In a letter to the Commerce Secretary this week, two U.S. lawmakers urged the Biden government to tighten the current AI chip exports to China to cripple their AI growth eventually.
This comes after industry-wide lobbying to keep the chip restrictions from October 2022 – which let Nvidia and Intel supply specially crafted low-powered AI chips to China. As these OEMs are cleverly surpassing the limits, lawmakers have called for a tighter grip now.
More Stricter Export Rules
Considering China’s rise in the AI space a threat, the US has levied a range of export restrictions on the South Asian nation – hopefully, to cripple them in the AI race. These restrictions include directing the native AI chip makers like Nvidia, Intel and AMD to supply low-powered cards to China and cut off other needed technologies.
Well, since China is a big market, the OEMs have cleverly crafted unique versions of their AI chips to evade US restrictions formally and cash on the opportunities. This triggered the US lawmakers, who’re now pushing for tighter regulations.
In a letter sent to the US Commerce Secretary this week, two US lawmakers – Representative Mike Gallagher, a Republican and chair of the House of Representatives select committee on China, and Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat and ranking member of the committee, have urged the US government to tighten the current exports restrictions to China.
Majorly, they talked about levying performance caps on China-aimed AI chips – to restrict how fast the chips can talk to one another and their processing speeds. This comes weeks after industry-wide lobbying to settle tensions between the lawmakers and China – which may not have been successful, leading to tightening suggestions.
Besides this, the letter also urged the US government to closely consider cutting China off the advanced computing chips for Cloud made by Microsoft, Amazon and Google.
