China surveys Broadcom switch use in state data centres, FT says
Beijing's state-assets regulator counted the switches in state-controlled facilities and could issue informal guidance to cut their use, according to the Financial Times.
China's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission has surveyed the number of Broadcom switches running in state-backed data centres, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. The newspaper tied the survey to a campaign to move state computing onto domestic parts.
Reuters and Techmeme both carried the report on Wednesday without adding independent confirmation, and the paper has seen no comment from Broadcom or from the commission. The Financial Times said preliminary findings put Broadcom switches at as much as 90% of the equipment in use, a share no other outlet has published.
On those findings the commission may issue informal guidance telling state-run data centres to scale back their use of the switches, the Financial Times said. Informal guidance is not a ban. The report did not give a timetable, name the facilities covered, or say how many sites the survey reached.
Nvidia products are already barred from state-backed data centres, according to the report, which leaves switches among the last large categories of American hardware still widely installed in them. The material available carries no figure for Broadcom's revenue from Chinese state buyers, and the 90% share describes equipment counted, not money.
Two accounts summarising the report on X framed it as part of a push for full-stack hardware independence in China. That framing is theirs. The Financial Times report, as relayed, describes a survey and possible guidance, not a decision to pull the switches out.