The outfit confirmed the tech after whispering about it in private demos for months. The still-unreleased feature would be an optional software install that leverages the confidential computing features built into its GPUs.
According to an Nvidia official, the tool was initially built to help data centre buyers keep tabs on the performance of their processor fleets. It uses the time delay between the chip and Nvidia’s servers to provide a rough sense of where a GPU is located, similar to what other internet services do.
A blog post the day after Reuters lifted the lid offered more detail and said Nvidia plans to open source the system so outside security bods can poke at it.
A spokesNvidia said: “We're in the process of implementing a new software service that empowers data centre operators to monitor the health and inventory of their entire AI GPU fleet... the customer-installed agent uses GPU telemetry to monitor fleet health, integrity and inventory.”
The firm insisted it cannot fiddle with anything from afar, saying there are “no features that allow Nvidia to control or take action on registered systems remotely” and that all telemetry sent to its servers is “read only.” It followed up with “There is no feature within Nvidia GPUs that allows Nvidia or a remote actor to disable the Nvidia GPU. There is no kill switch,” the company said.
The tech will debut on the new Blackwell chips, which pack beefier attestation safeguards than the older Hopper and Ampere lines. Nvidia is chewing over whether it can retrofit something similar for those previous generations, the Nvidia official said.
If it ships, the feature could soothe calls from the White House and both sides of US Congress for stricter anti-smuggling measures after prosecutors charged China-linked groups with trying to sneak more than $160 million worth of Nvidia gear into the country.
Those same calls have China’s cybersecurity regulator grilling Nvidia about whether its products harbour US-friendly backdoors. The political fog thickened again this week after US President Donald Trump said he would allow exports of the H200, the predecessor to Blackwell, to China. At the same time, foreign policy watchers questioned whether Beijing would let local firms import them.
Nvidia has repeatedly denied any backdoors. Software experts have said the company can build location verification without compromising its security model.
