NVIDIA Considering Plans to Increase H200 Chip Production

JAKARTA - After being allowed to resell its advanced chips to China by the US government, NVIDIA plans to increase the production capacity of H200 chips. This decision was made due to the high demand from China.

H200 is NVIDIA's most advanced Hopper-generation graphics processing chip (GPU). This chip is specifically designed to train large language models, but its sales have been hampered by export restriction rules since the Joe Biden administration.

Now, NVIDIA can resell the chips after being allowed by the US Department of Commerce. However, this permission is accompanied by a 25 percent cut requirement from each chip sale made in the country.

Launching from Reuters, a source who asked not to be named said that NVIDIA received strong demand from a number of Chinese companies. Therefore, NVIDIA plans to increase its production capacity.

However, this request has not been confirmed to be in progress because the Chinese government is still considering the import rules for H200 chips. It is not yet known whether the local government will allow the import of more powerful chips than the H20 GPU version.

Reportedly, some of the major Chinese companies that have contacted NVIDIA to use its H200 chips are Alibaba and ByteDance. Both companies are developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) models and need sophisticated hardware.

"We manage our supply chain to ensure that the sale of H200 licensed to authorized customers in China will not impact our ability to supply customers in the United States," an NVIDIA spokesperson said, quoted on Tuesday, December 16.