China is seeking to ease export controls on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a critical component for making artificial intelligence chips, in trade deal talks with the United States.
This was reported by the Financial Times, citing sources, News.Az informs.
The newspaper reported yesterday that the US government had granted Nvidia a license to export H20 chips to China. However, its sources say Beijing is far more concerned about chip export controls (HBM), as they seriously limit the ability of Chinese companies, including Huawei, to develop their own AI chips.
Export controls on such technologies were introduced by the previous US administration, which concluded that they would be the "biggest constraint" on China's ability to produce AI chips on a large scale, the FT source said.
"Relieving these controls would be a boon to Huawei and SMIC and could open the floodgates for China to start producing millions of AI chips a year, while also diverting scarce HBM away from chips sold in the U.S.," he said. "This is why China wants the controls lifted, and why they should not be a subject of negotiations."
Another source told the publication that HBM technology is a “big bottleneck” because memory chips are an important part of AI chips that integrate memory and logic components. He believes that Beijing needs HBM to equip the logic component of AI chips that Chinese firm SophGo allegedly purchased from Taiwan’s TSMC in violation of U.S. law.
The FT wrote that the US administration is trying to avoid jeopardizing trade talks with China and help US President Donald Trump secure a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In particular, Washington has suspended restrictions on technology exports to China.
