The rumor mill is working overtime in relation to Nvidia's Chinese market tactics again. After export restrictions on its H20 AI chips were imposed, speculation arises that it is cooking up an alternative attempt-this time, apparently, on the latest Blackwell architecture and named the B30. What do we really know about this latest chip
According to reports, one of the standout features of the B30 accelerator will be its multi-GPU tying ability-great for processors working together to take a big bite out of massive AI workloads. As for heavy-duty AI tasks that these chips have been designed to bring to life, multi-GPU scaling proves crucial.
Interestingly, these B30s are expected to be featuring high-speed GDDR7 memory and the same core silicon (GB20X) utilized in consumer-grade Nvidia's RTX 50 series GPUs, but here is something of a tech head-scratcher Nvidia for a while hasn't included NVLink (which usually allows GPUs to talk to one another directly) in its consumer chips. How is it supposed to do B30s then
It could very well be that Nvidia's using a completely different method, such as that which was exhibited with their RTX Pro Blackwell servers. These could connect up to eight pro GPUs using a really high-speed networking technology (ConnectX-8 SuperNICs with PCIe 6.0 switches). To be on the safe side, it's not even out of the question that Nvidia has been able to hack the standard GB202 chips (the core of RTX 5090s) to bring NVLink back into the fold, so to speak, specifically for this B30 variant.
Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, made it clear that there will not be any more Hopper-based alternatives coming out for China. A decided turn to new Blackwell architecture is indicated in all future chips designed for compliance with U.S. export regulations. The last few years have seen the government get more and more focused on high memory bandwidths and interconnect speeds with chips like the H20, which military supercomputers in China could use.
This isn't a first for Nivida. Often, on many occasions, a company has found itself in a series of complicated U.S. export controls that have limited Beijing's access to powerful AI technologies. Like AMD, other companies have been affected because it slapped bans on its AI chips.
There is something higher here this kind of concerns for Huang reflect the fact that they might just spur Chinese companies such as Huawei to accelerate innovation beyond what they would have done otherwise. His claim involves an assessment that caution by the U.S. on these issues could come back to undermine its competitive position when all these rivals get into the business of making competing hardware, which might eventuate into new world standards.
This is, in fact, a very high-stakes game, and the very development of such chips as the one rumored as B30 can show how quickly companies like Nvidia are adapting to an ever-evolving geopolitical, as well as a technological, landscape.
