Author｜Xue LiangNeil

The boots have finally landed, and the new US export control regulations that have been rumored privately in the Chinese market for more than half a month have finally officially revealed their true colors.

Consistent with widespread rumors, the new regulations have further tightened the export of chips to China. After changing the evaluation criteria and using more computing power as the criterion (instead of last year's bandwidth parameters), almost all current high-performance chips have been swept away.

It even includes Nvidia's consumer gaming graphics card RTX4090 . Although its computing power and bit width product (TPP) is less than 2700, its average chip area capability (PD) is what the U.S. Department of Commerce calls "performance density". ) happens to fall within the judgment range of the export control list 3A090b sub-high-performance chips, which means that Nvidia is also subject to restrictions even if it sells graphics cards to gamers. Reuters quoted U.S. officials as saying that the most powerful consumer chip orders also need to be notified to the Commerce Department, even if it is used in laptop computers .

Even chips whose performance is slightly lower than the regulatory standards need to be notified to the government before export .

This means that all high-performance chips are subject to restrictions, including AI chips previously developed specifically for the Chinese market, such as Nvidia's special editions A800 and H800, the latest L40S, AMD's MI250, and Intel Gaudi2 which has not yet been officially put into use in China. .

Although the market has expected it, the severity of the new regulations is still shocking. Late on the 16th, a screenshot of the latest internal situation at Nvidia was circulated in the WeChat group. In this unconfirmed content, Nvidia urges anyone interested in purchasing the H800 to place an order before midnight on the 17th.

Chills spread throughout the AI ​​field.

Behind the precise knife skills

The U.S. Department of Commerce is obviously well prepared. In addition to clearly using computing power as a criterion to measure the final result, the new regulations also include the list of export country restrictions (nearly 20 countries are included in it) and the export license of semiconductor manufacturing equipment. and other aspects have set up more obstacles, and at the same time, companies such as Biren and Moore Thread have been included in the so-called "entity list."

In fact, the Ministry of Commerce will soon launch a process to restrict China's access to cloud computing power - almost all of the world's largest cloud service providers are American companies.

Therefore, a simple summary is that the new export control regulations are a two-pronged approach that not only prevents China from obtaining chips from third countries, but also prevents China from obtaining the ability to manufacture advanced chips .

This unreasonable and hysterical policy reflects the almost pathological attitude of the United States towards China. In fact, at this policy brewing stage, the US media has filled the headlines with various colored glasses reports about Chinese chips, while Commerce Secretary Raimondo was evaluating Huawei mobile phones (it was during Raimondo’s visit to China (during the period), the word used was "deeply disturbing".

These funny farces seem to be a warm-up for the introduction of this policy . Although there is still a 30-day public notice period for the new regulations, no changes are expected. Raimondo even said that the control regulations will be updated at least once a year, which shows that the United States intends to take the road of long-arm jurisdiction to the end.

Industry and political circles have different interpretations of this extremely strict new regulation.

The Semiconductor Industry Alliance SIA , which represents 99% of U.S. chip companies, stated in a public statement that "overly extensive unilateral control will harm the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem." Translated into layman's terms, SIA feels that the government's hand is stretched too far. Although the so-called national security has become the new political correctness in the United States, and anyone can sell dog meat under this sheep's head, SIA believes that such a strict policy will cause overseas customers to "turn elsewhere."

However, some people in the U.S. Congress feel that such a policy is not strong enough. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, even issued a statement during his busy schedule to participate in the hearing on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, saying that he must " continue to be vigilant " to prevent the Chinese from circumventing these original policies. Just unreasonable restrictions .

Analysts familiar with the semiconductor industry said that export restrictions did not include provisions for technology transfer and collaboration with third countries, which would be a huge "loophole."

It can be seen that U.S. policymakers and many people who support the situation are seriously worried that not all countries are as sick and crazy as the United States.

Nvidia’s collective failure

If there are still different opinions on this policy itself, both pros and cons, then one thing is undoubtedly one-sided, and that is the failure of chip companies in lobbying.

Obviously, Nvidia and every other company did not influence the formulation of the Ministry of Commerce policy in any positive way. To some extent, they were equally caught off guard.

For example, Intel's Gaudi2 chip held a huge launch event in Beijing in early July. At that time, Sandra Rivera, Intel's executive vice president in charge of artificial intelligence business, said that Gaudi2 complied with the US export control policy, and the compliance method at that time was The number of internal interconnection Ethernet interfaces has been reduced from 24 to 21, which means that there is no difference between the Chinese version and the international version in terms of Gaudi2's computing power.

Now the new export control regulations may disrupt Intel's entire deployment and make Intel's already ugly performance worse.

The same is true for NVIDIA, which was originally dominated by the wave of large models. Revenue from China has been steadily accounting for about a quarter of its total revenue. Now this part of the business is full of variables. The regulatory filing provided by Nvidia to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission explains the impact of relevant policies on its ability to sell, including restrictions on almost all popular chips. Nvidia specifically mentions one point in the regulatory filing, although Nvidia can help customers apply for export licenses. , but it cannot guarantee that these permissions will be approved or processed properly and in a timely manner.

The weak position of chip companies in this policy formulation has been fully exposed. This is surprising. You must know that in the United States, chip companies, like Internet companies, are big players in the field of political lobbying. The government's support policies and funds in the "Chip Act" will largely flow into the largest chip companies - this is often cited as embodying the influence of chip companies on Capitol Hill.

That influence is now gone, at least in the area of ​​export controls. As soon as the news from the Ministry of Commerce came out, Nvidia's stock price plunged 8%, showing people's generally pessimistic expectations.

Some people in the industry describe that the only person who can make the arrogant NVIDIA lose miserably is the US government .

The Panopticon and Weaponized Dependence

The division of labor and collaboration in the chip field was once a model of the global economy, and this extensive and profound interconnection of various economies in the world was once considered to benefit the world.

However, globalization has not made the world more "flat". On the contrary, the division of labor and cooperation in the industrial chain have finally centralized the free flow of production factors. The United States, with its strong economic and technological strength, has been in the process of centralization. occupied a dominant position.

Now, the United States is comprehensively abusing this dominant position in the name of national security . Abraham L. Newman, a political scientist at Georgetown University, calls this abuse weaponized interdependence. In Chinese, it can be called "weaponized interdependence" or "weaponized dependence."

The global supply chain, which is huge and complex and affects the whole body, will be completely shaken by one or two key nodes (chokepoints). In other words, who masters the key nodes and uses them for strategic purposes through generalized national security concepts. Whoever has the purpose has almost unlimited power .

When Abraham L. Newman introduced the concept of "weaponization of interdependence", he linked it to the Panopticon effect of the famous British utilitarian philosopher Bentham. Observers standing in the middle of the prison can see what all the prisoners are doing and thus ensure that their own security position remains intact, which is a long-standing practice in the United States.

After 9/11, counter-terrorism became a national security theme. Michael Hayden, then director of the National Security Agency, publicly stated that the United States should use the so-called "home field advantage" in espionage activities because the United States occupies a dominant position in the field of electronic communications. FBI Director Chris Wray also said that it is necessary to prevent the risks caused by foreign entities gaining power in telecommunications networks. It is based on this logic that Huawei has been completely blocked by the United States.

Now, the new battlefield of so-called "national security" has come to the field of cutting-edge chips .

write at the end

It is said that major domestic artificial intelligence and large model players have ordered more than 5 billion US dollars in related chips. The risks faced by this part of the order are still uncertain. In the screenshot of the latest internal situation at Nvidia, the 30-day public notice period for the new regulations It is regarded as a buffer period to speed up the delivery of chips in the Chinese market.

Of course, these are only stopgap measures, and the most fundamental way out is to comprehensively improve the capabilities of domestic chips. In fact, this is what business representatives, including NVIDIA, and SIA have constantly emphasized to everyone: the blockade of China will leave China with no choice but to improve its chip capabilities .

For China, the design and manufacturing of advanced chips is no longer a multiple-choice question, but a must-answer question.

Among the domestic alternative chips currently on the market related to artificial intelligence computing power, Huawei's Ascend ecosystem still has a fighting chance. Many domestic companies involved in large model training and inference use its solutions to a greater or lesser extent, and even many large models are used in algorithms. At this stage, try to adapt to a variety of hardware to avoid various risks brought by geopolitics. But from an overall perspective, the current capabilities of domestic chips are far from matching the market’s hungry computing power needs.

The emerging Hundred Model War shows China’s strong strength in the field of large models. This is a major trend that cannot be missed in the development of China’s science and technology. The problem of chip stuck neck will only delay our speed at most, but it will never completely extinguish the star of artificial intelligence. the fire.

Whatever holds you back will ultimately make you stronger.