The British chip company Arm does not think it can sell a license for its Neoverse V3 chip to Chinese companies because of the Wassenaar Agreement. The company would need permission from the US, which recently extended its export restrictions to China.
According to Arm, the Neoverse V3 is powerful enough to fall under the most recent extension of US trade restrictions to China, and will also take into account the 1996 Wassenaar Accord. Wassenaar OK is an international treaty from 1996 regulating the export of arms. This includes a clause on so-called ‘dual use’ technology. This is technology that can be used for both commercial and military purposes. This clause should regulate the export of such technology.
According to The Financial Times, this is not the first time this situation has arisen. For example, the sale of the Neoverse V2 and V1 to Chinese companies would have been stopped in the past. The Neoverse V3 is a chip design for data centers that should be on the market in 2023 and China’s Alibaba has already shown interest. The chip is also the successor to the Neoverse V2. That chip design is currently already being used by Nvidia and Amazon in server parks, among others.
Earlier this year it was also announced that Nvidia is no longer allowed to supply certain AI GPUs, the A100 and H100 data center GPUs, to China and Russia because, according to the US government, these graphics cards can also be used for military purposes. Competitor AMD also received such a ban for its MI250 accelerators.