[News] Following in NVIDIA’s Footsteps? Intel Reportedly Plans to Launch Chinese Version of AI Chips

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Under pressure from US restrictions, Intel is reportedly preparing to follow in NVIDIA’s footsteps by developing “special edition” versions of its AI acceleration chips, Gaudi 3, for the Chinese market. These two related products are rumored to be launched at the end of June and the end of September.

According to reports from The Register, Intel recently unveiled its new generation AI acceleration chip, Gaudi 3. Intel stated in the Gaudi 3 white paper that it is preparing to launch a special edition Gaudi 3 tailored for the Chinese market. This would include two hardware variants: the HL-328 OAM-compatible Mezzanine Card and the HL-388 PCIe Accelerator Card. The HL-328 is said to be scheduled for release on June 24, while the HL-388 follow suit on September 24.

In regard of the specifications, the made-for-China edition and the original version share the same features, including 96MB of on-chip SRAM memory, 128GB of HBM2e high-bandwidth memory with a bandwidth of 3.7TB per second, PCIe 5.0X16 interface, and decoding standards.

However, due to US export restrictions on AI chips, the comprehensive computing performance (TPP) of high-performance AI needs to be below 4,800 to export to China. This means the Chinese special edition’s 16-bit performance cannot exceed 150 TFLOPS (trillion floating-point operations per second).

For comparison, the original Gaudi 3 achieves 1,835 TFLOPS in FP16/BF16. This contrasts with NVIDIA’s H100, which is approximately 40% faster in large model training and 50% more efficient in inference tasks.

Therefore, the made-for-China edition will need to significantly reduce the number of cores (the original version has 8 Matrix Multiplication Engines [MME] and 64 Tensor Processor Core [TPC] engines) and operating frequency. Ultimately, this could result in reducing its AI performance by approximately 92% to comply with US export control requirements.

Analyses cited in the same report further suggest that Intel’s launch of the made-for-China edition for AI performance will be comparable to NVIDIA’s AI accelerator card H20 tailored for the Chinese market.

The made-for-China edition of Intel’s Gaudi 3 boasts a performance of 148 TFLOPS in FP16/BF16, slightly below the 150 TFLOPS limit. However, in terms of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) capacity and bandwidth, the Chinese special edition Gaudi 3 will be lower than NVIDIA’s H20, potentially putting it at a competitive disadvantage against the H20. Still, pricing will also be a key factor in determining whether it holds any competitive advantage.

As per a previous report from Reuters, the prices of the chips were said to be comparable to those of its competitor Huawei’s products. Reportedly, NVIDIA priced orders from Chinese H20 distributors between USD 12,000 and 15,000 per unit.

TrendForce believes Chinese companies will continue to buy existing AI chips in the short term. NVIDIA’s GPU AI accelerator chips remain a top priority—including H20, L20, and L2—designed specifically for the Chinese market following the ban.

Read more

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(Photo credit: NVIDIA)