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December 11 - According to the latest revelations, NVIDIA has developed a chip location technology that can indicate the country where its AI chips are operating. Insiders stated that this feature, a software option NVIDIA has privately demonstrated to clients in recent months but not yet officially released, will leverage the so - called "confidential computing capabilities" of its GPUs. NVIDIA indirectly confirmed the news through a statement, saying, "We are implementing a new software service that enables data center operators to monitor the health and inventory of their entire AI GPU clusters. This customer - installed software agent uses GPU telemetry technology to monitor cluster health, integrity, and inventory." An NVIDIA employee said that the software was originally designed to help customers track the overall computing performance of chips. Additionally, it can estimate the approximate geographical location of chips by measuring the latency when they communicate with NVIDIA servers, with an accuracy comparable to other internet - based services. The employee also mentioned that this feature will first be available on NVIDIA's new - generation Blackwell - architecture chips, and the company is also exploring solutions for previous - generation products. It is reported that this newly developed location - tracking feature targets countries subject to U.S. export controls, such as China. For a long time, the U.S. government has prohibited companies like NVIDIA and AMD from exporting high - performance chips to China under the pretext of "national security". There have been repeated claims in U.S. public opinion about the "large - scale smuggling of NVIDIA chips to prohibited countries". Therefore, reports point out that this location - tracking feature aims to prevent the "smuggling" of NVIDIA chips. If officially launched, this technology may respond to the calls from the White House and bipartisan members of the U.S. Congress, who have demanded measures to prevent the smuggling of AI chips to restricted - sales countries like China. These calls have grown louder since the U.S. Department of Justice filed criminal charges against a group suspected of smuggling NVIDIA chips worth over $160 million to China. Meanwhile, U.S. requirements for location verification have led Chinese cybersecurity regulators to interview NVIDIA, questioning whether its products contain "backdoors" that could allow the U.S. side to bypass chip security functions. This week, regulatory concerns resurfaced after U.S. President Trump stated that he would allow the export of NVIDIA H200 chips (the direct predecessor of the current flagship Blackwell chips) to China. Foreign policy experts are skeptical about whether Chinese enterprises will be allowed to purchase them. NVIDIA firmly denies the existence of backdoors in its chips. Software experts point out that NVIDIA is fully capable of implementing chip location verification without compromising product security.