By Stephen Nellis and Michael Martina
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 9 (Reuters) – Nvidia has built location verification technology that could indicate which country its chips are operating in, according to sources familiar with the matter, 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), the sources said.
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 centers – 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 an Nvidia official.
Exclusive-Nvidia Builds Location Verification Tech That Could Help Fight Chip Smuggling
