U.S. microchip export controls imposed last year to freeze China's development of supercomputers used to develop nuclear weapons and artificial-intelligence systems like ChatGPT are having only minimal effects on China's tech sector.
The rules restricted shipments of Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices chips that have become the global technology industry's standard for developing chatbots and other AI systems.
But Nvidia has created variants of its chips for the Chinese market that are slowed down to meet U.S. rules. Industry experts said that the newest one — the Nvidia H800, announced in March — will likely take 10% to 30% longer to carry out some AI tasks and could double some costs compared with Nvidia's fastest U.S. chips.