US chip giant Nvidia faces increasing mistrust in China over its H20 chips, after the company secured a licence from Washington to export the tailor-made processors by agreeing to pay 15 per cent of its revenues to the US government.
On Sunday, a Chinese state media outlet labelled Nvidia’s H20 chip as unsafe and urged Chinese buyers to boycott the artificial intelligence processors designed for the Chinese market.
Despite Nvidia’s repeated denials of “back-door” vulnerabilities, Yuyuan Tantian, associated with state broadcaster China Central Television, said the H20 chip could not be trusted because of the US government’s alleged efforts to embed “back doors” in the chips.
“When a chip is neither environmentally friendly nor advanced or safe, as consumers, we certainly have the option not to buy it,” the outlet said in a commentary.
It suggested that the H20 chip could be remotely controlled through hardware and software exploits, citing Washington’s attempts in 1992 to implement surveillance via chip back doors and a recent bill proposed in May requiring US chipmakers to incorporate tracking features.
Nvidia’s chief security officer David Reber Jnr published a blog post last week titled: “There are no back doors in Nvidia chips. No kill switches. No spyware.”
Chinese state media’s allegations come as the US Department of Commerce has begun issuing licences to Nvidia for exporting H20 chips to China.
Nvidia and rival Advanced Micro Devices agreed to pay the US government 15 per cent of their revenues from chip sales to China as part of a deal with the Trump administration to secure export licences, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
Yuyuan Tantian’s article reflects Nvidia’s struggle to establish trust in China, which accounted for 13 per cent of its revenues in the last financial year despite escalating technology rivalry between Beijing and Washington.
Last month, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) summoned Nvidia for discussions about the risks associated with potential tracking and remote control functions of its H20 chips.
In an opinion piece titled “How can we trust you, Nvidia?” earlier this month, the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, called on the US chipmaker to provide proof of its security measures to regain the trust of Chinese customers.
In response, Nvidia said it “does not have ‘back doors’ in our chips that would give anyone a remote way to access or control them”.
The H20, an AI graphics processing unit released by Nvidia last year specifically for China to comply with US export restrictions, has become a focal point in the tech war between the two countries after Washington lifted a sales ban on the chip last month.
While the resumption of H20 sales is expected to provide a near-term boost to China’s AI development, Nvidia faces challenges amid Beijing’s scrutiny and a push from domestic firms to adopt home-grown processors, such as those developed by Huawei Technologies.
The CAC’s review served partly “as a reminder to domestic firms to avoid over-reliance on a single chip and to always be prepared to use alternatives”, Chinese semiconductor research firm ICwise said in a note last week, which has since been deleted.
The firm also said that China’s interest in the H20 chip was likely to “continue to wane” as the country’s chip sector advanced. – SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
