Live data from Hacker News

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

sec.gov

451–460 of 645 posts

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

#451
There is a little irony in the fact these chips are manufactured in Taiwan, which according to China is already 'in China'.

So these chips which are banned from going from the US to China, do already go from China to the US.

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

#452

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

This is one of those problems that “throwing money at it” doesn’t speed it up. China has been throwing money at the problem for over a decade and they’re still behind.

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

#453
post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the US government, it's many civilized governments doing these sort of things. And in this particular case this european is grateful for it because it is not about setting ceilings or hindering industry, it's about preventing the abuse of dual use goods. In other words; Not being fsckd by our own stuff. Other examples can be found here: https://www.wassenaar.org/app/uploads/2021/12/Public-Docs-Vo...

>it's many civilized governments... China not civilized? And before human rights becomes the main talking point: Guantanamo.

It's a gradient. How you throw things down on that is up to you. Guantanamo vs. reeducation and labor camps. Paying judges to help keep the local juvenile prison full vs. harvesting organs from prisoners. Suppression of free speech and the media vs. whatever we see on Twitter daily.

Civilized or not is up to your perspective.

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

#454

To me this is a pretty clear message that the US will defend Taiwan with full force.

As a Chinese, what I want to say is that populism here has risen rapidly in recent years, the Thucydides trap has been fulfilled again, and a war is basically inevitable. is the United States determined to deal with this earth war? How much are you willing to pay to protect Taiwan?

China under communist rule has a long history of changing their tune on a dime and the population going along with it without difficulty. If the Party decides tomorrow stoking nationalism is a bad idea it'll take a matter of weeks to have people saying, "The Taiwanese are our brothers, why would we fight them?" followed weeks later by "We never said we'd invade Taiwan, you just dont understand the way China works."

In the last 80 years the Chinese have become masters of holding diametrically opposed ideas. I believe they can back down from this without breaking a sweat.

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

#455
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Chinese, what I want to say is that populism here has risen rapidly in recent years, the Thucydides trap has been fulfilled again, and a war is basically inevitable. is the United States determined to deal with this earth war? How much are you willing to pay to protect Taiwan?

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…

> 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?

Standards of living in China were low very recently, for now middle class remembers this, and not having access to a parallel timeline (plus being under influence of ever-present propaganda) they think they should thank CCP for that. I suspect many of them are dissatisfied Taiwan is not attacked yet, hardly a moderating influence.

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

#457

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…

Sounds like the 80s/90s 208hp “gentleman’s agreement” in Japan. Most of those cars put out 320+hp with trivial bolt-on mods but they were all “208hp nudge nudge wink wink

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

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How so? The US never had a one child policy and replenishes population by allowing migrants to become Americans (try becoming a Chinese--this basically never happens). Manufacturing is moving to the US. Regarding scapegoating it's China where you see government propaganda adverts showing terrible and ugly capitalist western countries, nothing even close the other way around.

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

#459
post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'll eat a hat if any major league manager in the US who could decide this ever goes to prison. To be clear, I'd celebrate it, but the mortgage crisis showed that laws and punishment hardly work on top level execs.

ITAR is a bit different.

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

#460
post #342
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.

It's not just the US government, it's many civilized governments doing these sort of things. And in this particular case this european is grateful for it because it is not about setting ceilings or hindering industry, it's about preventing the abuse of dual use goods. In other words; Not being fsckd by our own stuff. Other examples can be found here: https://www.wassenaar.org/app/uploads/2021/12/Public-Docs-Vo...

"civilized governments"? how that works?
Post reply on HN