It's interesting that while people love to look at high computation numbers, it's the GPUs that get validated and verified to work on as many system as possible that achieve the greatest success at the end.
Heh! It is what they say in the military. Quantity has a quality of its own.
Just stick another GPU in there to increase performance. That will cost more in electricity, but China pays lower electricity costs than most other people.
According to this chart, electricity is 50% cheaper in China than America, and it is double in Japan and even more in Germany!
(To be redundant, to answer they question why talk about electricity costs, when we talking about chips, the air condition in the server room cost money. They say sometimes it can reach half the cost of operating a server room.)
Here is quick example of why it is important.
Suppose American chip has performance benchmark of 50. Then two chips together would yield a performance of 100.
American chips performance at 100, and electricity costs at 150.
China chips performance (if have same chip) is at 100, and electricity costs at 100.
Therefore, if the chips are equal, the Chinese operations are far more competitive due to lower cost, which is electricity.
But, due to the tech restrictions, China does not currently have the most advance chips for servers, let's just make that assumption.
Suppose that the benchmark for the Chinese chip is only 80% of the American chip (it probably a lot higher, but for the sake of this example we use 20% less better).
So now, this is what it will like the operations cost and performance.
American chips performance at 100, and electricity costs at 150.
China chips performance (using 3 at 40 benchmark the 20% less better) is at 120, and electricity costs at 150.
Assuming the less better chip at benchmark of 40 still uses the same amount of electricity.
It is just basic math.
Doing the first way, due to lower electricity costs, China is more competitive.
Doing the second way, where sticking more GPUs into the machine, will increase electricity costs to equal levels of the Americans, but that Chinese machine will do more computing output, hence it is still more competitive.
Of course, in the real world, it is more complicated, but this is the general idea that that chip war really is just a False Dimitri. You know, fake news.
The chip may not be the most advanced inside that Chinese computer, but so what? There is a lot more to it, including those components inside that box, all made in China probably, and other costs.