NVIDIA recently reported that it will begin selling its NVIDIA H200 AI data center graphics cards to China. This follows the decision of the US government to allow it, as long as a portion of the sales value is channeled to the government.
However, the Chinese government has also said that all AI projects under the auspices of their government will only use components developed by companies from China itself. However, demand for GPU components made from the Hopper series of processing chips is still high among private AI companies in the country.
This is because even though the NVIDIA H200 series of graphics cards is seen as “old”, its capabilities are still seen as far superior to the existing AI graphics card offerings in China at the moment, including the NVIDIA H20 AI chip designed specifically for the Chinese market. These companies are also expected to take the opportunity to legally purchase these components before one or both of these governments change their minds.
NVIDIA is expected to ship 80-82 thousand NVIDIA H200 graphics cards ahead of the upcoming Chinese New Year holiday season, and if demand remains high, they are expected to ship more of these graphics cards to the market.
