Nvidia is seemingly planning a modified version of its high-end Blackwell chips, made specifically for the Chinese market. The idea is to avoid US trade restrictions by lowering the GPU performance just below the authorised limit.
Team Green may be working on a US export-compliant variant of its flagship B100/200 GPU. According to Reuters, multiple sources indicated the brand has a follow-up to the H20 accelerator dubbed B20. This chip is supposedly based on the latest Blackwell architecture unveiled during GTC 2024. SemiAnalysis estimates that Nvidia may sell over one million H20 chips to China this year, bringing over $12 Billion in revenue.
This is not the first time Nvidia has pulled such a move. It did the same to avoid restrictions with GeForce RTX 4090D, which is a cut-down version of the RTX 4090 featuring 11% fewer CUDA cores. Moreover, according to rumours, Nvidia may also be thinking of redoing the same with the upcoming RTX 5090.
Nvidia’s attempts at evading US trade restrictions are understandable since China accounted for more than a quarter (26%) of its pre-sanction sales. This revenue dropped to 17% following the limitations. Unfortunately for Nvidia, such restrictions allow domestic brands such as Huawei to fill the void, leveraging the increased revenue to develop faster silicon chips. Meanwhile, these efforts may become obsolete if the proposed measure, which stops products from being sold if they were made using American technologies, passes.
Chips built using the Blackwell architecture were announced back in March and are expected to become available by the end of 2024, or early next year. For now, Nvidia refuses to give a statement regarding this rumour.