US to Introduce New Restrictions on China’s Access to Edge Chips

The US government has been imposing similar export controls on China aimed at reducing its ability to make advanced silicon for years, but the controls apparently haven’t stopped Huawei from developing competitive chips for training large AI models.

The Chinese tech giant, which was temporarily crippled by US sanctions half a decade ago, sent samples of its latest AI training chip, called Ascend, to customers in September, according to the South China Morning Post. Companies testing Ascend reportedly include ByteDance, the Chinese parent of TikTok, which is said to be training a major model using Ascend. Baidu, which makes China’s leading search engine and has developed autonomous driving systems, recently placed an order for Huawei chips in a bid to overtake US chip giant Nvidia, according to Reuters. (Nvidia declined to comment.)

Export restrictions aimed at curbing China’s AI sector began under the Trump administration. In 2019, several emerging Chinese AI firms were delisted, meaning that American firms, including chip makers such as Nvidia, would have to obtain a special license to do business with them. This was followed by restrictions on the sale of chips made with US technology to Huawei, China’s leading telco and leading smartphone manufacturer.

The Biden administration consolidated the controls in October 2022, limiting Chinese exports of high-end GPU chips, including those made by Nvidia, a move intended to curb any Chinese company’s ability to train more powerful AI models. The rules were tightened a year later to close loopholes that still allowed Chinese firms access to advanced chips.

It can be tricky to measure the impact of the US chip penalties, and some experts doubt that the controls will encourage China to make rapid advances in chipmaking itself, reducing its reliance on American companies.

At the end of 2023, Huawei launched the Mate 60, a smartphone with an improved chip from China’s SMIC chipmaker. The announcement caused a stir in Washington, because it suggested that SMIC had made significant progress in improving its production strategies. (Further analysis showed that Huawei and SMIC were still dependent on foreign suppliers.)

But a report published this week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington, DC, said the Chinese government had already begun to mobilize investment in domestic poultry production before the US government began to clamp down on the country’s access. advanced semiconductors. It also noted that China has made great strides in sectors not subject to export controls, such as solar cells and electric vehicle production.