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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 o
by obblekk 4y ago
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 2-3yrs out.
Given that both political parties have placed export limits on tech to China, it seems this is the new normal.
- option 4y agowouldn’t a better strategy be have china depend on those product but require a sorts of built-on remote control in them in case of a conflict.
- mclightning 4y agono.
- foerbert 4y agoOnly if you expect China to forgo their own development of these sorts of products if they are given access to them.
- giantg2 4y agoIt's unlikely they would pay the premium when they can rip them off or design their own for cheaper. Edit: why disagree?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- LeonTheremin 4y agoEric 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-2022-04-01/ What he won’t tell is that this is already a reality, as I learned after having my air-gapped system and Pixel phone wiped remotely for researching “silent speech interfaces”. There is no security when silicon trojans are in all devices.
- d110af5ccf 4y ago> You could for example, on every chip put in essentially a public private key pair, which authenticates it and allows it to work intel SGX already involves a per-chip keypair with intel as the root of trust. it just isn't required to use the rest of the chip
- ethbr0 4y agoDid your airgapped systems get wiped remotely again, after the last time you posted about it 22 days ago? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32394353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32394353 > 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. [...]
- twirlock 4y ago
- LeonTheremin 4y agoNot my air-gapped again, but my phone is indeed interfered with to dissuade me from posting. Thanks for the concern.
- ethbr0 4y agoI'm going to put this nicely, so please take it in the constructive spirit intended -- serious claims require serious evidence to be believed. And a scattering of news articles or videos are not serious evidence. I truly believe you're very concerned about all the things you talk about, but if you want to convince people to also believe then there needs to be more from your side. And no, suggesting that people perform ptychographic x-ray laminography on their chips isn't a practical suggestion.
- LeonTheremin 4y agoFine with me. Evidence is better when people collect it themselves. If someone isn't willing to have their own air-gapped system, ask how they could bring about the same results that I found and carry experiments accepting the risks, they aren't properly looking for scientific knowledge and I am fine with them ignoring my claims. People with willingness and means can find me anyways.
- d110af5ccf 4y agolast I checked that's not what's at issue. they can't produce equivalent chips themselves and rely on them for various physics simulations that back weapons research
- bhedgeoser 4y agoYeah sure, bundle a freaking web server in you gpu driver.
- beebeepka 4y agoNvidia already has plenty of spyware in their drivers Edit: I knew this would get downvoted quickly. Hey, mr or ms judge of truth, how about you check what nvidia services run on your machine before wielding all that power.
- bhedgeoser 4y agoCrazy, do radeon drivers do anything like that?
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoWhy not? https://itigic.com/minix-the-hidden-operating-system-in-intel-hardware/ https://itigic.com/minix-the-hidden-operating-system-in-inte...
- na85 4y agoThink of the marketing for Nvidia: "The GPU so powerful we're not allowed to export it. "
- shotta 4y agoReminds me of an old Apple ad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoxvLq0dFvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoxvLq0dFvw
- MiddleEndian 4y agoThe G4 cases with the handles on the edges were so nice.
- KronisLV 4y agoI wonder how they could have said: "As for Pentium PCs... well, they're harmless." without that resulting in lawsuits. Somehow I feel that in our world the majority of corporations don't make direct comparisons to their competitors that often, preferring to use "competing brands" or something of that variety instead.
- DocTomoe 4y agoAvoiding a lawsuit is easy in that case: The Intel lawyer would have to make the argument that Pentium PCs are, in fact, harmful. Which would have opened a whole new can of worms.
- chmod600 4y ago"As for Pentium PCs... well, they're harmless." Hard to see how Intel could sue over a statement like that. The reason many companies say "competing brands" is because they don't want to mention an alternative, because it increases the mindshare of the other brand.
- 22SAS 4y agoor, "A100: The F-22 Raptor of GPU's!"
- zerohp 4y agoThe 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.
- LionTamer 4y agoWhen was this done previously?
- bobsmooth 4y agoCheck out the limitations ITAR places on exported electronics.
- sandworm101 4y agoIn many (most?) manufacturing industries there is an upper limit on export product performance. If you make steel, there are a bunch of types/grades subject to limits related to their use in nuclear technology. If you make microphones there is a limit on those that might be used in sonar arrays. Certainly all manner of limits exist in aerospace. Even game consoles have been limited (Iran). This is not an unusual regulation.
- freeflight 4y ago> If you make steel, there are a bunch of types/grades subject to limits related to their use in nuclear technology. Assuming said steel is actually of the quality it's certified as [0] [0] https://asiatimes.com/2017/10/nuclear-tentacles-kobe-steel/ https://asiatimes.com/2017/10/nuclear-tentacles-kobe-steel/
- zerohp 4y agoYou can go down the rabbit hole at federalregister.gov. Here's a couple places where they talk about it: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-15/subtitle-B/chapter-VII/subchapter-C/part-743/section-743.2 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-15/subtitle-B/chapter-VII... https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2006/04/24/06-3647/implementation-of-new-formula-for-calculating-computer-performance-adjusted-peak-performance-app-in https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2006/04/24/06-3647... You'll probably have to dig quite a bit to find the latest rules and regulations. These regulations go back to at least the Export Control Act of 1968. Every CPU/GPU maker would have a legal team that understands these rules.
- wildzzz 4y agoOne 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 meet their required levels. I've done this before for a commercial chip that was rumored to be radiation tolerant despite nothing from the vendor saying so and found that it well exceeded my expectations. I wonder if Nvidia can use a similar loophole where the chips are clocked at lower rates for export to meet the law but can be "overclocked" with hardware modifications.
- bredren 4y agoChinese brand 8fun (bafang) ebike motors have been sold this way for a long time. AFAIK, the spec for their mid drive motors has been well below output potential.
- zerohp 4y ago> 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.
- sigmoid10 4y agoI'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.
- zerohp 4y agoExactly. It would get pinned on some poor engineer just like the Volkswagen diesel stuff. That’s why an individual contributor should not take part in it. It’s better to get a different job.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y agosoooo..... if china and russia do a collab and reverse engineer the existing A100, what.... will USA or nvidia do? like sue them? haha
- treefry 4y agoThey cannot manufacture such advanced chip even if they have circuit design.
- tankenmate 4y agoNot 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.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y agohow 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
- popol12 4y agoI 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.
- markus92 4y agoThat's what they've been trying to do, of course, but so far they haven't really succeeded yet.
- girvo 4y agoThis 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.
- ako 4y agoAre these GPUs being produced in china? Maybe china will ban shipping these to the US?
- gh02t 4y agoNvidia does their main chip fab in Taiwan AFAIK, along with a large number of other companies. It's one of the reasons tensions over Taiwan are worrying. China could blockade or invade Taiwan and start a "shortage" far worse than anything we've seen recently if they decided it was necessary/worthwhile.
- MichaelZuo 4y agoNearly all chip packaging however happens in mainland China. Including presumably for Nvidia's products. Though Nvidia has probably already sourced some niche provider at a much higher cost elsewhere in anticipation.
- gh02t 4y agoIndeed, China has lots of other levers it can exert to cause a catastrophic shortage entirely on its own. Chip fabs in Taiwan are a big problem because there aren't many alternatives elsewhere, and due to the cost/time required to stand up a SOTA fab facility.
- iszomer 4y agoNo surprise. I imagine they'll just buy older and/or more stable stock. Worked on a three 50U rack recently with quad T4's per 2U and we're not even through 10% of that order yet.
- totoglazer 4y agoT4 is great for some stuff. And total trash for many other things you might want A100/H100 for.
- iszomer 4y agoThat wasn't my point. We build servers, test them, and ship them (in the US). No fucks given on the technical superiority of the `A100/H100` than parts that may be a generation older.
- ShamelessC 4y agoYeah I mean, great for running inference (and obviously training smaller models). The problem is that Scaling Laws for Transformers show us that scaling model parameter count _up_, is a sure way to improve the model's performance over your task. So when you're playing nation-state hard-ball, since the architectures are _somewhat_ trivially copied upon being published, that means the best checkpoint goes to the one with the fastest GPU's. If China wasn't behind in deep learning, they will be.
- madaxe_again 4y agoI can’t see how this would be effectively enforced - what’s to prevent them from spinning up an arm’s-length subsidiary (i.e. controlled through trustworthy middlemen) outside of US jurisdiction and using that to sell to prohibited markets? Like, exactly what, for instance, crocs are doing with Russia - or Tetley’s did with Teapigs (for different reasons).