Nvidia launches gaming chip with reduced performance in China to comply with U.S. export controls

Nvidia, the U.S. chipmaking giant, is planning to release a modified version of a gaming processor with reduced performance in China to comply with U.S. export regulations.

The Nvidia RTX 4090D, which is set to be launched in January, according to information from Nvidia’s website for Chinese customers and a company spokesperson, has 11% fewer “CUDA” (Compute Unified Device Architecture) cores than versions of the chip sold outside China.

Nvidia’s RTX line comprises advanced gaming GPUs, or graphics processing units. CUDA architecture is essentially an equivalent to CPU cores for GPUs – processing units.

According to a company spokesperson, as reported by Reuters, the chip “has been designed to fully comply with U.S. government export controls”, and the U.S. government was heavily involved in the chip’s development.

U.S. export rules, which disallow Chinese companies from acquiring some of the latest chips from American businesses, have been imposed on China. Primarily, these restrictions are targeting chips that aid AI applications, but chips oriented towards gaming are also affected as many have potential uses in artificial intelligence.

The Nvidia RTX 4090 was included on a list of restricted U.S. made chips per an Oct. 17 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to Nvidia’s website, the RTX 4090D chip utilises AI to improve performance.

In 2023, Nvidia shares have soared, tripling in price year to date. The company has benefited from the surging demand for AI, largely driven by the hype around OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot.