Reportedly, Dell has issued a Sales Advisory document instructing its sales personnel not to sell AMD's latest Radeon RX 7900-series gaming graphics cards, as well as Instinct artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) GPUs, to China and 22 other countries in compliance with the latest U.S. export rules. However, it has been noted that a quick check of AMD's consumer GPU specifications reveals that they may not require an export license from the U.S. government. Therefore, if the document is legitimate, it could result from a misinterpretation of the new export rules. This comes in the wake of an export ban on Nvidia's fastest gaming graphics card, the RTX 4090, which prevents the company from shipping those models to China.
The purported Dell sales advisory includes AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XT, Radeon RX 7900 XTX, and Radeon Pro W7900 graphics boards, as well as Instinct MI210, MI250, MI250X, and MI300-series datacenter AI and HPC GPUs. Information suggests that neither of AMD's existing products offers a high enough Total Processing Performance (TPP) score or performance density to trigger the requirement for an export license, raising questions about the legitimacy of the advisory and Dell's decision to deny sales to specific entities or countries.
The advisory seems to be based on the latest U.S. export rules for high-performance CPUs and GPUs to China and other countries, where U.S.-based companies are required to obtain an export license from the U.S. Department of Commerce if the Total Processing Power (TPP) of their non-datacenter product exceeds 4800 points. For data center products, the U.S. Department of Commerce considers factors such as TPP and performance density, which may result in the need for an export license, advanced notification of shipments to China, or a presumption of denial review for export licenses.
The TPP score is a listed processing power in TFLOPS or TOPS multiplied by the length of operation without sparsity, and performance density is calculated as TPP divided by die size in square millimeters. AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Radeon Pro W7900 have FP16 rates that result in TPP scores below the threshold for an export license, casting doubt on the necessity of the reported advisory.
As of the publication time, the legitimacy of the excerpt from the purported Dell document has not been verified, and efforts to obtain official statements from AMD and Dell are ongoing. Once official statements are obtained, the story will be updated accordingly.
