The US has enacted new export regulations that could cause NVIDIA several headaches. In fact, the company will now be forced to obtain a license to sell its products overseas, causing delays that could cost it around $ 400 million.
Even more worrying is the possibility that the situation will even delay. the development of the H100 chip, with serious repercussions on Compute GPU sales for the data center market, which is quite important for NVIDIA. The new laws are designed to prevent China or Russia from easily getting hold of GPUs (or systems based on them) with peak performance and chip-to-chip I / O performance roughly equivalent to that of the A100.
On August 26, 2022, the US government informed NVIDIA that it has imposed a new licensing requirement, effective immediately, for any future export to China (including Hong Kong) and Russia of A100 and H100 integrated circuits.
The new licensing requirement may impact the company's ability to complete H100 development in a timely manner or support existing A100 customers and may require the transition of some operations out of China. The company is committed to the US government and is looking to obtain exemptions for its internal development and support activities.
The company is also engaging with customers in China and trying to satisfy their planned or future purchases of data center products with products not subject to the new licensing requirement. The company's fiscal third quarter forecast, provided on August 24, 2022, included approximately $ 400 million in potential sales in China, which could be subject to the new licensing requirement if customers do not want to purchase alternative product offerings or if the US government does not grant licenses in a timely manner or deny licenses to important customers.