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Alibaba Cloud says it cut Nvidia AI GPU use by 82% with new pooling system

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Re: Alibaba Cloud says it cut Nvidia AI GPU use by 82% with new pooling system

#141

Post by notepad0x90 »

lossolo wrote: post #52
notepad0x90 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would think so, but historically that's why they never became more than a regional power. Empires for millennia craved trade with China but only the mongols from that region made it all the way to western europe in their invasions. It is a strength, if their goal is to have a stable and prosperous country long term, and that seems to be what they want. good for them. But nature abhors a vacuum, so there will alwa…

> But nature abhors a vacuum, so there will always be an empire at the top of the food chain The world has been bipolar and multipolar before in history, and it can be again. The unipolar period of American dominance is ending.

Yes, it can but those poles are expansionist/influential empires not isolationist states. For example, China wants involvement in African development but they don't want any say or interference in local affairs, they can exert influence but they don't want to.

Re: Alibaba Cloud says it cut Nvidia AI GPU use by 82% with new pooling system

#143

Post by notepad0x90 »

rayiner wrote: post #65
notepad0x90 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think anti-immigrant rhetoric will have the most impact against the US. A lot of the people innovating on this stuff are being maligned and leaving in droves. Aside from geography, attracting talent from all over the world is the one edge the US has a nation over countries like China. But now the US is trying to be xenophobic like China, restrict tech import/export like China but compete against 10x population and…

> But now the US is trying to … compete against 10x population and lack of similar levels of internal strife and fissures. I can’t tell whether you think the anti-immigration stance is a good thing or bad thing.

it's bad for the US, because China has 10x population. the US can't make up in quality, what it lacks in quantity without immigration and attracting foreigners.

Re: Alibaba Cloud says it cut Nvidia AI GPU use by 82% with new pooling system

#144

Post by MSFT_Edging »

dlisboa wrote: post #11
hunglee2 wrote: post #2

The US attempt to slow down China's technological development succeeds on the basis of preventing China from directly following the same path, but may backfire in the sense it forces innovation by China in a different direction. The overall outcome for us all may be increase efficiency as a result of this forced innovation, especially if Chinese companies continue to open source their advances, so we may in the end h…

History has shown that withholding technology from China does not significantly stop them and they'll achieve it (or better) in a small number of years. In many senses there's hubris in the western* view of China accomplishments: most of what western companies have created has had significant contribution by Chinese scientists or manufacturing, without which those companies would have nothing. If you look at the name…

The whole "western" or "the west" always makes me laugh. Half the time it's a dog whistle for "white". Like many right-wing commentators love saying "Western Values" to avoid saying "white, Euro-centric, Christian values".

Mexico is a modern country, an industrialized country, a country that is exactly as "western" as the US or Canada. They have the same religious beliefs, speak a dialect of a European language. They have European style cities, a long history of cultural contributions. Yet they're not white enough to be part of "The West".

I think at this point we should be honest with ourselves in it's usage. 90% of the time it's a racist dog whistle.

Re: Alibaba Cloud says it cut Nvidia AI GPU use by 82% with new pooling system

#145

Post by lazide »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #144
dlisboa wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History has shown that withholding technology from China does not significantly stop them and they'll achieve it (or better) in a small number of years. In many senses there's hubris in the western* view of China accomplishments: most of what western companies have created has had significant contribution by Chinese scientists or manufacturing, without which those companies would have nothing. If you look at the name…

The whole "western" or "the west" always makes me laugh. Half the time it's a dog whistle for "white". Like many right-wing commentators love saying "Western Values" to avoid saying "white, Euro-centric, Christian values". Mexico is a modern country, an industrialized country, a country that is exactly as "western" as the US or Canada. They have the same religious beliefs, speak a dialect of a European language. They…

But why would anyone want to do that?

You do realize that antagonizing people with nuclear weapons and the largest economies in the world rarely results in positive results, right?

Re: Alibaba Cloud says it cut Nvidia AI GPU use by 82% with new pooling system

#146

Post by tw04 »

dlisboa wrote: post #11
hunglee2 wrote: post #2

The US attempt to slow down China's technological development succeeds on the basis of preventing China from directly following the same path, but may backfire in the sense it forces innovation by China in a different direction. The overall outcome for us all may be increase efficiency as a result of this forced innovation, especially if Chinese companies continue to open source their advances, so we may in the end h…

History has shown that withholding technology from China does not significantly stop them and they'll achieve it (or better) in a small number of years. In many senses there's hubris in the western* view of China accomplishments: most of what western companies have created has had significant contribution by Chinese scientists or manufacturing, without which those companies would have nothing. If you look at the name…

> History has shown that withholding technology from China does not significantly stop them and they'll achieve it (or better) in a small number of years.

Really? How long has China been attempting to build their own jet engines? How long have they been attempting to build competitive CPUs?

History has shown withholding tech successfully keeps them at least a generation behind the west.

In some fields like CPUs they “make up for it” by just building larger clusters, but ultimately history does not show what you’re claiming. The only thing it shows is that we need to be even more diligent in protecting IP because a large portion of their catching up is a direct result of stealing the tech they were cut off from.

Re: Alibaba Cloud says it cut Nvidia AI GPU use by 82% with new pooling system

#147

Post by redserk »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #127
Yoric wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If for purely political reasons, China may never be able to export these chips to most of the world - which limits their scale - which makes it harder to make them cost effective compared to Western chips. Note that this happens at the same time the US is breaking up its own alliances, so as of this writing, there's no such thing as certainty about politics.

>the same time the US is breaking up its own alliances This isn't happening. The US is driving a harder bargain with our allies. No one serious thinks anyone is walking away from alliances with the US.

Why the framing of alliances like it’s a boolean?

The question of “can we trust the American government” is now being asked more often. Existing alliances and new potential alliances face that question, whether or not you personally believe that they should trust America.

Even if no concrete actions are being performed with asking that question, the fact that question is even being asked is a major drop from where we were.

Re: Alibaba Cloud says it cut Nvidia AI GPU use by 82% with new pooling system

#148

Post by hollerith »

notepad0x90 wrote: post #12
hunglee2 wrote: post #2

The US attempt to slow down China's technological development succeeds on the basis of preventing China from directly following the same path, but may backfire in the sense it forces innovation by China in a different direction. The overall outcome for us all may be increase efficiency as a result of this forced innovation, especially if Chinese companies continue to open source their advances, so we may in the end h…

I think anti-immigrant rhetoric will have the most impact against the US. A lot of the people innovating on this stuff are being maligned and leaving in droves. Aside from geography, attracting talent from all over the world is the one edge the US has a nation over countries like China. But now the US is trying to be xenophobic like China, restrict tech import/export like China but compete against 10x population and…

>But now the US is trying to be xenophobic like China, restrict tech import/export like China but compete against 10x population and lack of similar levels of internal strife and fissures.

Do I infer correctly that you believe that China has less internal strife and fissures than the US has?

Re: Alibaba Cloud says it cut Nvidia AI GPU use by 82% with new pooling system

#149

Post by MSFT_Edging »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #103
segmondy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

may backfire? it's a bit too late for that. go to 2024, western labs were crushing it. it's now 2025, and from china, we have deepseek, qwen, kimi, glm, ernie and many more capable models keeping up with western labs. there are actually now more chinese labs releasing sota models than western labs.

But they aren't keeping up They are lauded for the ability to cost ratio, or their ability to parameter ratio, but virtually everyone using LLMs for productive work are using ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude. They are kind of like Huffy bicycles. Good value, work well, but if you go to any serious event, no one will be riding one.

The downside of their efficiency and cost-ratio is that they undermine the circular economy of massive data centers, GPU sales, and VC money that is constructing an extremely wasteful bubble.

Re: Alibaba Cloud says it cut Nvidia AI GPU use by 82% with new pooling system

#150

Post by MangoCoffee »

kilotaras wrote: post #47

Alibaba Cloud claims to reduce Nvidia GPU used for serving unpopular models by 82% (emphasis mine) > 17.7 per cent of GPUs allocated to serve only 1.35 per cent of requests in Alibaba Cloud’s marketplace, the researchers found Instead of 1192 GPUs they now use 213 for serving those requests.

In the past, software and computer engineers would tackle problems head-on, designing algorithms and finding creative solutions.

thanks to the US restrictions on semiconductor industry (Chinese), Chinese engineers are being forced to innovate and find their own ways to overcome challenges like the old school engineers (What Silicon Valley used to be)

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