The rumor that Nvidia's (NVDA. US) Chinese special supply chip H20 may be discontinued has been circulating in the industry in recent months, and the fate of this chip has once again become a focus of attention. Recently, some distributors told Caixin reporters that they are no longer able to place orders for H20 chips, and some terminal manufacturers have stated that some domestic distributors are no longer accepting H20 orders.
Dealer Wang Yu told Caixin reporters that Nvidia started not accepting H20 orders last month, but there was no written notice. To be precise, I am waiting for the latest news. The production schedule is estimated to be delayed. Although there is no clear instruction, it is basically like this. Perhaps some customized needs of the customer can still be met
Terminal manufacturer Li Xiaolin also told Caixin reporters, "We need to go through distributors to place orders with Nvidia. Recently, several distributors have stated that they will no longer accept orders for H20, while others have indicated that they have stock available to take orders
However, when asked about H20 by a Caixin reporter, channel merchant Li Ming said, "I can still take it here
Previously, a reporter from Caixin News Agency sent an interview outline to Nvidia China email to verify whether H20 has stopped accepting orders, but received no response. It is worth mentioning that Nvidia responded to the media's "no comment" regarding the content of the report by Caixin on the evening of September 20th.
Affected by the aforementioned news, Nvidia's stock price fluctuated last Friday, opening down 2 points and closing down 1.59% at $116.00.
NVIDIA seized the opportunity in the wave of big models and consolidated its dominant position. In 2023, due to policy restrictions, Nvidia launched three special supply chips based on H100 to China, among which H20 has the strongest performance.
Li Xiaolin revealed that Nvidia began accepting H20 chip orders in February this year, officially began shipping in April, and only shipped in large quantities in May.
However, Caixin reporters noticed that several practitioners, including Wang Yu, used the term "chicken ribs" to describe the H20 chip.
According to public information, the Nvidia H20 chip was launched to comply with US export restrictions and is an AI accelerator specifically designed for the Chinese market. H20 is based on the NVIDIA Hopper architecture and has 96GB of HBM3 memory, providing a memory bandwidth of 4.0TB/s. In terms of computing power, the FP8 performance of H20 is 296 TFLOPS, and the FP16 performance is 148 TFLOPS. Compared to H100, its GPU core count has decreased by 41% and performance has decreased by 28%.
Several industry professionals also told Caixin reporters that the attention to H20 chips is actually relatively low.
Zhang Na, who is close to multiple large model manufacturers, mentioned, "I feel that the market attention for computing power leasing is relatively low now, and the H20 is not so 'explicit'." Li Xiaolin also told reporters, "The H20 price is not low, and it still needs to be sold for more than one million yuan. Previously, big factories were hoarding goods, and small factories may have demand
Despite this, multiple sources in the industry have reported that there are still a large number of H20 deliveries in the near future, and the arrival within the year has exceeded the annual expectations.
According to the report, "chip experts said that it is estimated that ByteDance currently has more than 100000 Nvidia chips in hand; in 2024, H20 chip orders increased to 3.2-33 million, and 140000 to 150000 chips have been delivered."
Zhang Na said, "What I understand is that several manufacturers have recently received a large number of shipments, and even more than they expected. Before the year, the market generally expected H20 shipments to be around 400000 this year, but it is estimated that it is possible to ship 600000-700000 in the end." Zhang Na said, "I don't know if this sudden change is due to the news of H20 cut-off. Everyone wants to 'make a big deal'
Due to the surge in demand for AI computing power and policy factors, some Nvidia GPUs were once considered luxury goods due to their high prices. In the interview, Li Xiaolin also mentioned Nvidia's luxury "distribution" strategy based on the H20 chip.
Li Xiaolin said that due to the high popularity of chips such as GB200 and A100, many large factories have procurement needs. In addition, the production capacity of high-end chips is very limited, so it is often necessary to allocate goods during procurement, among which H20 is one of the common allocations. It's hard to say if some companies are purchasing H20 in large quantities because of distribution
In July of this year, multiple media outlets reported that investment bank Jefferies released a report stating that the H20 chip may be suspended from sale, potentially causing Nvidia a loss of $12 billion. The report suggests that H20 products may face a sales ban when the United States reviews its semiconductor export policy in October. This ban can take various forms, including bans on specific products, reducing the computing power of chips, or limiting their memory capacity
It is worth noting that many people in the industry chain, including Internet manufacturers, large model manufacturers and chip suppliers, who talked with the reporter of the Associated Press of Finance, clearly stated that H20 has been rumored to be suspended for a long time, and people generally care whether it will be suspended in the short term.
Zhang Na said, "Friends from several large and small factories have heard of this news related to hardware anyway
The industry has been discussing for a long time. Perhaps policies will be issued before the new year, but Nvidia is still striving for them, "said Wang Yusheng.
There have been rumors in the industry for a long time, but Nvidia has been suppressing them, "said Li Ming.
Li Xiaolin further told Caixin reporters, "Some dealers who are not taking orders now may also be gambling to see if H20 will stop selling in the near future. If it stops, they will sell it at a markup
In 2022 and 2023, the United States released policies on computing chips in September and October, respectively, which caused a huge storm at that time. Now, as we approach the policy release time of previous years, the fate of this special supply chip may soon be revealed.
(Wang Yu, Li Xiaolin, Li Ming, and Zhang Na are all pseudonyms in the text)