Technological restrictions imposed by the United States on China prevent them from buying artificial intelligence (AI) chips with the latest technology from AMD and NVIDIA. NVIDIA released the H800 chip with reduced performance compared to the A100 chip.
According to a Reuters report, because China is blocked from accessing the most powerful chips, AI development in the country takes 10-30% longer and costs double.
Despite being forced to use less powerful chips, China continues to develop its own AI. The H800 chip is still capable of reducing the processing time from 11 to just 4 days according to Tencent.
The recent ban on the import of AI chips was put in place by the U.S. because it does not want them to be used to develop military technology. Various Chinese companies are included in the list of entities including companies that built supercomputers a few years ago. The efforts made by the U.S. are only able to slow down China's efforts but are not able to stop the development that is being done now.