Nvidia tries to quickly avoid sanctions
China is a major revenue market for Nvidia. and precisely those chips that sell best in China, such as the Nvidia A100 and H100 GPUs, are sensitive technology according to the Americans that they would rather not see in the hands of arch-rival China. Nvidia has now asked Taiwanese chip giant TSMC to rapidly ramp up production before US sanctions come into effect.
According to a report (traditional Chinese) in the Taiwanese newspaper UDN, Nvidia is trying to get some top-end GPU orders delivered from TSMC quickly. The reason behind this rush is that the company wants to make a lot of money with this. Given the ailing share price, that is very welcome for Nvidia.
NVidia A100 and H100 GPUs dedicated to artificial intelligence
These GPUs are currently the most powerful in Nvidia’s lineup and thus probably in the world. Chinese data centers are currently running at full capacity to extract valuable information from huge amounts of data. The Americans are trying to thwart China with the sanctions and prevent China from gaining a decisive lead in the field of artificial intelligence and deep data.
These are really very powerful chips used by top companies such as Meta, the former Facebook, and Google by the tens of thousands at the same time.
Transition period for the sanctions to start
To give US companies the opportunity to adapt, the US government has provided for a transition period. Nvidia wants to make the best use of this period. The reason that TSMC has to supply these chips at a rapid pace. TSMC is also interested in this, because this rush order will generate a lot of extra turnover. Both TSMC and Nvidia will make a lot of extra profit in the fourth quarter as a result!
Delivery time halved
Thanks to this rush order, these chips can be delivered much faster, approximately in half the time it normally takes. We are talking about 2-3 months, instead of 5-6 months. The Americans probably won’t be happy with this opportunistic move by Nvidia, but there’s little they can do about it.
