Nvidia, the world's largest artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor corporations, flatly denied a foreign media report that it plans to release custom chips for Chinese clients within the year.
Reuters reported on the 20th (local time) that a Nvidia Spokesperson said there is no China-specific model in the company's product roadmap. This refuted a report by information technology (IT) outlet The Information that said Nvidia planned to launch a custom-made language processing unit (LPU) for Chinese companies around the end of the year.
Unlike graphics processing units (GPUs), which can be used broadly for training and inference, the LPU is an AI chip from the startup Groq that is specialized for inference. Nvidia secured a license for this product late last year through a kind of "acqui-hire" style of indirect acquisition.
The LPU, mass-produced by the Samsung Electronics(005930) foundry division based on high-speed SRAM, has a key advantage of faster response times than GPUs.
Nvidia said, "The reports about the LPU are not accurate," adding, "We are not selling LPUs in the Chinese market now, and there is no China-only LPU at all on the roadmap."
The commotion over the LPU launch appears to have arisen as Nvidia's business with China faces constraints amid the U.S.-China battle for supremacy in AI and semiconductors. In particular, because LPUs are subject to fewer related regulations than GPUs, Nvidia's flagship product, they drew attention as a new option targeting the Chinese market.
Nvidia's business in China has shown instability since last year as it was alternately blocked by export and import controls in both the United States and China. The U.S. administration of Donald Trump banned sales of Nvidia AI chips to China for a time early last year before allowing sales of the high-performance H200 chip. China, too, limited imports of Nvidia chips to protect its own semiconductor industry, but recently allowed small quantities for some tech corporations.
In May, Nvidia Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jensen Huang assessed China's semiconductor ecosystem by saying, "We have essentially ceded that market to them." As GPU sales in China grew difficult, Nvidia has been seeking a breakthrough in its China business with products that are relatively less affected by regulations, such as pushing to supply the "Vera" central processing unit (CPU).