Updated at 13:45

Bloomberg reported, citing sources, that shortly before Biden leaves, he wants to further limit the export of artificial intelligence chips to prevent advanced technologies from falling into the hands of China and Russia.

The restrictions will affect chips from Nvidia and AMD. The goal is to focus artificial intelligence development in friendly countries and force businesses around the world to meet US standards. Restrictions could be announced as early as January 10.

According to the agency, the supply reduction will take place on three levels. At the highest level, a small number of US allies would have virtually unlimited access to US chips. We're talking about 18 countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Most countries will be on the second list – with limited chip supplies. And the third level, which is effectively the ban level, would apply to China, Russia and all countries with which the United States has an arms embargo. There are about 20 states in total.

At the same time, as Bloomberg writes, companies with headquarters located in countries belonging to this last group will be able to bypass their national restrictions. Nvidia, in comments to Bloomberg, said the “last-minute restrictions” would not “reduce the risk of abuse” of AI technology but would “endanger economic growth and U.S. leadership.” about this issue.

Stanislav Shepelev, head of the Robot Design Department at MIET, said that Chinese artificial intelligence chips are not yet completely suitable to replace American products:

Stanislav Shepelev, head of SKB Robotics, MIET “Under the sanctions, purchases are not advertised, nor are supply chains. Occasionally, in the news, you can get data from open sources where some countries indirectly provide some components or servers. Current open sources suggest from these restrictions that there are some intermediate countries that will have limits on the amount of supply. The idea is to limit, among other things, which countries can resell; They will simply use up their purchase limit and will have nothing left to resell. As for the export of these technologies from China, this is questionable. There are no Chinese microchips, even those that are likely export-oriented; they currently have problems with software, documentation, and the solution is not the easiest to implement. Well, they lag behind Nvidia's solutions in terms of convenience. The trend is as follows: China now finds itself isolated, that is, it is not provided with the most modern technologies but has to get it from some third countries. Of course, all the companies that are actively working with AI technology in China are getting some kind of solution in one way or another. The problem is that the most advanced solutions today must be concentrated in the US, especially after an additional round of sanctions. That is, this is an attempt to somehow stop China's progress and slow it down as much as possible.”

Denis Samsonov, host of the program “Technology Summary” on “Business FM”, commented:

Denis Samsonov, host of the show “Sum of Technologies” on “Business FM” “Different companies are working on these chips, mainly Americans – Nvidia and AMD, I will also name Microsoft, Apple, Google. Currently, the two microprocessor power centers in the field of microprocessor design are the US and China. It could possibly be replaced by a processor made in China, but since the bill has not yet been published and it is not entirely clear to which devices this restriction will apply, it is difficult to say. speak. There is another point that not only will Russia, China and some countries that are not friendly to the US be completely banned from exporting processing machines, but super friendly countries will have absolute access to these processing machines and rest of the world. will receive processors depending on the following rules that the US leadership applies to the rest of humanity. That is, if we assume that in some future the current events in Georgia will be replayed, the US response will be to reduce the computing power available to the Georgian government. The design of the current banknote bears the spirit of Pelevin. The reality is not that everything will be done in this form. Now we are talking about restricting the sale of processors located in data centers, that is, in large computing centers where big data is being processed, and perhaps in the future, some language models are being processed. The major language will run in each of those hubs. early. I would talk about supplying Nvidia GPUs to Russia for the time being, but this is not certain. It seems to me that this is still parallel imports, especially to the IT industry, where sudden additional regulation and, in fact, market restrictions for the same company Nvidia means reducing profits and reducing opportunities for further growth. On this news, Nvidia's shares fell slightly, but while the law has not yet been announced, there are suspicions that this is part of an internal political game between the two parties of the United States and all participants others in the process, including Nvidia. Russia, China and the rest of the world in this case are such secondary victims.”

Konstantin Mantsvetov, CEO of Mobile Inform Group, a developer and manufacturer of smartphones and tablets, commented:

Konstantin Mantsvetov, General Director of Mobile Inform Group “Due to parallel chip imports, all products increased in price by 5% to 20%, which is within the same range for the base part. It also depends on the use of these chips, because some are difficult, even impossible, to obtain, because manufacturers often track end customers. Meaning, if the project is complicated, you might not buy them. Some power transistors that can be used in radar systems cannot even be obtained through parallel imports due to actions by the US Treasury Department that are threatening to disconnect the banks of friendly countries with SWIFT, so there are problems with this. There are no problems with the import itself, with physical logistics, there are only financial problems. Do you know what to worry about? About the fact that such sanctions have limited Russia's technological development. The reality is that if everything is bought off-the-shelf, it becomes more difficult to develop something. Because when you develop, you don't just need the physical chip itself, to be able to get the physical chip, you also need access to documentation and technical support from the manufacturer, so you can develop develop something. Without this, you can only collect or produce something. This problem is more serious than that of some formal restrictions. We need to look for other niches and master them. Previously, several countries joined forces to achieve a certain level of technology, but now this will no longer work. But at the same time, we look at the example of the Chinese: their largest semiconductor manufacturer, the chipmaker for Huawei, is 7 nanometers, and this is very good. How they did it is the big question, but however they succeeded, it means we have to look this way too.”

Shares of companies involved in quantum computing fell an average of 40% in yesterday's US trading session. This comes after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admitted that truly useful quantum computers will appear in about 20 years.

Previously, quantum computing hype had sent shares up more than 1,000%, but Huang's forecast cooled the enthusiasm.