What makes China confident enough to ban microchips made by US firm Nvidia?

Beijing’s decision this week to ban Chinese companies from using microchips made by US firm Nvidia indicates the country is increasingly confident about replacing them with domestically produced chips, experts say. Experts believe that after years of research, China can now produce chips that could replace the H20, the most powerful model chip Nvidia is allowed to export to China. As the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race between the two countries heats up, multiple companies in China are developing large language models (LLMs) and other AI products that require huge amounts of cutting-edge chips. “Maybe they [Chinese domestic alternative] are not…