NVIDIA B20, China-only Blackwell GPU

NVIDIA is working on a special purpose accelerator that meets U.S. Export restrictions.

NVIDIA’s revenue from China accounts for about 17%, which provides a strong motivator for the company to develop a custom chip for this market. According to a Reuters report, NVIDIA is now planning a successor to the H20 chip, which was launched last year.

The H20 chip had similar memory specifications and the same die size as its predecessor, but its compute performance was significantly reduced (296 TFLOPS compared to 1979 TFLOPS). This reduction was due to updated U.S. export regulations that focused on combined compute capability rather than multi-chip interconnect speed.

The new chip for China would rely on newer architecture known as Blackwell. This news follows the official introduction of the B100 and B200 chips which are expected to launch this year and the following year.

Nvidia will work with Inspur, one of its major distributor partners in China, on the launch and distribution of the chip which is tentatively named the “B20”, two of the sources said. The sources declined to be identified as Nvidia has yet to make a public announcement.

— Reuters

The development costs for the H20 chip are not publicly known. However, according to SemiAnalysis research, NVIDIA is on track to sell one million units of this chip, generating around $12 billion in revenue. With such significant potential for revenue, NVIDIA is motivated to release another China-specific chip.

For the upcoming B20 launch, NVIDIA will collaborate with Inspur, a major distribution partner in China. Both NVIDIA and Inspur have declined to comment on the B20 plans. The B20 chip is said to be entering mass production later this year. Reuters says that it will use two squares of silicon the sizes of the last-gen product, which likely means it uses the same die as B100/200 except with reduced compute capability.

Source: Reuters