Under the terms of the latest export rules imposed by the U.S. government , AMD, Intel, and Nvidia can no longer ship a number of their high-performance processors to China and a number of other countries without an export license from the U.S. Department of Commerce. In fact, the restrictions are so severe that shipments of Nvidia's AD102 processors are also restricted, which may have an impact on the supply of GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards.

Given the demand for Nvidia's AI GPUs across the globe, the company does not expect its financial results in the near term to be affected by the new export rules. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how these new export rules affect the production and prices of GeForce RTX 4090-based graphics cards, which are generally made in China. In a bid to comply with the new export rules, Nvidia will have to initiate production of GeForce RTX 4090 and other AD102-based products outside of China.

Transferring production to Taiwan is perhaps not a problem for the vast majority of brands as the vast majority of them are headquartered in Taiwan. There is one big exception, though. Colorful, which is one of Nvidia's major customers and which happens to be one of the world's largest makers of graphics cards, only operates in China. It is possible that Nvidia will attempt to supply as many AD102 GPUs to its partner as possible in the coming weeks, though it remains to be seen how this affects the supply of GeForce RTX 4090 products in other countries.

Starting from November 16, 2023, Nvidia will be unable to ship its A100, A800, H100, H800, L40, L40S, and GeForce RTX 4090 cards and modules for AI and HPC computing to China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam without an export license from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security.

All the mentioned products, except the GeForce RTX 4090, are data center GPUs for AI, HPC, and cloud applications. The GeForce RTX 4090 is the best graphics card money can buy, but since the new restrictions curb exports of high-performance processors in general, it falls under the new regulations.

"The licensing requirement may impact the Company's ability to complete development of products in a timely manner, support existing customers of covered products, or supply customers of covered products outside the impacted regions , and may require the Company to transition certain operations out of one or more of the identified countries," a statement by Nvidia in its filing with SEC reads.