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United States

US Allows Nvidia To Export, Transfer Tech To Develop Flagship AI Chip (reuters.com) 9

Nvidia said on Thursday that the U.S. government has allowed exports and in-country transfers needed to complete the development of its flagship artificial intelligence chip. From a report: The disclosure comes a day after Washington told the company to stop exporting its two top computing chips for AI work to China, a move Nvidia said could interfere with the development of the H100 chip it announced this year. The ban signaled a major escalation of the U.S. crackdown on China's technological capabilities as tensions bubble over the fate of Taiwan, where chips for Nvidia and almost every other major chip firm are manufactured. The ban, which affects Nvidia's A100 and H100 chips designed to speed up machine learning tasks, sent the company's shares down 4% before the bell. In its statement on Thursday, Nvidia said U.S. officials have authorized it to perform exports needed to provide support for U.S. customers of A100 through March 1, 2023.
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US Allows Nvidia To Export, Transfer Tech To Develop Flagship AI Chip

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  • What makes the US Feds think they can control the spread of technology in the information age? They'll just get the tech somewhere else. I recall companies like in the Soviet Union the Eastern Bloc were making unlicensed PDP-11s as late as the 1980s because DEC and other companies were prohibited from hi-tech exports to those countries.

    I'm sure the Chinese already have everything they need to clone what NVIDIA does at their fingertips already.

    • by Anonymous Coward
      You're right, fuck it, why even try. Admit defeat filthy Americans.
    • by UMichEE ( 9815976 ) on Thursday September 01, 2022 @10:07AM (#62843347)

      As someone who works in the industry, China does not have the ability to quickly clone what nVidia does. If Taiwan were part of the PRC, then they would be able to quickly turn out clones at TSMC, but it's not, so they can't. Even to replicate older (and slower) nVidia cards would take a year or more out of SMIC and that assumes that the PRC already had access to all of nVidia's databases for these designs.

      To give some idea of where China is at with GPU development. A Chinese company called "Moore Threads" announced earlier this year that they had created a GPU that would be similar to what nVidia was releasing in 2017. They demo-ed the GPU playing League of Legends at 1080p.

      Can they stop the spread of technology? No. Can they slow it down 3-5 years? Yes.

    • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday September 01, 2022 @10:12AM (#62843361)

      What makes the US Feds think they can control the spread of technology in the information age?

      The goal is not to stop China, but to slow them down.

      They'll just get the tech somewhere else.

      Where? Very few countries can make semiconductors like the sanctioned Nvidia chips, and all of those countries cooperate with American sanctions.

      the Soviet Union the Eastern Bloc were making unlicensed PDP-11s as late as the 1980s

      If they were so far behind that they were making obsolete PDP-11 clones in the 1980s, then clearly the sanctions were working.

      I'm sure the Chinese already have everything they need to clone what NVIDIA does at their fingertips already.

      You are mistaken. The Nvidia chips are manufactured at 5 nm. China can't do that.

    • nVIDIA and AMD has explicitly allied itself with the CCP government a few years ago so they can fine tune their AI to go after Uyghurs and other minorities. nVIDIA set up a research center just 2 years ago and it has been well known they were transferring the tech.

      Basically nVIDIA called the USâ(TM)s bluff not to pursue the violations of the sanction and Joe Biden is caving to the pressure.

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