The US Government Blocks Export of NVIDIA’s A100 AI GPUs to a Chinese Firm

[DuckDodgers]

China was barred from accessing NVIDIA's H800s and A800s, which were already cut-down variants previously developed by the firm, but now is being reported that the US has blocked off access to an older AI product, the A100.

 

Quotes

Quote

U.S. Department of Commerce Blocks Off NVIDIA's A100 Access To a Firm, Hinting More Harsher Sanctions In Future.

 

The Wall Street Journal reports that US officials have intervened in the sale of 24 of NVIDIA's A100 AI GPUs to a Chinese automotive company, TuSimple, claiming that there is a possibility that the AI chips might end up getting in China. TuSimple has disclosed that the chips are meant for a subsidiary in Australia, but after an investigation by the U.S. Department of Commerce and other authorities, there was a risk of a "technology transfer," which was ultimately prevented by an intervention. The US has already notified TuSimple to separate its dealings from China to operate in the US, but things ultimately heated up, which is why the firm has decided to delist from NASDAQ as well.

 

While there isn't a piece of concert evidence to back the "China" claim, WSJ sources disclose that the company's CEO Cheng Lu did want the A100s to be shifted to China by redirecting them to the Australian offices, as Australia isn't under the list of the "banned" nations for AI chip sales. If this is true, the move by the US government was evident to happen since the authorities are particularly active in this matter, and as claimed by US officials multiple times, the rise of AI is a threat to "national security".

 

Looks like Mr. Huang would need more "dance" classes with all the tightening export restrictions around Nvidia.

 

Source:

https://wccftech.com/us-government-blocks-nvidia-a100-ai-gpus-chinese-firm-technology-transfer/

[da na]

Can't wait for the China-specific A99 with 0.3% fewer CUDA cores...

[Somerandomtechyboi]

I wonder what the chinese would pay if someone were to buy one of these gpus and fly to china to resell

[BiotechBen]

*malicious compliance* 

If we are following the law to the letter, we cannot be in violation of it.

[Agall]

9 minutes ago, DuckDodgers said:

China was barred from accessing NVIDIA's H800s and A800s, which were already cut-down variants previously developed by the firm, but now is being reported that the US has blocked off access to an older AI product, the A100.

 

Quotes

 

Looks like Mr. Huang would need more "dance" classes with all the tightening export restrictions around Nvidia.

 

Source:

https://wccftech.com/us-government-blocks-nvidia-a100-ai-gpus-chinese-firm-technology-transfer/

There's a lot faster way China can get these GPUs, but that's assuming TSMC doesn't sabotage their own fab in the process, which they likely will.

[TetraSky]

The US really think they can stop the inevitable...

[Lunar River]

Sorry but i would think if the US really wants to get into a trade war with China…China would probably win

[starsmine]

1 hour ago, TetraSky said:

The US really think they can stop the inevitable...

I dont think anyone is under that illusion of a thought. Its just going to delay them, which is still economically and defense wise, incredibly significant. 
 

 

46 minutes ago, Lunar River said:

Sorry but i would think if the US really wants to get into a trade war with China…China would probably win

That is why the battles are generally carfully picked

 

[Donut417]

Im waiting till they ban all GPU's to China. I mean it sounds ridiculous but if you have seen the US lately, ridiculous is what seems to be normal now days.

[Orangeator]

9 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

I wonder what the chinese would pay if someone were to buy one of these gpus and fly to china to resell

People reading this comment, please do not attempt this. If caught you could face serious legal consequences. And the US is actively trying to prevent this. You will likely be charged if caught. Not worth the extra cash.

[williamcll]

10 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

I wonder what the chinese would pay if someone were to buy one of these gpus and fly to china to resell

Not much probably.

[mr moose]

10 hours ago, Lunar River said:

Sorry but i would think if the US really wants to get into a trade war with China…China would probably win

We had a little trade war with them not long ago,  they tried to stop buying our coal,  they went back to it after they realized they had no choice.   I feel a little more comfortable about our economy after that.

[DuckDodgers]

12 hours ago, Lunar River said:

Sorry but i would think if the US really wants to get into a trade war with China…China would probably win

China's economy is much too dependent on both exports and imports than US is. In fact, the US of all developed countries is by far the least dependent on the global trade and could wield a trade war with ease against China, taking much less damage. It also helps to have the world's reserve currency, the most powerful navy and hundreds of military bases and outposts around the world.

[thorhammerz]

5 hours ago, DuckDodgers said:

China's economy is much too dependent on both exports and imports than US is. In fact, the US of all developed countries is by far the least dependent on the global trade and could wield a trade war with ease against China, taking much less damage.

IIRC, around 2/3rds of the trade (in GDP) is within the NAFTA itself. If trade stops tomorrow, North America in all likelihood experiences a nasty recession with product shortages across the consumer electronics space for several years. But it'll also be all over in 5-10 years (industrial reshoring to mainland & Mexico is an ongoing process, but hardly complete).

5 hours ago, DuckDodgers said:

It also helps to have the world's reserve currency,

While yes, it allows massive budget deficits (and will only get larger as the boomer generation continues their 25-year-long sojourn into senescence... whatever red numbers Congress is passing now is only going to get larger for probably another decade), the economic "drag" is still very much real. Most of the consequences are simply several decades further out than what most doomsday pundits larp on (the short version being "when its time for the millennials to retire").

 

There is (at this time) no alternative ("hard" currency like Gold & Bitcoin are off the table because they are hard: modern society & economy operates on being able to "poof" up line items on both sides of banking balance sheet into existence), simply because nobody wants anyone else's fiat/debt (the Europeans shot themselves out of contention after the last financial crisis).

 

5 hours ago, DuckDodgers said:

the most powerful navy and hundreds of military bases and outposts around the world.

I would argue the military bases themselves aren't important for the US: without the Soviet threat they are primarily for the benefit for the local power in saying "we have American troops here, attack and you anger Uncle Sam". The important part is the navy, which is blue water capable regardless of whether the aforementioned bases exist (having a navy means you get to pick and choose where the fight happens, and if you don't win, you run away and fight again another day).

 

The "problem" China faces is multi-faceted. Just looking at the non-financial parts of it (as books can be cooked to delay problems almost indefinitely)

• A horrible demographics structure. Domestic consumption led growth is basically an impossibility upon consumption saturation of their existing population. Cue their own boomer generation moving into their late 60's and 70's over the next decade, and the CCP will have to start being extremely creative in how they want to implement old age support (basically from scratch), on top of the productivity losses that comes with lots of people retiring (and not enough replacements filling in).
• They import roughly 70% of their energy, most of which comes via tanker on the ocean. And most of that is from a continent (or two) away. It doesn't take much for anyone to interdict the Strait of Hormuz or the Strait of Malacca and China is SOL within a year (they have lots of missiles and lots of smaller ships. Little of which is useful in actually securing safe passage through Malacca, let alone the Persian Gulf).
  • Or for anyone unfriendly with the Russians (a list that isn't quite so short) to start causing "accidents" to Russian sourced tankers, for that matter.
• Should the Russian system continue to degrade (extraordinarily likely given their own demographic decline, and the gutting of what remains of their working age population to fuel the war effort), they lose their capacity to manufacture fertilizer for export. Once that happens, China goes into famine, and it's certainly not the first time the Chinese space has experienced one. Industrial scale agriculture requires industrial scale inputs.

Couple that with bad relations towards their export markets (some of whom are having their own demographic collapses), and either Xi finds a way to walk a 5000 km long tightrope, or we get to see some not-so-nice fireworks in the Chinese space sometime over the next few decades. This is not to say "China is doomed", insofar as this says "China has multiple shotguns pointed at its head, and it has little agency over when/where they may fire".

[HenrySalayne]

On 2/2/2024 at 1:41 AM, Orangeator said:

People reading this comment, please do not attempt this. If caught you could face serious legal consequences. And the US is actively trying to prevent this. You will likely be charged if caught. Not worth the extra cash.

Nobody in China cares about a single card and would pay a premium for it. To appeal to a Chinese customer, you would need to have at least a few hundred units for sale. It's all about scalability and that's what the US tries to limit.

tl;dr

Don't waste your time and money trying to smuggle a few units into China.

[jagdtigger]

On 2/1/2024 at 11:04 PM, TetraSky said:

The US really think they can stop the inevitable...

They are just delusional thinking there wont be an entire industry popping up around getting products to china. Have fun whacking the empty shell proxy companies......

[starsmine]

8 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

They are just delusional thinking there wont be an entire industry popping up around getting products to china. Have fun whacking the empty shell proxy companies......

again that's not the point, even with those shells it will significantly slow down the import of them. 

The point isnt to stop, its to delay

[igormp]

On 2/1/2024 at 12:06 PM, da na said:

Can't wait for the China-specific A99 with 0.3% fewer CUDA cores...

That's what the A800 is for, which was also banned recently.

[Obioban]

On 2/2/2024 at 9:35 AM, thorhammerz said:

IIRC, around 2/3rds of the trade (in GDP) is within the NAFTA itself. If trade stops tomorrow, North America in all likelihood experiences a nasty recession with product shortages across the consumer electronics space for several years. But it'll also be all over in 5-10 years (industrial reshoring to mainland & Mexico is an ongoing process, but hardly complete).

While yes, it allows massive budget deficits (and will only get larger as the boomer generation continues their 25-year-long sojourn into senescence... whatever red numbers Congress is passing now is only going to get larger for probably another decade), the economic "drag" is still very much real. Most of the consequences are simply several decades further out than what most doomsday pundits larp on (the short version being "when its time for the millennials to retire").

 

There is (at this time) no alternative ("hard" currency like Gold & Bitcoin are off the table because they are hard: modern society & economy operates on being able to "poof" up line items on both sides of banking balance sheet into existence), simply because nobody wants anyone else's fiat/debt (the Europeans shot themselves out of contention after the last financial crisis).

 

I would argue the military bases themselves aren't important for the US: without the Soviet threat they are primarily for the benefit for the local power in saying "we have American troops here, attack and you anger Uncle Sam". The important part is the navy, which is blue water capable regardless of whether the aforementioned bases exist (having a navy means you get to pick and choose where the fight happens, and if you don't win, you run away and fight again another day).

 

The "problem" China faces is multi-faceted. Just looking at the non-financial parts of it (as books can be cooked to delay problems almost indefinitely)

• A horrible demographics structure. Domestic consumption led growth is basically an impossibility upon consumption saturation of their existing population. Cue their own boomer generation moving into their late 60's and 70's over the next decade, and the CCP will have to start being extremely creative in how they want to implement old age support (basically from scratch), on top of the productivity losses that comes with lots of people retiring (and not enough replacements filling in).
• They import roughly 70% of their energy, most of which comes via tanker on the ocean. And most of that is from a continent (or two) away. It doesn't take much for anyone to interdict the Strait of Hormuz or the Strait of Malacca and China is SOL within a year (they have lots of missiles and lots of smaller ships. Little of which is useful in actually securing safe passage through Malacca, let alone the Persian Gulf).
  • Or for anyone unfriendly with the Russians (a list that isn't quite so short) to start causing "accidents" to Russian sourced tankers, for that matter.
• Should the Russian system continue to degrade (extraordinarily likely given their own demographic decline, and the gutting of what remains of their working age population to fuel the war effort), they lose their capacity to manufacture fertilizer for export. Once that happens, China goes into famine, and it's certainly not the first time the Chinese space has experienced one. Industrial scale agriculture requires industrial scale inputs.

Couple that with bad relations towards their export markets (some of whom are having their own demographic collapses), and either Xi finds a way to walk a 5000 km long tightrope, or we get to see some not-so-nice fireworks in the Chinese space sometime over the next few decades. This is not to say "China is doomed", insofar as this says "China has multiple shotguns pointed at its head, and it has little agency over when/where they may fire".

Yep, all of this.

[williamcll]

On 2/2/2024 at 10:35 PM, thorhammerz said:

The "problem" China faces is multi-faceted. Just looking at the non-financial parts of it (as books can be cooked to delay problems almost indefinitely)

• A horrible demographics structure. Domestic consumption led growth is basically an impossibility upon consumption saturation of their existing population. Cue their own boomer generation moving into their late 60's and 70's over the next decade, and the CCP will have to start being extremely creative in how they want to implement old age support (basically from scratch), on top of the productivity losses that comes with lots of people retiring (and not enough replacements filling in).
• They import roughly 70% of their energy, most of which comes via tanker on the ocean. And most of that is from a continent (or two) away. It doesn't take much for anyone to interdict the Strait of Hormuz or the Strait of Malacca and China is SOL within a year (they have lots of missiles and lots of smaller ships. Little of which is useful in actually securing safe passage through Malacca, let alone the Persian Gulf).
  • Or for anyone unfriendly with the Russians (a list that isn't quite so short) to start causing "accidents" to Russian sourced tankers, for that matter.
• Should the Russian system continue to degrade (extraordinarily likely given their own demographic decline, and the gutting of what remains of their working age population to fuel the war effort), they lose their capacity to manufacture fertilizer for export. Once that happens, China goes into famine, and it's certainly not the first time the Chinese space has experienced one. Industrial scale agriculture requires industrial scale inputs.

Couple that with bad relations towards their export markets (some of whom are having their own demographic collapses), and either Xi finds a way to walk a 5000 km long tightrope, or we get to see some not-so-nice fireworks in the Chinese space sometime over the next few decades. This is not to say "China is doomed", insofar as this says "China has multiple shotguns pointed at its head, and it has little agency over when/where they may fire".

This is the kind of thinking when you watch nothing but self proclaimed financial experts talking about the chinese economic collapse for the past 30 years.

[Obioban]

On 2/9/2024 at 12:06 AM, williamcll said:

This is the kind of thinking when you watch nothing but self proclaimed financial experts talking about the chinese economic collapse for the past 30 years.

... and now it has begun...

[PDifolco]

On 2/1/2024 at 4:12 PM, BiotechBen said:

*malicious compliance* 

If we are following the law to the letter, we cannot be in violation of it.

That's how US law works anyway, form over substance 

[SansVarnic]

-= Locked =-

As you know topic and discussion is not allowed to cross into politics.