Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

sec.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 645 posts

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

#311

Post by onepointsixC »

quantum_state wrote: post #296
onepointsixC wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>is the United States determined to deal with this earth war? How much are you willing to pay to protect Taiwan? Yes the US is very much determined to win such a war. A free and independent Taiwan is the linchpin of American foreign policy in Asia. America is willing to spend great fortunes in treasure and blood to keep it that way.

Counting the track records … Vietnam, Afghan … apart from wasting lots of tax payer money and making the people in the area miserable, what else did we achieve?

Those are your go to for examples of the US lacking determination and resolve to stand by allies? Sure the US abandoned the South Vietnamese and the Afghan Governments, but only after two decades of military conflict in support of each. A dragged out conflict over Taiwan hurts the CCP the most.

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

#312

Post by AbrahamParangi »

quantum_state wrote: post #296
onepointsixC wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>is the United States determined to deal with this earth war? How much are you willing to pay to protect Taiwan? Yes the US is very much determined to win such a war. A free and independent Taiwan is the linchpin of American foreign policy in Asia. America is willing to spend great fortunes in treasure and blood to keep it that way.

Counting the track records … Vietnam, Afghan … apart from wasting lots of tax payer money and making the people in the area miserable, what else did we achieve?

If you’re counting the track record of interventions shouldn’t you count WW1, WW2, the Korean War and the Cold War as well?

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

#313

Post by Kadin »

LionTamer wrote: post #264
zerohp wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US government has been setting the ceiling on performance that can be exported since the beginning of the computer industry. This is not really new but NVidia was caught by a surprise change in the limits.

When was this done previously?

Apple made a fairly big deal of the fact that the G5 processor, when they started putting it into their machines (or maybe it was when they went to dual G5s?), had just recently stopped being export-controlled by virtue of being classified as a "supercomputer".

(What really happened was that the Feds revised the definition of "supercomputer", and suddenly the G5 configuration they were using didn't qualify anymore... it had nothing to do with anything Apple did, except perhaps lobbying for it so they could build computers in China.)

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

#314

Post by ceeplusplus »

creatonez wrote: post #279
63 wrote: post #256

I guess I don't understand what the point is? A100s are extremely powerful and generally used for ML or mining, right? But mining is already illegal in China and if the PRC wants to do military AI, I'm sure they're capable of building their own super computer without A100s. This isn't banning weaponized ai. It just seems like a minor annoyance to a couple of China's bigger companies who will quickly produce alternati…

> I'm sure they're capable of building their own super computer without A100s They are most certainly not capable of doing this without silicon imports. Chinese manufacturing is hopelessly behind for the next decade at least.

But nation states have never been restricted by export bans. For example the US during the Cold War bought titanium for the SR71 from the Soviet Union. And Russia is buying chips on the black market today for its invasion of Ukraine.

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

#316

Post by creatonez »

ceeplusplus wrote: post #314
creatonez wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure they're capable of building their own super computer without A100s They are most certainly not capable of doing this without silicon imports. Chinese manufacturing is hopelessly behind for the next decade at least.

But nation states have never been restricted by export bans. For example the US during the Cold War bought titanium for the SR71 from the Soviet Union. And Russia is buying chips on the black market today for its invasion of Ukraine.

The comment I replied to is saying that without access to this specific CPU, they can still compete. That's tangential to whether or not they could get their hands on it anyways.

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

#317

Post by dannyw »

JBits wrote: post #315

I'm confused as to how the ban of exports to China is justifiable. Is this ban not some form of aggression? I can't see how the ban will achieve it's aims of "limiting" China nor do I see why it's acceptable for the US to do this.

I am also confused.

I understand in times of war or conflict, but this seems like deliberate economic sabotage.

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

#318

Post by Kadin »

user3939382 wrote: post #306

Won’t this just spur investment in alternatives in those markets and backfire?

Denying the Chinese access to American-designed parts broadens the competitive landscape, by forcing them to compete not just on supply chain, integration, and software, but also on chip design, in order to maintain parity in a key technology area.

This is advantageous to the US, or at least it's not as obviously disadvantageous as national competition centered on, say, manufacturing.

The US is never going to compete seriously with China on bulk/commodity manufacturing. But I think that there is a sense that we might have more of a shot competing in very advanced manufacturing (actual die fabrication; the manufacturing of high-end machinery and tooling for such; etc.) and in microprocessor design. Thus it makes sense to try to deny to China the fruits of those industries.

I would assume that the machinery used in high-end fabrication is probably a logical next step, if it's not export-controlled for one reason or another already. (If it's not, some arm-twisting might be required to get the Europeans to play ball, since I think a lot of that stuff is also made in, or made with significant submodules from, the EU.)

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

#319

Post by neonsunset »

For people having doubts regarding Taiwan's semiconductor industry, I present you a case in point: Ukraine's grain and other sectors. The only way to stop industry is militarily. Considering the expectation for US to step in and prevent the blockade, I doubt we'll see a full stop, even if disruptions will be felt worldwide.

Overall, when thinking about potential war, I think my country is a much better example to rationalize what might happen when compared to situations like ex-Yugoslavia scenario. This isn't meant to say it's not bad here, in Ukraine, because it absolutely is, and some places like Mariupol were hell (up to 100k civilian casualties, I pray for their souls).

However, globally speaking, you can extrapolate the events to the capacity of each country to be self-sufficient when it comes to the basics like food, energy and some manufacturing. So yeah, while the war with China would be a terrible development, US has a lot of resiliency and ability to produce everything domestically, even if it means that inefficient companies and bloated bureaucracy will have to go (maybe favor subsidizing STEM degrees over cancelling student debt for people majoring in gender studies?).

Keep in mind that complex organizations at some point start to survive not because of the complexity of their procedures but in spite of them. So when crisis happens, provided the organization is resilient enough and adapts through pain, the outcome is not as bad as it seems.

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

#320

Post by sudosysgen »

onepointsixC wrote: post #274
sudosysgen wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that as if it didn't just turn out that China has been producing 7nm chips for at least a year.

Real Question is what yields have they been producing those chips at. Mining chips pay for themselves, so it's not as much of a big deal if your process is bad and only 20% of your wafer is usable. If you want to make a super computer out of chips from a process with 20% yields, then you're spending absurd amounts.

I have a question for you. Do you know that, or why, China stopped submitting new entries to the Top500, while numerous sources are claiming China brought online exascale computers with custom architectures?

Mining chips don't just simply pay for themselves. If it was cheaper to get the chips fabbed at Samsung or TSMC at any other lithography they'd be fabbed there. The company that made the miners isn't even Chinese. That it was fabbed there means that not only was there yield leftover from whatever state project was required, it was also commercially competitive.

Post reply on HN