US government is adjusting export regulations for China, RTX 4090 D and H20 AI GPUs now banned

The US government is clamping down even harder on high-performance GPUs and AI GPUs being imported to China, with beefed-up US trade regulations stopping the cut-down GeForce RTX 4090 D graphics card, and H20 AI GPU.

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We've seen NVIDIA and AMD restricted on the number of silicon it can send to China, depending on specific performance metrics by the Biden administration. Starting on April 4, GPUs with rated compute performance that is over 70 TFLOPs -- including the cut-down GeForce RTX 4090 D and H20 AI GPUs -- are now restricted, as they offer over 70 TFLOPs of compute performance.

The updated SEC document explains: "License is required (NLR) for computers with an "Adjusted Peak Performance" ("APP") not exceeding 70 Weighted TeraFLOPS (WT) and for "electronic assemblies" described in 4A003.c that are not capable of exceeding an "Adjusted Peak Performance" ("APP") exceeding 70 Weighted TeraFLOPS (WT) in aggregation".

The new restrictions also see laptops affected, with the new restrictions also applying to laptops imported into China that are powered by those chips. The Commerce Deparment said it continues to update its restrictions on technology shipments into China, as Reuters reports "it seeks to bolster and fine-tune its measures".