All testing must be conducted in the U.S. and confirm that the declared specifications — TPP, memory bandwidth, interconnect bandwidth, and copackaged DRAM capacity — are accurate and remain within the stated limits. The BIS can revoke a lab's qualification at any time and suspend case-by-case review for exporters using that lab.
Another part of the policy is cloud usage controls that the U.S. has been considering for over two years.
From now on, exporters must confirm that the accelerators are not destined for military, military-intelligence, nuclear, missile, or chemical or biological weapons end uses or end users. They must also provide detailed descriptions of "Know Your Customer" (KYC) procedures and physical security measures employed by the receiver. If the hardware will be used in Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) environments, exporters must disclose all remote end users located or based in restricted jurisdictions and ask the IaaS provider to ensure that no unauthorized remote access is possible. Transfers of model weights or trained algorithms to undisclosed or prohibited users are also explicitly barred.
While the new export rules enable AMD and Nvidia to supply their MI325X and H200 GPUs to select customers in China or Macau (provided that the Chinese government allows them to buy these processors), the structure of the rule makes large-scale commercial exports hard to conduct.
Furthermore, the new rules specifically restrict shipments of high-performance AI or HPC processors from smaller companies as well as PRC-only SKUs from leading suppliers.
The combination of U.S. supply-first requirements, shipment caps, foundry-capacity protections, third-party testing, and extensive disclosure obligations introduces cost, delay, and uncertainty that will inevitably limit approvals to select units in carefully managed volumes.
On the one hand, this preserves the national security benefits of U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence (which Chinese competitors acknowledge as a challenge ), while allowing exports of some products that no longer belong to the leading-edge tier. However, the new restrictions are no longer tied only to performance, but also to the U.S. shipments' history.
For example, if Company A builds Accelerator B that is fully compliant with the U.S. DoC's BIS performance thresholds for China exports, Company A must still sell 50% more Accelerator B units to the U.S. customers than to clients in China. For a small company, this means beating AMD and Nvidia in the U.S. (i.e., by offering a lower price), passing all the obligatory formalities (which are not free), and then selling half of the volumes they sell in America to China, which would be very difficult for many AI startups.
The policy functions less as a reopening of trade with China and more as a controlled way of shipping GPUs to the PRC to preserve the presence of American companies in the country's AI sector and perhaps sell excessive volumes of outdated processors. The new rules enable AMD and Nvidia to seek licenses for older accelerators under strict conditions and ensure that China gains access only to constrained capability after U.S. needs are met. However, it will no longer be possible for companies to sell cut-down China-only SKUs to the PRC without making them available in the USA.
Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom\u2019s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-11/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Anton Shilov Social Links Navigation Contributing Writer Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/analyzing-washingtons-new-ai-accelerator-export-rules-smaller-manufacturers-suffer-while-nvidia-and-amd-will-reap-the-rewards#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.