Nvidia's new China chip finds little favour

Nvidia's RTX6000D, its newest artificial intelligence chip tailored for the Chinese market, has seen only lukewarm demand with some major tech firms opting not to place orders, two people with knowledge of procurement discussions said.

- LIAM MO BRENDA GOH

The RTX6000D, designed mainly for AI inference tasks, is seen as expensive for what it does, the two people said.

They added that testing of samples showed its performance lags behind the RTX5090 - a chip banned by the US for use in China but which is still readily available through grey market channels at less than half the RTX6000D's price of around 50,000 yuan ($7,000, or about 222,700 baht).

Chinese tech giants, including Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance, are also waiting for clarity on whether orders for Nvidia's H20 chip will be processed, separate sources said earlier this month. The US firm regained permission to sell the H20 in July, but shipments have yet to restart.

Additionally, the firms are hoping that Nvidia's B30A - a much more powerful chip than the H20 - will be approved by Washington.

The three chips are downgraded versions of models sold outside China, developed to comply with export restrictions put in place by the United States, which wants to rein in Chinese tech progress and retain its lead in AI development.