BEIJING, October 31 (TMTPost)— Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., (AMD), the United States chip giant, dismissed news about massive layoff as the U.S. government is going to impose new controls on export of all American products to China.

Credit：TMTPost

News circulated on line were not true, and the company recently conducted small optimization and restructuring for its organization based on its strategic adjustment, AMD told The Paper and other Chinese news media outlets.

Earlier this month, Chinese netizens revealed on the social media platform that AMD started to lay off in China and about 300 to 450 employees, accounting for 10% to 15% of local workforce, could be affected, out of which most positions came from AMD’s division of Radeon Technologies Group. A AMD worker in China later revealed that the company did fired employees, but not a lot of people, only a few, and the sacked workers were given a severance package of N+1, namely, the severance pay amounted to one month’ pay per year of service plus two months’ monthly wage. In addition, affected staff who was fired this month can receive the company’s monthly contribution of social security payment in the next two months.

AMD’s layoff news came as the Biden administration is tightening up tech curbs on China through latest updates of export controls on advanced computing semiconductors and semiconductor manufacturing equipment, as well as items that support supercomputing applications and end-uses, to China and other countries.

The U.S. Department of Commerce introduced on October 18 a rule entitles “Implementation of Additional Export Controls: Certain Advanced Computing Items; Supercomputer and Semiconductor End Use; Updates and Corrections”, which was going to come into effect following a 30-day public comment period.

The Commerce Department believes the rules are necessary to maintain the effectiveness of these controls, close loopholes, and ensure they remain durable. The goal is to limit China’s “access to advanced semiconductors that could fuel breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and sophisticated computers,” said the U.S. Commerce Secretary Raimondo.

The new rule is obvious a new hit on AMD and its domestic competitors, especially Nvidia, the semiconductor designer that dominates the market for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. Nvidia has modified some of flagship products including A100 and H100 for exports to China, including an alternative A800 chip, as the U.S. regulators last year banned it from selling its most advanced chips to China. AMD is mulling a similar strategy with its flagship AI chip MI300 and older MI250 chips, the CEO Lisa Su said, at an earning conference on August 1. Su told analysts that her company planst to be fully compliant with U.S. export controls,”but we do believe there's an opportunity to develop product(s) for our customer set in China that is looking for AI solutions, and we'll continue to work in that direction."

Nvidia last week disclosed the U.S. government informed that the licensing requirements of a rule introduced last week, applicable to products having a “total processing performance” of 4800 or more and designed or marketed for datacenters, is effective immediately.

The notification means he United States has skipped a 30-day public comment period and imposed the export control on Nvidia’s products in advance. Nvidia said the licensing requirements immediately impacted shipments of its five graphics processing unit (GPU) products, including A100, A800, H100, H800, and L40S. Nevertheless, the Amercian chipmaker didn’t anticipate the additional restrictions will have a near-term meaningful impact on its financial results, given the strength of demand for its products worldwide.

Several industry insiders in China expressed their concerns about impact of the new export control rule. They told TMTPost that training of large AI model’s computing in China could fall behind Microsoft-backed OpenAI in the future. TMTPost also learned Tencent and ByteDance had previously purchased H800 GPUs in large quantities, but they have not received any ordered products yet. It is highly unlikely for Nvidia to deliver any A800 GPU, the weakened version of Nivida’s cutting-edge A100 processor, even though Chinese companies place their small orders in the future.

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