that would cast doubt on the very possibility of such deliveries. Even limited at the level of specific performance of each accelerator, B20 remains attractive to Chinese customers, since it allows for efficient scaling of performance by combining multiple accelerators at the cluster level.
The Information publication also reported that Nvidia is preparing a GB20 accelerator adapted for China, which is based on a cut-down GB200. In addition to the actual graphic processors, such accelerators also use the Grace family of central processors developed by Nvidia, based on the Arm-compatible architecture.
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