Nvidia develops tech to track chip locations
Nvidia has developed location verification technology that could identify the country where its chips are being used, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The move aims to help prevent its artificial intelligence chips from being smuggled into countries where their export is prohibited, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.
The feature, demonstrated privately by Nvidia in recent months but not yet released, would be an optional software update for customers. It leverages the confidential computing capabilities of its graphics processing units (GPUs), sources said.
Designed to track a chip’s overall computing performance—a common practice for companies managing large fleets of processors in data centers—the software would use communication time delays with Nvidia servers to estimate the chip’s location, similar to other internet-based location services, an Nvidia official explained.
"We're in the process of implementing a new software service that empowers data center operators to monitor the health and inventory of their entire AI GPU fleet," Nvidia said in a statement. "This customer-installed software agent leverages GPU telemetry to monitor fleet health, integrity and inventory."
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 the Nvidia official.
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. 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.
But the calls for location verification in the U.S. have also led China's top cybersecurity regulator to call Nvidia in for questioning about whether its products contain backdoors that would allow the U.S. to bypass its chips' security features.
That regulatory cloud came to the fore again this week, after U.S. President Donald Trump said he would allow exports of the Nvidia H200, the most immediate predecessor to its current flagship Blackwell chips, to China. Foreign policy experts expressed skepticism about whether China would allow companies there to purchase them.
Nvidia has strongly denied that its chips have backdoors. Software experts have said that it would be possible for Nvidia to build chip location verification without compromising the security of its offerings.
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