ALBAWABA – The United States (US) is expanding its crackdown on AI capabilities beyond China, according to Reuters, as the US bans AI microchips export to some Middle East (ME) countries.
The US issued new restrictions, reported earlier today, Thursday, banning the export of advanced Nvidia and AMD AI microchips to unspecified countries in the Middle East region.
US officials have repeatedly insisted that these restrictions, earlier enacted to ban exports of advanced chip-making components and tech to China, are imposed for national security reasons.
However, Nvidia gave no explanation for the new restrictions in the latest regulatory filing this week, dated August 28, Reuters reported.
US bans AI microchips export to some Middle East countries after banning exports to China - Shutterstock
Last year, the company said US officials informed them that the rules "will address the risk that products may be used in, or diverted to, a 'military end use' or 'military end user' in China."
"During the second quarter of fiscal year 2024, the USG [US government] informed us of an additional licensing requirement for a subset of A100 and H100 products destined to certain customers and other regions, including some countries in the Middle East," Nvidia said in the filing.
Advanced Micro Devices, AMD, also received an informed letter with similar restrictions, an unnamed source told Reuters.
Both Nvidia’s filing and AMD’s unnamed source confirmed the restrictions will have no material impact on their revenues.
No material impact on sales as US bans AI microchips export to some Middle East countries
The restrictions, according to Nvidia’s filing, as reported by Reuters, affect its A100 and H100 chips, which are designed to speed up machine-learning tasks. Nonetheless, they will not have an “immediate material impact” on the company’s results.
Notably, Nvidia’s results have beaten analyst and market expectations for two quarters in a row, which has sent the company’s stocks through the roof this week, along with the majority of US stock indexes.
The company derived most of its $13.5 billion in sales in its fiscal quarter ended July 30 from the US, China and Taiwan. About 13.9 percent of sales came from all other countries combined, and Nvidia does not provide a revenue breakdown for Middle East sales.
The bulk of advanced chip sales goes to the US, China and Taiwan as US bans AI microchips export to some Middle East countries - SHutterstock
Last year, the US issued export controls restricting the exportation of advanced microchips to China.
Nvidia, AMD and Intel have since then all announced plans to create less powerful AI chips that can be exported to the Chinese market, Reuters reported.
Without the chips from companies like Nvidia and AMD, China will be unable to cost-effectively carry out the kind of advanced computing used for image and speech recognition, among many other tasks.
Image recognition and natural language processing are common in consumer applications like smartphones that can answer queries and tag photos. They also have military uses such as scouring satellite imagery for weapons or bases and filtering digital communications for intelligence-gathering purposes.
