Live data from Hacker News

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

tomshardware.com

81–90 of 331 posts

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

#81
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…

The US isn't slowing China anymore. China has an import ban on chips [1] so its irrelevant what the US does. [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/17/nvidia-ceo-disappointed-afte...

Would they have done that if the US had been more "reliable" in providing the chips and didn't cut them off in the first place?

The point still stands that the US instigated the split.

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

#83
post #68
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, China's greatest weakness is their lack of ambition and focus on regional matters like Taiwan and south china sea, instead of winning over western europe and india. That's a strength. Them not having interest in global domination and regime change other than their backyard is what allows them to easily make partners in Africa and LATAM, the most important regions for raw materials.

>Them not having interest in global domination and regime change I don't even know where to begin with that one.

Alright let's hear it.

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

#84
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…

The US isn't slowing China anymore. China has an import ban on chips [1] so its irrelevant what the US does. [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/17/nvidia-ceo-disappointed-afte...

The US is certainly slowing down China considerably. China would certainly not have an import ban on Blackwell GPUs if they were made available. And upstream, the ban on EUV and other high end semiconductor production equipment has severely limited china’s capacity to produce logic and DRAM (including HBM).

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

#85
post #40
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…

Another outcome may be that we now have to learn Chinese to understand their datasheets ...

I was doing this in the 70-80s with electronics from Hong Kong and Japan. The nice cheap stuff ( I was very young ) was all sheets in things I basically had to pattern match against notes of others on BBS and meetups.

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

#86
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…

The US isn't slowing China anymore. China has an import ban on chips [1] so its irrelevant what the US does. [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/17/nvidia-ceo-disappointed-afte...

> China has an import ban on chips

Only in response to the US banning the export of the high-end GPUs China wanted. The import ban is the Chinese government burning the the landing ships, it clearly communicates to everyone that there is no going back, and total commitment is expected.

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

#87
post #8

Does someone know if there's some equivalent of those engineering/research blogs for Chinese companies? I used to follow the ones from Western companies, but honestly, after some point in time, I would like to see some cases from what I consider is a good benchmark for everyone that does not work in FAANG in terms of engineering.

The company blogs of Chinese companies will often do articles like this[1] talking about a new innovation or optimization that they did, but this will be often just mixed in with marketing articles too.

I would also assume there's a lot of content in the native Chinese forums, which unfortunately, as an English-speaking person, I wouldn't be able to easily refer to :(

[1] https://www.alibabacloud.com/blog/how-does-alibaba-ensure-th...

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

#88
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…

> 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. It's worked for a very long time for aircraft. China has been pushing to build its own aircraft for >23 years. It took 14 years for COMAC to get its first regional jet flying commercial flights on a Chinese airline, and 21 years to get a narrow-body plane flying a…

But at the same time they are fielding multiple new stealth aircraft and their jets and missiles outperformed western aircraft in the recent Pakistan India flare-up.

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

#89
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…

> look at the names Why would I do that tho? If we look at the names of scientists/researchers/engineers/businessmen, the conclusion would be that the US has contributed nothing to the world. Europeans did all the hard work!

Another equivalent way to look at that:

Historically, top scientists/researchers/engineers/businessmen migrate from rest of the world to the US rather than to Europe or China.

Imagine if Europe or China were a bit more open with immigration and equally attractive, we would see the same pattern there too.

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

#90
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…

It's much easier to copy what others are doing instead of spending the time and money for research and engineering. It's also much easier if you steal the tech. I could never have invented a bicycle but I can sure make a copy of one.
Post reply on HN