The Chinese secretly sell sanctioned NVIDIA A100 chips for $20,000 instead of $10,000

Since last autumn, the US government has completely banned the export of NVIDIA A100 and H100 chips to China. Despite this, they can still be purchased, but with restrictions.

Here's What We Know

Yes, the chips aren't officially on sale in the Middle Kingdom, but that doesn't mean they can't be purchased. By the way, NVIDIA created the A800 and H800 chips as analogs of the A100 and H100 respectively, but with performance understated by several times. That's not our story, however.

Reuters correspondents visited a large electronics market in Shenzhen. After talking to local vendors they received at least 10 offers for NVIDIA A100 chips. These are small batch and priced at $20,000 instead of $10,000. There is no warranty.

NVIDIA chips, which are prohibited by sanctions, are moving into China in two ways. The first channel is through intermediaries in India, Taiwan or Singapore. The second channel is when major companies ship chips to the US market which they did not need via grey suppliers and then the products find their way to China.

NVIDIA H100 is almost impossible to find in China because they have only appeared a few months ago. The chips can be found on popular Chinese online marketplaces, but this is exploited by criminals who sell fakes.

Source: Reuters