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

431–440 of 645 posts

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

#431

Post by paganel »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #172
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.

That could also be a good way to get their sales banned to Armenia and Kazakhstan.

And then Kazakhstan buys them from the Saudis or from Turkey, who are de facto US allies (Turkey is even a NATO member, a big one). The US can try and do something about it, as supposedly the CIA has just tried to do a couple of weeks ago in connection to the recent sanctions against Russia, but what do you when the Turks tell you to shove it? (which is what Turkey's response to the CIA demands was). This is one of the "best" sources I could find in English [1] because, obviously, the Western media has not reported on it.

[1] https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/CIA-Allegedly-Targets-Tu...

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

#433

Post by zimpenfish »

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…

> where the chips are clocked at lower rates for export

You'd probably have a hard time claiming that was "peak performance" for the chip if it's underclocked with "nudge-nudge-wink-wink" overclocking available.

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

#434

Post by PeterStuer »

cbozeman wrote: post #396
gred wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'd be seeing significantly less concern in the West if the "official" Chinese worldview were more democratic, less authoritarian, more humanistic, and less illiberal. How long will it take for the emerging Chinese middle class to force changes internally, move up Maslow's hierarchy, and demand freedom of conscience, speech, religion, assembly, press, petition, and privacy? IMO it's a bit of a race between the Chine…

Things are going to get worse in China, not better. In 60 years, they'll have half their current population (One Child Policy). Not only that, but Western companies have seen the writing on the wall. Production is moving out of China to Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc.. Semiconductor facilities are being built in America. We're not going to be able to avoid a war with China, because Pooh Bear has to have a scapegoat and…

Funny thing is you could write a very simillar post with the protagonists reversed.

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

#435

Post by mk89 »

paganel wrote: post #428
anshumankmr wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how far can they stop the re-selling? Let's just say the US stops direct sales, but the GPUs are sold to country X who is a close ally of the US, who sells it to Y who is not that big of an ally to the US who in turns sells the GPUs to China. This could go on and on.

That's what's actually going now with oil-related sales over much of the Middle East and Southern Europe. Supposedly Greek ship owners are making a killing transporting the oil stuff and helping it change enough hands so that it can be bought from inside the countries that have formally sanctioned Russia. Physically harder to do that with gas, hence why we have the current crisis.

Even better. Some days ago I read that India was [re-]selling Russian oil to USA. :) of course, they didn't know it.

Good luck preventing bad actors from actually selling such illegal items.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-says-india-hid-ru...

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

#436

Post by endominus »

01100011 wrote: post #383
g42gregory wrote: post #366

I am not sure what exactly the thought process is here? So NVIDA is losing Chinese market, probably for the foreseeable future. Chinese are one step away from figuring out this technology anyway, if not already. They will not trust us again. It makes them less dependent on us. Oh, and we still need their manufacturing because of the labor costs, environmental issues, regulations and now, energy costs. How would this…

It seems to only make sense if we feel that advanced technology enables a greater threat in the near future... ... or we're governed by morons. Take your pick. Nice that this comes a month after the Pelosis cleared their NVDA holdings. Just a coincidence, I'm sure.

It's kind of astounding that the Senate can literally legalize insider trading for themselves and nothing comes of it. There's no one pointing out how that's just garden-variety corruption common in every authoritarian, extractive state, but one step removed. A great example of how even in a democratic society, the people cannot realistically expect lawmakers to pass laws against those lawmakers' own economic interests.

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

#437

Post by Guthur »

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #36
Guthur wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between whom? Hard to see any particular country having the desire or where for all to undertake such an endeavour.

China/Taiwan

Not really a land war.

Also China has desire to resolve the civil war by other means.

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

#439

Post by popol12 »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #427
tankenmate wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, by the time they figure how to do it the rest of the world will have moved on by at least 2 generations. SMIC has announced 14nm (but shipments in volume aren't clear), TSMC will have 5nm chips shipping in volume by the end of the month.

how does that matter? SMIC had the 7nm news recently, not sure about that but even if it is 14nm, can't they throw money on the problem and get something to start with? they don't have to achieve A100 levels in the first go, even Rpi level chips should be enough to give them experience

I guess they are not able to buy the tooling (think ASML EUV) to make advanced node either. So, they’d also need to throw a shitload of time and money at this.

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

#440

Post by rootw0rm »

alliao wrote: post #262
LeonTheremin wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eric Schmidt, the former Google chairman, told Reuters in a recent interview that high-end processors should have kill-switches. “Knowing where the chips go is probably a very good thing. You could for example, on every chip put in essentially a public private key pair, which authenticates it and allows it to work”. hxxps://www.reuters.com/technology/chip-challenge-keeping-western-semiconductors-out-russian-weapons-2…

vacuum gapped for the next try?

why stop there? I propose a FOOF gap
Post reply on HN