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US Government Bans Export of Nvidia A100 and H100 GPUs to China and Russia

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Re: US Government Bans Export of Nvidia A100 and H100 GPUs to China and Russia

#51
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you're really trying to do. Having to pay that putative 30% markup on hardware is going to be a crippling disadvantage for a China-based AI product, for example.

Hmm ... kind of ... Just buy less GPUs and run them for more time. It's not like GPU clusters are running at 100% anyway. (Also, implying China does not have enough money to buy them like that)

> Just buy less GPUs and run them for more time. It's not like GPU clusters are running at 100% anyway

"Just get way better at managing compute resources. You know, that area of research every giant, multi-national cloud provider is pouring tons of money into. Just do that."

Re: US Government Bans Export of Nvidia A100 and H100 GPUs to China and Russia

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charging companies for evading sanctions and export controls is a pretty regular thing. It’s not about single units crossing the borders but large numbers which are much harder to hide and investigation of such things isn’t that hard.

What do you do with 100,000 central asian guest workers each carrying one GPU in their cabin baggage when they go to Russia for their construction gig? Smuggling electronics beats smuggling drugs, danger-wise.

Billion dollar operations like that would be noticed by someone up the chain of suppliers. That just isn’t how these things usually happen. It’s usually a couple of hops of resellers in increasingly distant from American jurisdiction areas.

Re: US Government Bans Export of Nvidia A100 and H100 GPUs to China and Russia

#54
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US is scared.

The world isn't really going in the right direction and any sign toward appeasing or pacification is crucial at such stage :/ What I am calling for: closer ties and negotiations and collaborative work.

Sorry what does this comment mean? I genuinely don't understand (not a native speaker).

EDIT: Oh I think I get it, you want more cooperation, peace, among humans/countries etc.

Yeah, most people want it, but in today's world, it is increasingly unlikely.

On one hand, I don't like the fact that Western world emphasizes diversity and multiculturalism too much. We are too different, and forcing everyone to accept everyone is just pipe dream. At one point my values will clash with someone else's. I think fences, borders, are good. Deglobalization is good, slower economy is good. Just make sure we don't invade one another (I know, also pipe dream).

I also quite admire Xi Jinping. He is a dictator, and knows that he serves his country, an ethnic nation. He doesn't pretend to care about other ethnic minorities or other nations. He made China great. Hopefully China doesn't invade other countries, and prefer to be defensive.

In short: fences make good neighbors, let's all slow down on (forced) diversity and multiculturalism, let's all go back to our own fences, and cooperate from within the fences. We can visit our neighbors sometimes, have a good laugh, and after that we go home to our own fences.

Cooperation is overrated. I'd settle with peaceful coexistence. It is heaven on Earth.

I don't seek downvote, but I know I will be downvoted for this opinion, just make sure you squint to read the light colored comments.

Re: US Government Bans Export of Nvidia A100 and H100 GPUs to China and Russia

#55

Sign of a coming AI arms race? If the image generation market is getting too saturated, maybe OpenAI can sell something to the government. No one has deeper pockets.

An AI arms race will be limited by the silicon it's built on. The arms race will be in the fabrication of the chips. You can only scale old nodes so far.

The cheapest solution out of all the possibilities is to just use a back channel to get them, of course.

Re: US Government Bans Export of Nvidia A100 and H100 GPUs to China and Russia

#57
post #21

Very worrying to see the restrictions against China escalating; Especially since China is incredibly advanced in hardware manufacturing and is not at war with the West. At best, this is just pushing for escalation so they can restrict exports on their side too. Even, for them. In one of their speech (in France, on a YouTube channel called Thinkerview for those who know), one of their representative quoted a Chinese p…

US is scared.

No, the US world police is winding down (Bretton Woods era). Expect massive chaos everywhere except in US for decades to come.

Re: US Government Bans Export of Nvidia A100 and H100 GPUs to China and Russia

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taiwan is not PRC.

Oh but NVDA has operational hub in PRC. And by their law NVDA would be required to hand over the IP.

I highly doubt that NVDA hands over high level IP to save money on low level assembly.

Re: US Government Bans Export of Nvidia A100 and H100 GPUs to China and Russia

#60
post #9

How on earth are they going to enforce that? Kazakhstan and Turkey are bound to become unusually large buyers of such GPUs.

If you want to enforce something then the men with either sunglasses or guns can usually make it happen.

If Kazakh companies suddenly started buying GPUs to go in their datacenter that probably doesn't exist suspicions would be raised.

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