News Chip smuggling operation that sent 53,000 banned American chips to China gets busted — $12 million worth of chips funneled through South Korean com...

[Admin]

A smuggling operation carried out by the unnamed South Korean 'Company A' involved 53,000 chips worth nearly $12 million.

Chip smuggling operation that sent 53,000 banned American chips to China gets busted — $12 million worth of chips funneled through South Korean com... : Read more

 

[JTWrenn]

I wonder if we will start to see mandated additions of hardware to make it harder to snuggle these. Like rfid chip embedding or something custom made and hard to remove. These chips are quickly becoming the new super weapons and I worry that distinction will cause them to get regulated to heavily.

Just hoping someone comes up with ai that doesn't resemble a graphics card soon. We need the ASIIC of the ai world to free up gpus again.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Hell is too kind a place.

 

[digitalgriffin]

I wonder if we will start to see mandated additions of hardware to make it harder to snuggle these. Like rfid chip embedding or something custom made and hard to remove. These chips are quickly becoming the new super weapons and I worry that distinction will cause them to get regulated to heavily.

Just hoping someone comes up with ai that doesn't resemble a graphics card soon. We need the ASIIC of the ai world to free up gpus again.

Years ago, Intel had upgradeable CPUs. They would be crippled till they were verified by Intel after you paid an absurd premium.

Each GPU can contain a serial number that gets encoded and sent to companies for a unique activation code internally. It would make them traceable via IP address. It would be obvious if the GPUs were used elsewhere or a large number were activated at an IP to street address and the GPUs are no longer there. You can't activate 5000 GPUs tied to you by ip address and then have them poof.

 

[bit_user]

this operation involved chips made to convert analog signals to digital. Because these chips could conceivably be used for weapons of mass destruction, they have been under export and import restrictions since 2020.

For me, this is the most intriguing aspect of the entire story. I have difficulty imaging any sort of ADC that's not fundamentally dual-use.

For instance, consumer audio gear has tons of ADCs, but I guess they're too low-frequency to be relevant. Then, there's the HD video capture card market which, although it's been largely HDMI, for a long time, still existed for analog signals. There are also plenty of commodity VGA -> HDMI converters that handle 1080p60, as well. Moving into even higher frequency domains, you have things like digital oscilloscopes, which I'd imagine need probably at least 8-bit precision, into the GHz range. And then, of course, data acquisition cards for scientific and perhaps medical applications.

So, I'd love to know what sort of line has been drawn, in this area.

 

[bit_user]

Just hoping someone comes up with ai that doesn't resemble a graphics card soon. We need the ASIIC of the ai world to free up gpus again.

Eh, GPUs are still available near list price, as far as I can tell. It's nothing like the sort of scalping situation we had during the crypto mining boom.

If you're talking about Nvidia H100's, those aren't really GPUs. Moreover, whatever AI-oriented ASIC might replace them would still be competing for the same TSMC wafer capacity. Just be glad they use HBM and not GDDR6.

 

[bit_user]

Years ago, Intel had upgradeable CPUs. They would be crippled till they were verified by Intel after you paid an absurd premium.

Huh? Intel On Demand only just launched with Sapphire Rapids, less than a year ago!

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/ondemand/overview.html
​

Each GPU can contain a serial number that gets encoded and sent to companies for a unique activation code internally.

The article isn't even talking about GPUs, just so we're clear.

It would make them traceable via IP address.

You can't stop people from getting a license key to unlock their GPU and then moving it to another machine, on another network. Also, relying on network-based location services is doomed to fail, since too many people would fall through the cracks.

 

[pointa2b]

Supply and demand is a more powerful force than government sanctions and laws.

 

[peachpuff]

What is China doing with all these chips? Destroying them or keeping them for themselves?

 

[Pierce2623]

For me, this is the most intriguing aspect of the entire story. I have difficulty imaging any sort of ADC that's not fundamentally dual-use.

For instance, consumer audio gear has tons of ADCs, but I guess they're too low-frequency to be relevant. Then, there's the HD video capture card market which, although it's been largely HDMI, for a long time, still existed for analog signals. There are also plenty of commodity VGA -> HDMI converters that handle 1080p60, as well. Moving into even higher frequency domains, you have things like digital oscilloscopes, which I'd imagine need probably at least 8-bit precision, into the GHz range. And then, of course, data acquisition cards for scientific and perhaps medical applications.

So, I'd love to know what sort of line has been drawn, in this area.

I could be wrong but I’m guessing this is more like the DSPs in high end phones or basically what they now refer to as neural processors. They’re matrix math processors optimized for lower precision data types for AI inference style work loads. It’s surely not about some audiophile ADC.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Huh? Intel On Demand only just launched with Sapphire Rapids, less than a year ago!

​

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/ondemand/overview.html​

​

The article isn't even talking about GPUs, just so we're clear.


You can't stop people from getting a license key to unlock their GPU and then moving it to another machine, on another network. Also, relying on network-based location services is doomed to fail, since too many people would fall through the cracks.

No. Intel sold processors with disabled cores and cache. You ran their upgrade utility after paying a small fortune online, and the additional cores and cache were made available. This was when circuit City was still around. It fell flat on its face because it cost 1/2 as much as the processor for a very small boost.

That's said, yes you most certainly can stop them. 10,000 GPUs registered to a static IP owned by "shady x corp" and then suddenly disappearing is a good clue these GPUs have been diverted. Registering via VPN would result in a fail. Don't register the GPUs, they stay crippled. I have seen similar things done already in "sensitive" items. Case in point tagins , color laser printers, and lowjack laptops There are other examples I cannot quote and additional hardware security measures that can be taken, which I also cannot quote.

If any of these GPUs are found in a large scale import bust, then the paper trail exist to prosecute someone. There are other ways of catching them.

 

[purpleduggy]

reminds me of the prohibition with the speakeasys and smuggling alchohol except its now with pieces of sand with fancy patterns being morally evil. as if it will stop anyone and as if those who do the moral judging have any right or moral high ground to judge

 

[evdjj3j]

Huh? Intel On Demand only just launched with Sapphire Rapids, less than a year ago!

​

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/ondemand/overview.html​

​

The article isn't even talking about GPUs, just so we're clear.


You can't stop people from getting a license key to unlock their GPU and then moving it to another machine, on another network. Also, relying on network-based location services is doomed to fail, since too many people would fall through the cracks.

You are incorrect. Intel released the G6951 in 2010 that was software upgradable to an i3. They also released a few Sandy Bridge chips too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Upgrade_Service

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/upgrade-card-Core-i3-sandy-bridge-Best-Buy-scratch-off,13225.html

 

[Colin Ionita]

No. Intel sold processors with disabled cores and cache. You ran their upgrade utility after paying a small fortune online, and the additional cores and cache were made available. This was when circuit City was still around. It fell flat on its face because it cost 1/2 as much as the processor for a very small boost.

That's said, yes you most certainly can stop them. 10,000 GPUs registered to a static IP owned by "shady x corp" and then suddenly disappearing is a good clue these GPUs have been diverted. Registering via VPN would result in a fail. Don't register the GPUs, they stay crippled. I have seen similar things done already in "sensitive" items. Case in point tagins , color laser printers, and lowjack laptops There are other examples I cannot quote and additional hardware security measures that can be taken, which I also cannot quote.

If any of these GPUs are found in a large scale import bust, then the paper trail exist to prosecute someone. There are other ways of catching them.

I remember this, thy sold the upgrade codes on cute little cards. Glad it was a flop.
"The program was extended in 2011 to the Sandy Bridge series of processors as follows:[7]

• the Core i3-2312M (2.1 GHz, 3 MB cache) laptop processor could be upgraded to the Core i3-2393M with higher frequency and more cache (2.5 GHz, 4 MB cache)
• the Core i3-2102 (3.1 GHz, 3 MB cache) desktop processor could be upgraded to the Core i3-2153 with a higher frequency (3.6 GHz)
• the Pentium G622 desktop processor (2.6 GHz, 3 MB cache) could be upgraded to the Pentium G693 with a higher frequency (3.2 GHz)"

 

[JTWrenn]

Years ago, Intel had upgradeable CPUs. They would be crippled till they were verified by Intel after you paid an absurd premium.

Each GPU can contain a serial number that gets encoded and sent to companies for a unique activation code internally. It would make them traceable via IP address. It would be obvious if the GPUs were used elsewhere or a large number were activated at an IP to street address and the GPUs are no longer there. You can't activate 5000 GPUs tied to you by ip address and then have them poof.

I don't think that would be very effective at all at this point. Once they have them they would eventually work around that. If the goal is to really stop them from getting in through legal ports of entry then some sort of easy to spot and hard to remove item would need to be invented I think. Then you make the operation that would pop up to remove them easier to police by putting it in countries that are willing to work on it.

 

[JTWrenn]

Eh, GPUs are still available near list price, as far as I can tell. It's nothing like the sort of scalping situation we had during the crypto mining boom.

If you're talking about Nvidia H100's, those aren't really GPUs. Moreover, whatever AI-oriented ASIC might replace them would still be competing for the same TSMC wafer capacity. Just be glad they use HBM and not GDDR6.

Wasn't talking about supply v demand issues. Was talking about sanctions possibly resulting in regulating extra hardware on things like 4090s to make them trackable and thus pushing up prices.

 

[bit_user]

yes you most certainly can stop them. 10,000 GPUs registered to a static IP owned by "shady x corp"

Given the kind of money we're talking about, they could easily afford to setup & funnel the GPUs through numerous fake "front" companies, with different IPs.

and then suddenly disappearing is a good clue these GPUs have been diverted.

You can't require the GPUs stay on a publicly-accessible network, as this will run afoul of many corporations' IT policies, and simply having a one-time unlock procedure guarantees nothing.

Registering via VPN would result in a fail.

That's a non-starter, for business users. Also, VPN detection is far from perfect.

There's just not a good technical solution to this problem, or else it would have already been done.

If any of these GPUs are found in a large scale import bust, then the paper trail exist to prosecute someone. There are other ways of catching them.

Except the countries importing them don't want to bust them. It's export, where you need to catch them, and that's hard. Most countries' customs aren't setup to inspect exports.

 

[bit_user]

reminds me of the prohibition with the speakeasys and smuggling alchohol except its now with pieces of sand with fancy patterns being morally evil. as if it will stop anyone and as if those who do the moral judging have any right or moral high ground to judge

You can engage in relativistic sophistry and try to paint it in harmless terms, but that will not fool customs agents, prosecutors, or judges. The reason these are being sanctioned is for the practical uses they have. Not, because they're "pieces of sand with fancy patterns".

Following your "prohibition" argument, we could not ban anything. Do you think normal people should be allowed to posses biological weapons or anti-aircraft missiles? And do you think companies should be allowed to sell them to anyone, anywhere? I sure don't!

 

[digitalgriffin]

Given the kind of money we're talking about, they could easily afford to setup & funnel the GPUs through numerous fake "front" companies, with different IPs.


You can't require the GPUs stay on a publicly-accessible network, as this will run afoul of many corporations' IT policies, and simply having a one-time unlock procedure guarantees nothing.


That's a non-starter, for business users. Also, VPN detection is far from perfect.

There's just not a good technical solution to this problem, or else it would have already been done.


Except the countries importing them don't want to bust them. It's export, where you need to catch them, and that's hard. Most countries' customs aren't setup to inspect exports.

Wish I could say more, but I can't.

 

[evdjj3j]

AMD released new processors today and instead of a review we get this garbage article.

 

[bit_user]

AMD released new processors today and instead of a review we get this garbage article.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/21242/amd-ryzen-7-8700g-and-ryzen-5-8600g-review
​

 

[evdjj3j]

​

https://www.anandtech.com/show/21242/amd-ryzen-7-8700g-and-ryzen-5-8600g-review​

​

I know I already read it. My comment still stands.

 

[Darkoverlordofdata]

What is China doing with all these chips? Destroying them or keeping them for themselves?

They could use the ADC capability to make guitar amplifiers and flood America with thrash metal music to debase our moral values. Oh, wait - it’s been done…

 

[bit_user]

I know I already read it. My comment still stands.

I was just pointing others at the CPUs you were referring to.

 

[mwhannan74]

ADCs (analog to digital converters) and DACs like the ones noted in this article are likely used for Radio Frequency (RF) electronics for Radar, Electronic Warfare, and Communications. Electronic Warfare is a huge (massive) deal in the military. It is just not something you hear much about in the Tom's Hardware kind of world.

Just google Electronic Warfare and pretty much every link is to a major defense contractor (Lockheed, L3, BAE, etc.).