China seeks to develop an indigenous semiconductor industry. It is in the strategic interest of the United States and democratic friends for China to remain reliant on them for state-of-the-art computer chips, especially as Beijing invests heavily in advanced chips.

The success of modern AI techniques relies on computation on a scale unimaginable even a few years ago. What exactly are the AI chips powering the development and deployment of AI at scale and why are they essential? Saif M. Khan and Alexander Mann explain how these chips work, why they have proliferated, and why they matter.

As artificial intelligence is applied to new and more complex tasks, the computational power necessary to develop and deploy it will become increasingly expensive. This policy brief offers a concise overview of the full report, “AI Chips: What They Are and Why They Matter.”

The United States and its allies enjoy a competitive advantage in the production of artificial intelligence chips necessary for leading AI research and implementation. This memo identifies chokepoints for limiting China’s access to key chipmaking equipment.