On Monday, the State Administration for Market Regulation in China announced that it had launched an investigation against NVIDIA. The Chinese agency suspected that the American chipmaker violated China’s antitrust law during its acquisition of Mellanox Technologies. NVIDIA, a leading technology firm specializing on graphics processing units (GPUs), artificial intelligence technologies and high-performance networking, is based in Israel. The announcement comes amid increased tensions in semiconductor industry. Last Monday, the United States added 140 Chinese semiconductor-related companies to its Entity List, imposing new sanctions on the Chinese semiconductor equipment sector and restricting access to key U.S.-made components and tools for advanced semiconductor manufacturing. [TechNode reporting, SAMRโs announcement, in Chinese]