Chinese semiconductor industry
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
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Is my translator correct ?
The article says
"addition, the U.S. government has authorized order fulfillment and logistics for the A100 and H100 through the company's Hong Kong plant through September 1, 2023."
So already ordered chips will be delivered up to September 2023 or will they still slow orders up to that date?
This GPU ban is making me uncomfortable. I have to laugh at the timing since it came literally like a day after Biren announced its competitor to the nVidia chips. Unfortunately Biren GP100 isn't available yet, and there's no idea how many they can make (or if it can actually compete with the nVidia chips)
But the GPUs that the US is banning is pretty fundamental to supercomputing now. This isn't banning "finished" products, this is like banning hammers and nails. Very, very advanced hammers and nails, for which while there are alternatives, the alternatives are unknown in a field where familiarity is very valuable.
The US is starting to try and hit the fundamentals. They're going low.
But the GPUs that the US is banning is pretty fundamental to supercomputing now. This isn't banning "finished" products, this is like banning hammers and nails. Very, very advanced hammers and nails, for which while there are alternatives, the alternatives are unknown in a field where familiarity is very valuable.
The US is starting to try and hit the fundamentals. They're going low.
This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
It's been pretty obvious that the US goal has been to try and cripple and undermine Chinese technological advancement, so aiming for upstream determinants of technological progress is a very natural progression.
It's been pretty obvious that the US goal has been to try and cripple and undermine Chinese technological advancement, so aiming for upstream determinants of technological progress is a very natural progression.
I am not a SME in software and computing. But to me hitting fundamentals would be like Japanese ban of anhydrous HF and other semiconductor materials to South Korea or a hypothetical ASML DUV ban, etc
GPUs to me look like the downstream. You don't need GPUs to make the instruments that can make GPUs after all.
I don't think it was a surprise, just something inevitable, but unpleasant. In fact I remember I think... Longsoon? That was developing AI-GPUs even back a year ago. At the time a lot of western commentators were making fun of the fact that it couldn't run video games because it didn't have support for some software or another. (I think it was OpenGL) Even then I think everyone knew this was coming.
Still, it kinda sucks, for the short term.
True. And I think the existing ones still work anyways so ultimately this is going to hurt expansion plans more than existing plans.
I guess it just comes down to if Chinese replacements can step up to the plate fast enough.
Feels like by the end of this decade, there will be a complete technological decoupling between the West and China, with two separate standards and regulation for technologies and science, as that one side continues to block exports and cooperation like this. In the end, the consumer will get hurt the most because of incompatibility and import ban, and the slower research and development of the field as a result of fewer multinational cooperation.
This is not a competition US and its allies can win.
From a very illuminating reddit post:
China has more talent coming up the pipeline, and that talent is also harder working and more efficiently harvested by the CPC's brutally pragmatic governance. If tech decouples and there is a Chinese ecosystem and western ecosystem, China's will emerge superior given enough time.
Yeah there wouldn't be much impact for Chinese supercomputer makers since they have their own fp64 accelerators. But it's going to have an impact on AI firms, particularly start-ups. Chinese supercomputers probably don't have the right AI libraries.
Chinese GPU makers are going to stay away from fp64 capabilities and focus on lower accuracy stuff, which would be fine for most AI but not physics simulations and scientific computation. Chinese supercomputer makers will focus on fp64 performance. I predict Nvidia will design a separate product line with fp64 capabilities disabled on its tensor cores and try to convince USG to let it sell those to China.
You're thinking in idealistic manner, globalization is going to end soon, blocks are getting formed, both blocks would have different technology standard .
If you're using a window's os laptop but it won't support Chinese tech( GPU, cpu) etc. West still have edge over china in high tech, and I don't think that anybody outside of china would dump their windows laptop or android OS and instead choose Huawei OS or other Chinese OS. Decoupling has been started and west wants to push the final button with china vs taiwan war , so for tike being they are creating alternate supply chain that's what they say about china +1 strategy and bringing critical semiconductor manufacturing back to west so that during war they won't end with entire disruption in digital technology devices.
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