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DeepSeek uses banned Nvidia chips for AI model, report says

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: DeepSeek uses banned Nvidia chips for AI model, report says

#221

Post by PunchyHamster »

codedokode wrote: post #71
rvnx wrote: post #19

Long term consequences: China outperforms Nvidia, by producing cheaper, faster chips at a large scale, by getting inspired by the IP but using their own production lines. Through sanctions, the irony is that the west removed the incentive for China to respect IP laws. Well done. If they can solve the lithography/ASML issue by getting access to it, then they will be forced to win.

I don't know much about GPUs, but is there really any value in IP? I can learn to write HDL code all day long, but turning it into real transistors is the hard part. Code is worth nothing nowadays with AI.

not IP in particular but APIs. Putting your existing CUDA codebase into new NVIDIA generation that might be noticeably more expensive but is still faster/more energy-efficient than competition.

Competition's software stack have to be good enough that it is worth migrating over and I think till we get some kind of cross vendor API for that it won't happen for a while

Re: DeepSeek uses banned Nvidia chips for AI model, report says

#222

Post by actionfromafar »

ignoramous wrote: post #183
voidnap wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The bans are export controls. They are not banned in china. They are just banned from export in the US. Using them in china is legal in china.

> Yes. The bans are export controls. These export controls increasingly look like "tax". The White House said the US government would take a 25 percent cut of the chip’s sales, similar to a deal with AMD and Nvidia earlier this year that allowed them to sell lower-powered AI chips to China while paying the US government 15 percent of the proceeds. > Using them in China is legal in China. Technically, yes. The CCP, th…

This recent White House is another animal. It’s just bribes all the way down.

Re: DeepSeek uses banned Nvidia chips for AI model, report says

#223

Post by robotnikman »

Lammy wrote: post #123
the_pwner224 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just selling my RTX 4090 on Ebay recently and got a ton of bids from Chinese accounts. The winner ($2,325) had Australia set as the country on their profile, but a Chinese name on the account, and the order shipping address was to a different Chinese name (to a regular single-family house in Delaware). Most bidders straight up had China as their profile country. So my 4090 (24 GB) is probably going to get turne…

> So my 4090 (24 GB) is probably going to get turned into a 48/96 GB VRAM frankenstein in a Chinese chop shop Cool, though. Where can I buy one? :p

last I checked you can find these cards with more VRAM on aliexpress and ebay.

Re: DeepSeek uses banned Nvidia chips for AI model, report says

#224

Post by spencerflem »

nish__ wrote: post #191
esafak wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The player has the power to change the game.

That is just not true. The referees have the power to change the game. The fans have the power to change the game. The owners and the commissioners have the power to change the game. The players have no power at all.

I don’t see how that follows

Re: DeepSeek uses banned Nvidia chips for AI model, report says

#225

Post by LogicFailsMe »

htrp wrote: post #199
nostrademons wrote: post #119

I thought this was common knowledge. DeepSeek’s Wikipedia entry says that they trained all their models on Nvidia chips procured before the U.S. embargo to China on them. It wouldn’t surprise me if they continued acquiring them through, well, less than legal means. I also read somewhere (not Wikipedia) that they trained on ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini queries, basically feeding in the output of competitor’s LLMs as tr…

Everyone trains on queries from other models, it's called distillation

Well, given AI content cannot be copyrighted, haters can hate hate hate hate hate...

Re: DeepSeek uses banned Nvidia chips for AI model, report says

#226

Post by drysine »

echelon wrote: post #157
ComputerGuru wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s bandits all the way down, so adding a little smuggling to that doesn’t surprise me. Implying it’s *morally* wrong for a Chinese company to bypass US sanctions is hilarious. You really say that with a straight face when even the president admits this is only protectionism?

It's the moral imperative of every country to optimize for its citizens' economic prospects. The CIA (and every other intelligence org.) is literally a weapon designed to operate in the grey area to fit the mandate of the policy makers and elected leadership. Many of the things they do are questionable or worse. In the case of the DoD, they do these things at the behest of democratically elected leadership. Of course…

>It's the moral imperative of every country to optimize for its citizens' economic prospects.

Moral???

Re: DeepSeek uses banned Nvidia chips for AI model, report says

#227

Post by realusername »

echelon wrote: post #166
yannyu wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just "might makes right" but modern. I don't know that this is the consistent, wide-held belief that you seem to think it is. Plenty of people would rather our governments not engage in clandestine disruption and undermining of foreign governments. Competition is inevitable, especially between geopolitical rivals, but we don't have to engage in Minitrue-style "the enemy has always been our enemy" rhetoric.

We live under economic conditions created by a government that does intervene. And a greater world order established by a hegemon that does intervene. It would be interesting to see what life would be like today had that not happened. It might be better, it might be worse. Probably a little of both for different groups of people. As the world returns to multi-polarity, there are signs of increases in violence. The la…

This is not news, I had "the multi polar world" in history class in high school in the early 2000s, it's just that the US suddenly realized it and has been blind to the change for a while.

Re: DeepSeek uses banned Nvidia chips for AI model, report says

#228

Post by pembrook »

dlisboa wrote: post #112
pembrook wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that a fair playing field for everyone would be the ideal state. But let's not pretend China doesn't use their influence to keep other countries down as well, and let's not pretend they allow a fair playing field for foreign competitors domestically either. The US would not have imposed these targeted sanctions if China simply wanted to fairly compete in the marketplace.

The US sanctions have nothing to do with free market maximalism. I thought that was quite obvious historically and specially now. They've imposed tariffs on literally every country on the planet.

It's my fault for wading into a political discussion on a forum of react developers. That's on me.

But the "banned" chips this article is referring to and the original chips act is from the Biden administration, having nothing to do with the current tariff climate.

Also, obviously US actions have nothing to do with free market maximalism. Nor does China feel that way either. Which is my point.

Re: DeepSeek uses banned Nvidia chips for AI model, report says

#229

Post by codyb »

yannyu wrote: post #179
echelon wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We live under economic conditions created by a government that does intervene. And a greater world order established by a hegemon that does intervene. It would be interesting to see what life would be like today had that not happened. It might be better, it might be worse. Probably a little of both for different groups of people. As the world returns to multi-polarity, there are signs of increases in violence. The la…

> The last time the world had multi-polarity, we had far more wars. Including the worst wars the world has ever seen. Citations? Simply saying that World War 1 happened during a time of multi-polarity is just begging the question. Multi-polarity of varying degrees has always been the case throughout human history, and often times single-polarity is achieved only through extreme violence.

American Hegemony or Pax Americana (post WWII until present) is the most peaceful period of human history, despite the myriad atrocities which have occurred during that period, from myriad different parties, including the USA itself

A big reason for that, as far as I can tell, is that if one side has the USA on its side, they're basically unattackable for many places since the USA is so over powered militarily and can project force anywhere

It stands to reason as the USA recedes from the world's stage it will get more violent as more nations stand at parity with their adversaries again. And we're certainly seeing wars cropping up lately as the US continues to undermine its traditional allies, bully adversaries, declare trade wars, and withdraw from agreements.

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