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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

#351

Post by zerohp »

wildzzz wrote: post #294
obblekk wrote: post #146

This doesn't just ban A100s. It bans those and "any future NVIDIA integrated circuit achieving both peak performance and chip-to-chip I/O performance equal to or greater than thresholds that are roughly equivalent to the A100." It's a ceiling on the performance that can be exported. In an exponentially scaling industry, this is the equivalent of an announcement in advance of a complete ban on competitive products 2-3…

One way that companies get around ITAR and similar regulations for things like space grade components that have radiation tolerant features is to only rad test up to what the limits are. The components are probably much more resilient than what they are specced for but by only declaring the legal limit, companies can still export their products. The foreign buyers can do their own testing to prove the components can…

> Under the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (50 U.S.C. §§ 4801-4852) (ECRA), criminal penalties can include up to 20 years of imprisonment and up to $1 million in fines per violation, or both.

I work in CPU design and I wouldn't risk it.

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

#352

Post by unmole »

speeder wrote: post #269
xedrac wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems ridiculous that we don't officially acknowledge Taiwan. But to say it's not China, might be misleading. Does the Taiwanese government still make claim on China?

Kinda yes. To start, why Taiwan exists? Its roots are related to how China became a republic in first place, when the Emperor was booted from power, China quickly became the land of warlordism, with generals treating their subordinates as personal army, and each warlord promoting a different ideology. Although officially in history books people separate the period as many smaller civil wars, the fact is that China is…

> Kuomingtang still exists, and their supporters among Taiwan's population believe they should prepare and then fight back, and win the civil war, wipe communist party out of the face of the earth, and re-take mainland China.

This is a rather outdated caricature. If anything, Kuomintang is now seen as being too soft on the PRC. Of course, the KMT is not a homogeneous blob and there are diverse viewpoints vis-a-vis Cross-Strait relations within the party. But there is zero support for taking the mainland by force.

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4576006

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

#353

Post by adrian_b »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #87
cpursley wrote: post #13

And so then Russia buys them via Armenia or Kazakstan for a 30% markup... The only way to really do this is to geo-fence disable the chips.

It would take them years to acquire the GPUs at the scale that they need them. By the time they do that they're 2 generations behind. It's about adding a barrier.

The barrier has been added too late. They have already made their first datacenter GPUs and they are no longer dependent of NVIDIA.

Replacing CUDA programs will take work, but they have enough people for that and this is an easier task than designing a GPU.

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

#354

Post by ezconnect »

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?

Since the creation of the United States of America. One famous in the computer era is the banning of encryption algorithm.

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

#355

Post by autoexec »

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.

Considering how much of what we have is made in china in the first place, how can they not already have all the tech they need? I assume if they can't get fast US devices they'll just use the US designs we give them to make whatever they need on their own dime, likely to sell for less than the prices we'd be demanding.

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

#356

Post by [deleted] »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #332
majormajor wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like an attempt to play lawyerball and find larger significance than exists in a fact. For instance, the US recognizes Taiwan passports for visitors, those are not China passports... and they treat visitors differently, see how Taiwan is on this list and China is not: https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/201... So "by default" the US already "officially" recognizes Taiwan as "not China.…

> This seems like an attempt to play lawyerball Yes, that's literally what the original question was?

[deleted]

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

#358

Post by adrian_b »

sudosysgen wrote: post #321
ajross wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on how SMIC's ramp goes. Right now they're shipping what amount to samples only. And even then there's no chips to fab absent more development work. Making a ML accelerator is hard . If AMD and Intel (actually Google and Tesla seem closer) can't beat NVIDIA, you really think Goodix is going to get it done? High tech is still high tech for a reason. Sure, in the long term China is going to get there event…

Are they? Do you know why China stopped submitting any supercomputers to Top500 despite widespread reports of two exascale supercomputers coming online? And why would they prioritize commercial chip sales over national security projects? AMD and Google have already beat Nvidia at the ML accelerator hardware game in the past. Google TPUs have had the edge over Nvidia cards for a few years, and AMD spent almost a decad…

> They can make an ML accelerator comparable to the A100 if they want to.

That is already in the past. They have already designed a datacenter GPU faster than NVIDIA A100 (made at TSMC):

https://www.servethehome.com/biren-br100-gpu-for-datacenter-...

Alibaba has already the fastest per socket server CPU for non-floating-point workloads, which has 128 Armv9 cores and DDR5 and PCIe5 before the launch of Intel Sapphire Rapids and AMD Genoa.

At this time, China is at least at parity with USA in chip design, so no export bans of US chips can hurt them.

Their only vulnerability is the dependence on the superior manufacturing capability of TSMC, so only banning exports from TSMC to China can hurt them (like Huawei was hurt when they were no longer able to make chips at TSMC).

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

#359

Post by notsapiensatall »

sandworm101 wrote: post #299
22SAS wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or, "A100: The F-22 Raptor of GPU's!"

So... designed in the 80s. Built in the 90s. Never exported. And not manufactured for over a decade?

Think like a marketer. How about, "Fast, quiet, and comfortable in the clouds"?

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

#360

Post by DSingularity »

Funny. And when the Chinese steal whatever IP they want they will eventually produce their own chips. Then when they improve the designs they will produce them in bulk, sell them at a premium, and buy them at a discount.

If the US wants to maintain its hegemonic hood over the world — it best not be relying on these kinds of strategies.

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