While Nvidia is just going to create a GeForce RTX 4090 D (Dragon) video card for China, which will not fall under US sanctions, Chinese gamers have become much more active in buying Radeon RX 7900 XT/XTX.

Demand has reportedly increased so much that AMD is having difficulty making more of the Navi 31 GPUs that powers the adapters available to the Chinese market.

The shortage may not only last until the end of the year, but also continue into the first quarter of next year. There were some rumors that supplies of AMD flagships to China would also be prohibited, but the Expreview resource says that so far none of the video card manufacturers have confirmed this.

Let us remember that some time ago RX 7900 cards had already risen in price a little, and market players expected a further slight increase in prices. If a shortage occurs in retail, prices may rise more significantly.

When it became known about the ban on supplies of the GeForce RTX 4090 to China, a logical assumption appeared that Nvidia, following the example of AI accelerators, could create some new 3D card for the Chinese market. According to recent data, it will be the RTX 4090 D.

The letter D will be short for Dragon, although this, of course, has no meaning. The RTX 4090 D will be exclusive to the Middle Kingdom and will hit the market next year.

How such a model will differ from the regular version of the RTX 4090 is still unclear. Let us remind you that US sanctions apply to adapters with a TPP performance of over 4800 units, and these same units are calculated using a formula and apply to all modes (FP16, FP32, and so on).

Therefore, Nvidia may trim the GPU, lower frequencies, or otherwise limit the card’s capabilities so that it does not fall under sanctions. But it is likely that several methods will be used at once. However, you need to understand that in order for the card to continue to bear the name RTX 4090 and it makes sense, it must in any case be faster than the RTX 4080.

It is expected that the RTX 4090 D, despite possible weakening, will be sold at the same recommended price as the regular model, that is, 13,000 yuan.

Apple has been developing its own platforms for smartphones for a long time, and for the last few years for PCs. These SoCs are built on Apple’s own CPU, but are based on Arm architecture. Apple reportedly pays Arm less than 30 cents for each chip it produces.

It’s unclear what the normal price is, but Apple is reported to pay less than all other licensees. In addition, this same amount (less than 30 cents per chip) is paid for any Apple SoC, regardless of its characteristics. Because of all this, despite the fact that the Cupertino giant is one of Arm’s largest customers, the latter receives less than 5% of its total revenue from Apple.

Back in 2017, SoftBank’s CEO gathered a group of executives from Arm, which SoftBank had just acquired at the time, to complain about Apple. At the time, he said Apple was paying more for the piece of plastic that protects the screens of the new iPhones than for the Arm license. What the amount was at that time is unknown, but the current 30 cents (more precisely, less than 30 cents) clearly indicate that if SoftBank tried to change something through negotiations, it did not work out.