News US Govt softens stance on Nvidia selling AI GPUs to China, working with company to better define sanctions limits

[Admin]

Nvidia is talking to the U.S. government about selling 'permissible GPUs' to Chinese entities.

US Govt softens stance on Nvidia selling AI GPUs to China, working with company to better define sanctions limits : Read more

 

[ThomasKinsley]

Just over a week ago, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo issued a harsh rebuke to Nvidia for making swift alterations to its chips to allow selling its high-performance GPUs for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) applications to Chinese entities, threatening that that specific export cut lines could be adjusted “the very next day.”

This is absolutely uncalled for. A government official blasting tech CEOs for selling legal products in accordance with US sanctions is egregious. Yet this reaction reveals the US's policy for the tech sector for the next year: the sanctions will become stricter. This is why Nvidia's new products are met with sharp rebuke. It runs in opposition to the planned sanctions that are not yet public.

 

[abufrejoval]

I always wondered how the US government justifies the restrictions on high-tech exports...

The fact that China might become not just be a contender but a technology lead alone is not a permissible reason for these measures.

 

[Lucky_SLS]

If only the US also put a price cap on the products based on the performance...

 

[JTWrenn]

The truth is the government made a bad regulation and Nvidia followed it to the letter and it made someone look bad. So she came out and blasted them to cover her behind rather than admitting their regulations were not layed out right and saying...well exactly what she just said. This sounds like a misunderstanding of how tech works from government regulators. They saw existing products and that that if they drew a line between two products they could cap the capabilities at tier 2 rather than Nvidia making a 2.5 that maxes out the sanctions level.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

A reminder that politics of any kind are to be kept out of these forums. Failure to comply will result in closure of the thread and possible sanctions on the violator/s.

 

[watzupken]

I think they had to backtrack because this is not a 1 way street. US have a very heavy dependency on the likes of Nvidia for hardware. So while they can threaten Nvidia, it can backfire on them if they push too hard and becomes unbearable. Corporates are out to make money, so someone wants to shut them out of any very lucrative market completely, it won't go well.

 

[dk382]

The previous stance of "if you try to get in just under the line we draw for you, we'll move the line" was ridiculous. What's the point of drawing a line if you're just going to move it every time someone gets close to it? Nvidia and government officials working together to determine what can and can't be sold makes the most sense and is how things should have been handled from the start.

That said, I still don't understand the point. It's not like higher-end AI chips enable things that lower-end chips don't. Everyone is running these chips in parallel to create exascale supercomputers, and you'll be able to do this with any datacenter accelerator Nvidia sells. The only thing this performance restriction does is make it so China will have to buy 20,000 lower-end GPUs instead of 10,000 H100s to build their supercomputers. Maybe US officials are just now realizing how futile their trade restrictions are.

 

[gg83]

The power of lobbying dollars I'm sure. When a company makes 70% profit they need to be looked into. Unless they make essential military equipment, those companies do what they want.