Three anonymous sources speaking to Reuters have claimed that Nvidia is working on a new AI chip called the B20 as part of its Blackwell chip series. This chip is aimed at the Chinese market and is compliant with current US export controls.
As a bit of background, the US implemented its current export controls regarding AI chips back in October 2023, less than a year after the launch of ChatGPT. The restrictions target high-performance AI chips, specific chip-making equipment, and related technology in a bid to limit China's military modernization efforts, safeguard US national security interests, and maintain US leadership in AI technology.
Two of the three sources said that Nvidia will work with Inspur, one of its major distributor partners in China. Neither Inspur nor Nvidia commented on the matter, as expected, and the sources all wanted to remain anonymous because Nvidia hasn't made an announcement.
The sources didn't divulge the technical specifications of the B20 chip, but it will most likely be less powerful than the B200 it announced earlier this year, which has 30 times inference performance than its predecessor, the H100.
For reference, the B200 GPU offers 20 petaflops of FP4 horsepower from 208 billion transistors and is built on a customer TSMC 4NP process. It boasts four times the performance of its predecessor in AI training performance and can handle complex AI tasks like generative AI, large language models, and natural language processing.
The unified DGX B200 AI platform incorporates the B200 GPUs as part of its core. Companies can then leverage that solution to power their workloads.
Reuters' sources did not mention when the so-called B20 chip would be available in the Chinese market. It will definitely be interesting to compare it to the B200 when it does eventually get made available.
Source: Reuters - Image via Depositphotos.com
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