The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), part of the US Department of Commerce, said that Huawei’s Ascend 910B, 910C (pictured) and 910D ICs are likely to have been “designed with certain US software or technology or produced with semiconductor manufacturing equipment that is the direct produce of certain US-origin software or technology, or both.”
Anyone using the devices requires a licence. Anyone using the chips without a BIS licence faces “substantial criminal and administrative penalties, up to and including imprisonment, fines, loss of export privileges, or other restrictions.”
Servers built using Huawei’s 910C Ascend IC have been found to outperform servers made with Nvidia’s most powerful ICs.
The decision won’t bother Huawei much because it can’t get enough Ascend chips built for its own use let alone anyone else’s.
The BIS has also rescinded the so-called AI Diffusion Rule which divided countries into three tiers for different levels of AI export restriction. It says it will be coming up with a new rule.
It is thought this will be positive news for US companies wanting to sell chips to China.
