Despite the recent regulations of the US Department of Commerce in restricting the export of artificial intelligence chips, a thriving underground market seems to be emerging around Nvidia's A800 and H800 chips, chipsets specifically designed for the Chinese market.
The prohibitions, which took effect last October, have significantly limited the export of these chips, making them a hot commodity on the black market. Active traders have been found on various social media and e-commerce platforms, offering these prohibited advanced chips for sale, under the guise of secondhand goods.
The forbidden chips are sold at astronomical prices that continue to fluctuate and rise, however, the prices do not seem to deter those desperate for these tech components. The sellers usually come from the South, with concealed sources of supplies, capable of delivering goods from overseas to designated places in mainland China.
It is asserted that since April this year, sellers have been setting prices for A100 chips on social media, e-commerce, and even second-hand e-commerce platforms, with some posts implying their small supply of A100 chips that are no less than the value of a BMW.
The technological giant, Nvidia, has responded to the constraints by pushing the A800 and H800 chips to the Chinese market in order to meet the surge of computational power demanded by Chinese concept enterprises. However, hype has been created around the A100 and H100 that are on the control list, and these can only be procured through non-official channels.
In an attempt to evade the export control, Nvidia also launched three new improved series of chips designed towards the Chinese market: HGX H20, L20 PCle, and L2 PCle. It is rumored that Nvidia will announce this information next week, and Chinese manufacturers will soon get hold of these products.
Despite these efforts, the question remains: how and when will production be stepped up to meet the soaring demand for these high-end chips? The latest bottleneck in the industry seems to be production capacity, which lags behind the escalating demand.
In conclusion, the ban on the export of high-end chips from the US to China has fueled an underground market for these coveted tech parts. Even though the US regulations have imposed restrictions on the sales of high-end chips, this has not hindered the trade of these parts but instead, breathed life into a thriving black market.
