The US gov created some rules which basically set some limit on the max bi-directional bandwidth of the chip, the max number of operations per second (4800 TOPS), and in the latest regulation they added another rule around “performance density”.
So basically they said something like: if you make a chip that has (in my arbitrary units) less than 100 TOPS, 500 bandwidth, and 200 performance density, then it’s OK to go to China.
So Nvidia made a chip that has 99 TOPS, 499 bandwidth, and 199 performance, which of course would be legal to export. And now the government is saying, well, we don’t like that. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me given they previously said they were OK with chips not hitting those limits being exported.
I don’t think you can blame Nvidia for taking the government at face value, assuming the government picked what they consider to be good values for their “chip banning equation” and then making chips that apply to the new rule.
This just seems to me like the US gov doesn’t know what they want exactly and thus keeps changing their regulation, none of which is a surprise to me. The whole thing reeks of incompetence.