Nvidia Builds Location Verification Tech
Nvidia has built location verification technology that could indicate which country its chips are operating in, according to reports, a move that could help prevent its artificial intelligence chips from being smuggled into countries where their export is banned.
The feature, which Nvidia has demonstrated privately in recent months but has not yet released, would be an optional software update that customers could install. It would tap into what are known as the confidential computing capabilities of its graphics processing units (GPUs), according to reports.
The software was built to allow customers to track a chip's overall computing performance - a common practice among companies that buy fleets of processors for large data centres - and would use the time delay in communicating with servers run by Nvidia to give a sense of the chip's location on par with what other internet-based services can provide, according to reports.
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“We're in the process of implementing a new software service that empowers data centre operators to monitor the health and inventory of their entire AI GPU fleet. This customer-installed software agent leverages GPU telemetry to monitor fleet health, integrity and inventory,” according to the company.
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The feature will first be made available on Nvidia's latest "Blackwell" chips, which have more security features for a process called "attestation" than Nvidia's previous generations of Hopper and Ampere semiconductors, but Nvidia is examining options for those prior generations, according to reports.
If released, Nvidia's location update could address calls from the White House and lawmakers from both major political parties in the U.S. Congress for measures to prevent smuggling AI chips to China and other countries where their sale is restricted.
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Those calls have intensified as the Department of Justice has brought criminal cases against China-connected smuggling rings that were allegedly attempting to bring more than $160 million worth of Nvidia chips to China.