New Nvidia AI chip to match Huawei on price

Nvidia has started taking pre-orders for a new China-specific artificial intelligence (AI) chip from distributors who are pricing it on par with a rival product from Huawei, sources familiar with the matter said.

The graphics card, the H20, is the most powerful of three Nvidia has been developing for the Chinese market after the US expanded bans on high-end chip exports.

The H20 will deliver less computing power than Nvidia's flagship H100 AI chip and the H800 - the later China-specific card that was also banned in October. But specifications for the H20 also appear to indicate it is less powerful than Huawei's Ascend 910B in some key areas, according to sources.

Nvidia has been pricing orders for H20 distributors in China in a range of US$12,000 (HK$93,600) to US$15,000 per card.

Some distributors have started advertising the chips with a significant markup to the lower end of that range at about 110,000 yuan (HK$121,109), one of the sources said. By comparison, Huawei's 910B is being sold for around 120,000 yuan.

One source said distributors are offering H20 servers, which are pre-configured with eight of the AI chips, for 1.4 million yuan. By comparison, servers that used eight H800s were sold at around 2 million yuan when they were launched a year ago.