US-China chip war: Biden administration imposes new curbs on exports to China

The US-China chip wars continue to intensify as Washington directed one of the world's top chipmakers, the Santa Clara, California-headquartered Nvidia, to enforce new curbs on the export of its high-end Artificial Intelligence chips to China. The US restrictions to certain chip exports, to countries such as China, Iran and Russia, were previously scheduled to be enforced from 16 November but the deadline now effectively has been advanced.

The semiconductor chips are increasingly emerging as pivots of global economy, and have been described as the 'new oil' of the technology age. The computing power accessed through microchips, from data centers to smartphones, are required for all parts of the economy.

The US policies in the recent years, including the geopolitical patronage to self-governed island of Taiwan -- which China considers as its own and is world's top manufacturer of semiconductor chips -- have been directed to reduce China's access to these crucial elemental pivots of global economy.

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Other than Nvidia, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have also been affected by the curbs and are supposed to enforce them on an immediate basis.

US-China chip wars: What the latest US restrictions are about?

The restrictions are targeted at preventing the development of machine learning models that power Artificial Intelligence tools like ChatGPT, BingAI or Stable Diffusion. The chip export restrictions also target the chips that power the next generation of AI-enabled audio, speech, 2D, video and 3D applications.

The restrictions bar the export of Intel Gaudi 2 chips, and that of Nvidia A800, H800, A100, H100 and L40S chips among others.

Notably, Intel Gaudi 2, and Nvidia AI chips A800 and H800 were created for the Chinese market in compliance with previous export rules.

Previously, China in July had put curbs on the exports of germanium and gallium, two rare metals used in the manufacturing of semiconductors and electronics. Prior to that, the Netherlands had imposed, in consultation with the United States, new restrictions on the export of the Dutch manufacturer ASML’s advanced chips machinery to China.