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The Biden administration has imposed new restrictions on sales of some sophisticated computer chips to China and Russia, the U.S. government’s latest attempt to use semiconductors as a tool to hobble rivals’ advances in fields such as high-performance computing and artificial intelligence, The New York Times reports.

The new limits affect high-end models of chips known as graphics processing units, or GPUs, which are sold by the Silicon Valley companies Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices. Such products were originally developed to render images in video games but in the past decade were widely deployed in the largest supercomputers used by scientists and by internet companies for applications such as recognizing speech and objects in photographs.

Supercomputers are used in applications that include weapons development and intelligence gathering, and some large systems in China have been linked to surveillance of the country’s Muslim minorities. A.I. technology is also increasingly being used for purposes such as identifying faces in video images.

The restrictions are part of a cold war between China and the United States for primacy in advanced technologies. The Biden administration, building on limits begun under former President Donald J. Trump, has adopted measures aimed at restricting access by companies such as China’s Huawei to advanced chips and foreign semiconductor manufacturing. China has designed many chips on its own, but generally relies on factories in Taiwan to manufacture the most advanced models.

In statements on Wednesday, Nvidia and AMD acknowledged the new restrictions.