The US chip ban is upgraded: all high-end AI chips are eliminated, and advanced equipment is sold to China
As we all know, the last two times were in October 2022, and in October 2023, the United States amended the export restriction order to control any advanced chip equipment, and also united Japan and the Netherlands to contain it. The goal of the United States is to lock our logic chips to 14nm processes, DRAM at 18nm, and 3D NAND flash at 128-layer. In addition to these, the AI chip has also been very strictly blocked. For example, many GPU and AI chip products from Nvidia, AMD and Intel can no longer be exported to China, and it is funny that even the high-end game graphics card RTX 4090 has been restricted.
In this way, the United States is not satisfied, in the early morning of March 30, once again upgraded the ban, amending the new export restrictions formulated by the BIS (Bureau of Industry and Security). According to U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, the United States must not allow China to get the most cutting-edge chips, and must not allow China to catch up with the United States in chip technology. The United States wants to eliminate all possibilities for China to obtain advanced chip equipment, and does not allow China to obtain advanced AI chips to prevent China from having the ability to train cutting-edge AI models.
This ban, for the specific indicators, parameters, and did not do too much upgrade, or based on the previous logic, did not say that the specifications of the chip to improve, more is the control of export behavior. This time it is a "case-by-case review" of all advanced equipment and AI chips exported to China, including a comprehensive examination of information such as technology level, customer identity, and compliance plan.
The purpose of this is to ensure that items exported, re-exported or transferred within the country also comply with the ban, preventing certain companies from exporting, transferring, re-exporting and ultimately selling into China.
In fact, the most direct purpose of this ban is to plug all possible loopholes to prevent some second-hand equipment, or N-hand equipment, from evading the ban and flowing into China. Not only that, but also limits the maintenance of advanced equipment, such as previously bought equipment, if it is within the scope of the ban, then European and American companies are not allowed to repair, care and so on.
This means that the next Chinese chip equipment, AI chips, must rely on their own, rely on domestic replacement, want to bypass the ban by other means, is unlikely.
