Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, February 27th (Reporter Zhang Yangyang) Today, a reporter from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily learned from industry insiders that Nvidia's "special edition" AI chip H20 for China will be fully available for booking after this year's Nvidia GTC 2024 conference (March 18-March 21), and can be supplied as soon as four weeks.
An industry chain insider said that the performance of H20 is equivalent to a quarter of H100, but the cost-effectiveness is not very good, and the production capacity supply cannot keep up. The quantity supply is expected to be in the second half of this year.
A distributor in Beijing said that currently, the demand for H20 is not high, mainly due to "low cost-effectiveness", and domestic computing chips are also a choice for manufacturers.
The dealer stated that currently, most of the chip underlying technologies of computing power manufacturers are still supported by Nvidia. The advantages of using H20 are compliance and low migration costs. However, the localization of computing power is a certain trend in the long run. Therefore, for customers, they will still choose between the two.
Another distributor in Shenzhen told a reporter from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that it is currently uncertain whether they will purchase H20 and will need to be determined based on future market demand.
As of the time of publication, Nvidia has not responded to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily regarding this matter.
H20 is a "special supply" version launched by Nvidia for the Chinese market, aimed at complying with the new export control regulations in the United States. This chip is derived from the H100 and was first exposed in October 2023. Two other chips, L20 and L2, also appeared during the same period.
The H20 chip was originally scheduled to be released in November last year, but has since been postponed. Previously, market news indicated that the delay was caused by server manufacturers encountering problems integrating the chip.
China is Nvidia's third largest market, with sales accounting for one-fifth of its revenue. However, due to the new export control regulations in the United States, Nvidia's data center revenue from China has significantly decreased.
According to Nvidia's latest financial report data, despite a surge in total revenue in 2023, its fourth quarter performance reached a record breaking $22.1 billion, a year-on-year increase of 265%. But in the China region, the fourth quarter's revenue only accounted for a single digit proportion. The company expects the Chinese market to do the same in the next fiscal quarter. Previously, data center business revenue from restricted countries and regions such as China contributed approximately 20% to 25% of the company's overall revenue.
The aforementioned Beijing distributor stated that in terms of market strategy, Nvidia's launch of H20 is mainly aimed at stabilizing the domestic market. In terms of product indicators, as long as it is slightly higher than domestic computing power products, there will no longer be high standards compared to other overseas products. However, whether this chip has a demand still depends on market validation.
From the perspective of the demand side, a domestic manufacturer executive with cloud computing business told the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that the company has reserves for both high-end and domestic chips in Nvidia. It is difficult to make a decision on whether to purchase H20 at present, and it will only be determined after receiving the goods for actual testing.