News Nvidia Readies New AI and HPC GPUs for China Market: Report

[Admin]

Nvidia Preps HGX H20, L20 PCle, and L2 PCle GPUs that comply with U.S. exports rules for China.

Nvidia Readies New AI and HPC GPUs for China Market: Report : Read more

 

[elforeign]

Can someone help me understand the logic here? So they will produce H100 GPUs destined for the chinese market with cut down performance, i'm guessing by having to cut down the hardware itself and not just software coded limitations. But isn't the real problem here that these will still be designed and manufactured by TSMC with the latest technologies? How's that going to bypass the restrictions meant to keep the chinese from obtaining cutting edge manufacturing tech and designs.

They could just reverse engineer the chip to view how it was made. Not that they couldn't find ways to do that already, but this trade war seems a lot more problematic than it's worth?

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Can someone help me understand the logic here? So they will produce H100 GPUs destined for the chinese market with cut down performance, i'm guessing by having to cut down the hardware itself and not just software coded limitations. But isn't the real problem here that these will still be designed and manufactured by TSMC with the latest technologies? How's that going to bypass the restrictions meant to keep the chinese from obtaining cutting edge manufacturing tech and designs.

They could just reverse engineer the chip to view how it was made. Not that they couldn't find ways to do that already, but this trade war seems a lot more problematic than it's worth?

The current export controls mostly target computational potential within a given volume of space, not the tech used to make the parts. RTX 4080 and below, all made using the same TSMC 4N process as the RTX 4090 and H100, can still be sold in China. It seems these new parts come in below the current limit and are thus allowable.

There are two main questions now, however. First, will Chinese companies even be interested in these gimped parts? Maybe, maybe not. But the bigger issue is that even if companies in China do start buying these GPUs, what's to prevent the U.S. government from lowering the limit yet again? The H800 and A800 after all were made to comply with the 2022 restrictions. If someone thinks the L20 or H20 are "too fast" in the coming months, we'll see the same scenario play out yet again.

There's also the question of clocks and whether some of these could be tweaked to regain lost performance. We don't have exact specs yet, but I wouldn't put it past certain players over in China to try to alter the hardware to get performance back closer to H800 levels.

 

[elforeign]

The current export controls mostly target computational potential within a given volume of space, not the tech used to make the parts. RTX 4080 and below, all made using the same TSMC 4N process as the RTX 4090 and H100, can still be sold in China. It seems these new parts come in below the current limit and are thus allowable.

There are two main questions now, however. First, will Chinese companies even be interested in these gimped parts? Maybe, maybe not. But the bigger issue is that even if companies in China do start buying these GPUs, what's to prevent the U.S. government from lowering the limit yet again? The H800 and A800 after all were made to comply with the 2022 restrictions. If someone thinks the L20 or H20 are "too fast" in the coming months, we'll see the same scenario play out yet again.

There's also the question of clocks and whether some of these could be tweaked to regain lost performance. We don't have exact specs yet, but I wouldn't put it past certain players over in China to try to alter the hardware to get performance back closer to H800 levels.

I see, thank you for that explanation. I could certainly see the bar being lowered yet again. I guess we'll have to wait and see what the specs for the revised chips will be and what headroom that will afford those possessing them to extract more performance.

Another question I have is, what is the underlying fear? So far I have understood the export controls to significantly slow down the Chinese market's ability to be a player in manufacturing and production of advanced lithography chips which can then be used for defense purposes. But is it to slow down their progress in AI? to slow down their ability to innovate their technology to then threaten the West vis a vis computational power to what, hack infrastructure? defeat security to intrude into sensitive systems?

Obviously IP theft and using technology to engage in cyberwarfare is bad, but I don't yet seem to understand what are we really trying to slow down the Chinese from doing, and how slow do we want/hope them to be moving? It doesn't seem likely we will stop them from achieving their goals, but slow them down long enough for us to do what exactly?

 

[thisisaname]

Either allow them to have them or not. This giving them a cut down version does little if the "cut downness" can be "fixed". Which the Chinese maybe able to do, after all they are quite bright and they have the resources to do!

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I see, thank you for that explanation. I could certainly see the bar being lowered yet again. I guess we'll have to wait and see what the specs for the revised chips will be and what headroom that will afford those possessing them to extract more performance.

Another question I have is, what is the underlying fear? So far I have understood the export controls to significantly slow down the Chinese market's ability to be a player in manufacturing and production of advanced lithography chips which can then be used for defense purposes. But is it to slow down their progress in AI? to slow down their ability to innovate their technology to then threaten the West vis a vis computational power to what, hack infrastructure? defeat security to intrude into sensitive systems?

Obviously IP theft and using technology to engage in cyberwarfare is bad, but I don't yet seem to understand what are we really trying to slow down the Chinese from doing, and how slow do we want/hope them to be moving? It doesn't seem likely we will stop them from achieving their goals, but slow them down long enough for us to do what exactly?

That is the billion dollar question. Certainly, there are elements within the US gov't that feel China is a threat. I think that's not just militarily, but economically, technologically, etc. AI isn't even fully understood by most people working in the field, never mind politicians, so it feels to me like there's an "AI = BAD!" mentality and "AI in the hands of our enemies = REALLY BAD!"

I'm not sure those people are wrong, but I'm also quite sure that, given time, China is likely to overcome most of the hurdles being thrown up by these export controls. The best-case scenario is that if China is ten years behind the US, it will take ten years to get to where we are now. And then hopefully we'd be ten years further ahead! But I suspect it won't work out quite like that in practice.

 

[elforeign]

That is the billion dollar question. Certainly, there are elements within the US gov't that feel China is a threat. I think that's not just militarily, but economically, technologically, etc. AI isn't even fully understood by most people working in the field, never mind politicians, so it feels to me like there's an "AI = BAD!" mentality and "AI in the hands of our enemies = REALLY BAD!"

I'm not sure those people are wrong, but I'm also quite sure that, given time, China is likely to overcome most of the hurdles being thrown up by these export controls. The best-case scenario is that if China is ten years behind the US, it will take ten years to get to where we are now. And then hopefully we'd be ten years further ahead! But I suspect it won't work out quite like that in practice.

It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out in the next few years. The U.S and E.U will need to coordinate closely for the export controls to be even marginally successful. Between the R&D for advanced lithography and semiconductor design, to the resulting products (CPU/GPU) - that is where we are still advanced in comparison to the efforts of the Chinese et. al. - but the manufacturing and raw material sourcing will be hampered on our end because of the historical offshoring of the supply chain to these countries and it's only a matter of days before we hear what the response from China will be with respect to their added export controls.

I wonder if/when there will be a noticeable change in International Relations and Globalism when military power isn't so much measured in how many nukes you can shoot of at once, but rather whose flops determine the flow of money and power.

Looks like the 5080 will be coming at $1,999 - and you better like it! 😀