The BIS October 2023 rules refer to a package of updates issued by the U.S. Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security on October 17, 2023, tightening export controls on advanced computing chips, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and related items destined for China and certain other countries. The rules built directly on the framework first established by BIS on October 7, 2022, closing perceived loopholes and broadening country and entity coverage.
Key changes included:
- Revised performance thresholds for controlled advanced integrated circuits, replacing the prior "interconnect bandwidth" parameter with a "performance density" metric to capture chips that had been redesigned to fall just below the 2022 limits (notably NVIDIA's A800 and H800 variants developed for the Chinese market).
- A new "notified advanced computing" (NAC) license exception and licensing category, requiring exporters to notify BIS of shipments of chips falling into a "gray zone" just below control thresholds.
- Expansion of the country scope beyond China and Macau to include roughly 20 additional countries (including those subject to U.S. arms embargoes) for certain advanced computing items, to address diversion risk.
- Additions to the Entity List, including Chinese GPU designers such as Moore Threads and Biren Technology, restricting their access to U.S.-origin technology.
- Tightened controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME), including additional tool types and a broader extraterritorial reach via the Foreign Direct Product Rule.
The package was published in the Federal Register on October 25, 2023, with staggered effective dates. BIS framed the rules as necessary to prevent the People's Republic of China from acquiring computing power used to train frontier AI models with potential military applications. The rules drew criticism from U.S. industry (citing lost revenue at firms like NVIDIA, AMD, and Lam Research) and prompted retaliatory measures from Beijing, including export controls on gallium, germanium, and graphite. The October 2023 package was itself superseded in part by further BIS updates in 2024 and January 2025.
Example
In October 2023, BIS used the new rules to block NVIDIA from shipping its A800 and H800 GPUs—originally designed to comply with the 2022 controls—to customers in China.