Naive question: Are the current (from what I have heard not very effective) export restrictions of HPC GPUs to china truly productive in the long run if the goal is to retain an edge? As in, to me it seems that it just fuels an expansion of domestic capabilities and in the car and solar sector my impression is that china had already proven that it can absolutely perform on par or even better in many different metrics compared to western countries, given time and pressure. So while these chips are not on par with current or even last gen GPUs, I would not be surprised if china would catch up and even have a much higher incentive to do so, now that other countries try to control their access to key technologies.
I am not saying whether retaining an edge is good or bad or that I have a different answer if one thought it was good. Just curious what you guys think.
sho_hn · 20h ago
I would not be surprised if most of us are running Chinese silicon a decade or two from now, unless China invades Taiwan, and I also think recent events have certainly spurned CCP tech strategy and accelerated this timeline.
There's a few hurdles for China to overcome first, most notably catching up on high-end manufacturing processes, but it's naive to assume that won't happen eventually.
For consumer and prosumer gear that they can get it done is already obvious, cf. people generally having no problem with buying DJI, BambuLabs or Anker.
bbarnett · 20h ago
China will 100% invade Taiwan. This is why both parties in the US are spending so much to get domestic chip production running.
I would be astonished if the backroom deal wasn't "If you take Taiwan now, we'll have to stop you, if you wait until we're self sufficient, we won't interfere."
This is the strategy for decades but it’s failed to produce results
lossolo · 18h ago
The demographic situation in Taiwan is collapsing. Taiwan is basically fully dependent on trade with China and so on. The Chinese are masters of long term strategy and patience and would rather use deception than a sword if possible.
lossolo · 18h ago
> China will 100% invade Taiwan.
Stop looking at China through a Western lens. No one knows what China will do, so this statement is false. Considering their history and culture, they will first use all other tactics to take over the island. They said they want to do it by 2049, and they could succeed without firing a single bullet, as the commenter below noted.
> I would be astonished if the backroom deal wasn't "If you take Taiwan now, we'll have to stop you, if you wait until we're self sufficient, we won't interfere."
None of the cutting edge nodes are, or will be, produced in the US by TSMC. They are all produced in Asia, and the fabs in US will be X years behind.
xethos · 16h ago
> None of the cutting edge nodes are, or will be, produced in the US by TSMC. They are all produced in Asia, and the fabs in US will be X years behind.
I don't doubt you, and I think you'll be right for some time.
I also think it's foolish to count out Intel. They're down, but so was AMD. More pointedly, this is not Intel's first time playing "This works or we go under"
rchaud · 5h ago
Intel won't be allowed to go under, that was part of the goal of the CHIPS act.
bbarnett · 10h ago
Stop looking at China through a Western lens. No one knows what China will do, so this statement is false.
No, it is not. Do you know why?
It's an opinion, clearly. Clearly, as few claim to be prescient. Dismissing my opinion, because I am not psychic and prescient is a very, very strange thing to say and do. You may say "that won't happen, your opinion will turn out to be wrong", but you cannot say my opinion as a statement is false, unless you are claiming I am lying about my own opinion?
And really, it is exceptionally silly to say "No one knows what $x will do", because of course not it's the future. We're all employing prediction trees, when we offer opinions on future events. Saying "no one knows the future" is just plain silly in this case. What are you even trying to assert? That we should all just never use our life experiences, knowledge, to attempt to provide some idea of what may come? Absolutely absurd! All of what I've just said is also understood as part of normal discussions of the future, so please try to keep this in mind.
Because trying to invalidate opinion by saying "you can't tell the future" makes no sense
And beyond that, after you discount my opinion because you claim people cannot tell the future (eg, no one knows what China will do), you immediately provide your own rendition of "what China will do".
What?!
So presumably, what you really mean in your first paragraph is that only you may predict the future outcome of events? I suggest, and I mean this honestly, that you drop this weird tactic from future debates. You cannot invalidate opinion in this way.
Moving on, it is strange to claim I am using a "Western lens". Are you trying to claim that China is somehow a land of pure people, free of all aggression and expansionist drive? And which will engage in no warlike actions? Which will not use force when it suits them? Such a rendition of any grouping of people is truly bizarre, and it is the only possible way your statement may be read. It is also very strange for you to throw this in.
You seem to be using trigger words, and pre-packaged conceptualized methods in an attempt to invalidate things people assert or say. Throwing 'Western lens" around is an attempt at impinging my worldview, it is logical fallacy, an ad hominem attack.
Please drop these sorts of tactics. If you want to realistically refute something I am saying, just refute the specific thing. Don't use ad hominem attacks. Don't refute a method (opinions of future actions), then employ them yourself.
Back to the meat of it. Surprisingly, for China, you and I seem to agree here, for you claim that China will try to use other tactics. Not will, but try as in "first use all other tactics". No kidding, ya think? Everyone tries other tactics first. Look at how many years Russia spent trying to subvert the Ukraine, before invading.
So you're not disagreeing with me. Not one bit. Because when I say China will invade Taiwan, I know all of this. Pretty much everyone you talk to knows that China has spent decades trying to subvert and take over Taiwan via sneaky, tricky subversion of Taiwan's political system. This isn't news to anyone, they've been trying for decades and endlessly failed. They've already tried those other tactics. Forever. They've failed. Over and over again.
And no, they aren't closer than ever before. Not much has changed in this regard.
So my assertion is that all of that will fail, as it has failed for decades. And that, as I said:
"China will 100% invade Taiwan."
Back to TSMC. There is more to the world than TSMC. There are other FABs coming online. There will be more money spent. And that's the whole crux of my comment.
Because the US does not want a war with China, any more than China with the US. Yet the US absolutely, positively, will not give control of Taiwan to China ever, under any circumstances, as long as the very prosperity of the US depends upon it.
Not going to happen. Not via political means. Not via a direct attack. Not via invasion. Never, never, never.
China will never ever be allowed control of Taiwan, until the US no longer needs it.
And so yes, there is an understanding between the US and China. You and I and everyone very much should want there to be an understanding. We should all want the US to have all the fabs it needs.
Because the alternative is a lot of death and destruction.
The closest parallel is, if a country cannot feed itself, and its stomach is filled by the bread of another land? And you invade that land? You will immediately be at war.
Instantly
This is entirely the same. So you should very much hope I am correct.
tangotaylor · 20h ago
I think it will be effective. This stuff is hard. There used to be many competitors capable of the best process technology: TI, GlobalFoundries, Intel, IBM, Samsung, TSMC.
Canon, Nikon, ASML all used to have competitive lithography machines.
Now it’s just TSMC and Samsung at the edge, and only ASML supplies the latest lithography machines.
China will probably catch up quickly but the pace will be nonlinear and illusory. They will hit diminishing returns just like everyone else has.
They’ve probably stolen every bit of semiconductor IP they can through economic coercion or espionage.
All they can do now is out-innovate everyone else and that will take a long time. But who knows, their pace of advancement since Mao died has been impressive.
trm42 · 14h ago
One interesting detail is that the Chinese have been improving their photography lens production and quality in rapid pace and cheap price.
The legendary Zeiss is producing the lithography lenses for ASML, so it looks like China is pouring lots of effort to photography lenses to bootstrap their lithography lens capabilities.
I don’t know about the other parts needed for chip fabbing but I kinda expect then to encourage and subsidize other technological fields related to it as well.
ac29 · 19h ago
> Now it’s just TSMC and Samsung at the edge
Intel 3 has been shipping since last year and is only very slightly behind TSMC N3.
TSMC is almost certainly doing far more volume on their leading node though.
sciencesama · 19h ago
Smic is led by the person who spear headed tsmc !
chrsw · 20h ago
China is racing full speed ahead to win in all these tech domains regardless of export controls.
They will surpass us on chips just like they surpassed us on EVs. The leading edge of chip design is very complex so it will just take more time than EVs. But it is inevitable.
Even if China could get their hands on all the NVIDIA GPUs they wanted they would still try to make their own as fast as possible.
wuschel · 10h ago
Thanks for your input!
Since you are from this domain:
1. Why will they master it? Because they dedicate their industrial strategy and hence resources to it like they did in the other technological domains and flood the market?
2. Is the only way out a strict decoupling from the Chinese market in these domains? Or would it be a strategy that involves protecting domestic industries with other levers?
chrsw · 7h ago
1. Why is because making advanced chips is an engineering problem, not magic. It's about motivation, resources and time. China as all three.
2. If we don't want to rely on China for critical technology we need to focus on our own values and education, which will take generations to realize. But that's what China did, so it's not impossible. Industrial and financial policy are useless if you don't have the cultural and intellectual inclination towards self-sufficiency.
trasirinc · 20h ago
That's assuming they can keep pumping massive capital into every industry that it seeks to circumvent from bans and sanctions. But it appears they have very short runway these days. Just months after the initial tariffs/sanctions from US, Chinese government is enacting multiple tax raising schemes in September to try to stay alive. The first is the mandating that workers and employees cannot opt out of social security contributions. which is around 1500 yuan ($200) per month for one worker. for an average worker that makes 4000 ($600) yuan, it makes no sense. So many companies are deciding to layoff or close up in September. And workers are going back to countryside. The second is the landlord tax that is starting on September 15th. This is due to people not buying real estates anymore and renting instead.
stogot · 18h ago
Are you a local? What city?
HAL3000 · 18h ago
Langley
bb88 · 18h ago
We can look at history.
The US has export restrictions on certain computing devices to certain regimes which included the Sony Playstation 2, a gaming console from the double noughts [0]. Apparently the military thought it could be used to create nasty weapons. Two decades later and nobody cares whether a PS2 is shipped to Iran. We still track FPGAs I guess, though I haven't checked what's on the ITAR/EAR list in a while.
Embargoes typically work until the embargoees(?) develop the technology to build or acquire what they need. If AI is only a strategic advantage because of hardware alone, then yes. But Deepseek kinda maybe killed that idea. China has never been the first mover. They optimize. But it looks like today, AI embargoes to China will get the US months at most.
This feels comparable to the intel's battlemage offering of GPUs. Competitive when it comes to price, but simply not at the level of nvidia's offerings nor are they usable for AI.
I highly doubt these will overtake the modded 48gb 4090 usage in China, but still it's a clear indicator that the chip embargo has lit a fire under Chinese industry to accelerate their own offerings in the semiconductor sector. It'll be interesting to see how these evolve in the coming months/years, as I suspect their iteration cycles will be shorter than US counterparts.
jauntywundrkind · 18h ago
Huawei doing what the West won't, smashing the product segmentation niches. 96GB is what counts here. Being able to fit a good model is more important than speed, for many folks.
Also worth trying to better compare on efficiency. I don't know how this shakes up, but TOps/W is another figure of merit that also matters a lot, maybe more than absolute TOps count. I don't know how good 1.86TOps/W measures up here, but knowing that this is 150W is quite time where-as a 4090 or whatever is way way more reasonable than how most cards get built.
KronisLV · 9h ago
> This feels comparable to the intel's battlemage offering of GPUs.
I'd very much like whatever card can run LLMs with Ollama or vLLM without bankrupting me and hopefully with somewhat low power usage.
Nvidia L4 cards seem to fit the bill when it comes to the power usage and getting things done, but the costs are way out there, not functionally different from H100s (I can afford neither).
So I'd very much welcome the Intel B60 Pro cards or honestly anything I could actually buy online. Until then, I'm stuck throwing money at OpenRouter and other API providers every month.
com2kid · 19h ago
You can do a lot with a lot of VRAM and a reasonable amount of TOPS.
A 24GB affordable GPU can easily power an entire house worth of AI work, from real time voice chat, image generation, simple tool calls and task running, reminders, alerts, smart home integrations, etc.
IMHO a large set of potential use cases is being held back by Nvidia's high prices.
sho_hn · 20h ago
This is a first-gen effort from Huawei, no? Plenty of resources and time to iterate.
wakawaka28 · 20h ago
Isn't it also an early effort for Intel? They are not known for their GPUs. Also, I'm sure Huawei has some chip tech, and GPUs are mostly just a ton of little processors arranged in a grid.
GodelNumbering · 21h ago
LPDDR4X 96GB, total bandwidth 408GB/s
jsheard · 21h ago
For comparison, Nvidia's 96GB card uses GDDR7 for 1.8TB/sec bandwidth. This Huawei card is more in the league of an M4 Max bandwidth-wise.
LargoLasskhyfv · 2h ago
@150Watts
sciencesama · 21h ago
But the price !
nine_k · 20h ago
I wonder if Huawei are making any money off this, or are they trying to get a foot in the door first.
moralestapia · 20h ago
Which is?
No comments yet
userbinator · 20h ago
If they release the full hardware documentation they will already be ahead of the incumbent in openness, just like Intel and AMD did; and IMHO that will also help gain a following.
wakawaka28 · 20h ago
If openness becomes the killer feature, their competitors will also release docs or whatever else.
bababalamba · 14h ago
Many are so focused on the narrative that the media runs with so that they seem all but blind to see the more logical macro-view of the situation which is just sitting there in plain sight..
1. If you look at a world map you will quickly notice that the island of Taiwan is adjacent to the asian subcontinent and mainland China.
If you had one of those physical globes with a world map on them, you would not even see the United states of America when looking at Taiwan.
This fact alone should make you realize that the US has no business whatsoever interfering or warmongering about anything going on over there.
2. The reason for all this is to, by any means, try prevent any increase in "power" for other countries in an attempt to prevent their time in the sun on the global economic field from fading away.
3. The reason why this will fail is because the strategy of trying to force others to be your friends and to blackmail/strongarm them into submissive allies does not work in the long run.
Anyone who has attended the social battleground of kindergarten should have seen this to be a human fact.
4. My tip to all world leaders is as follows. Try not act like hyperagressive mentally challenged warmongering pssies and everything will be fine.
/Michael Ah. Sweden
commandersaki · 21h ago
I'm not really familiar with GPUs that are not Intel, AMD, and Nvidia, but would these work fine for gaming (realising it is not the primary purpose).
smallmancontrov · 21h ago
Gaming has an enormous API surface compared to AI, so almost certainly not.
jsheard · 20h ago
Gaming also wants a bunch of fixed-function graphics units that a dedicated accelerator like this has no reason to include.
I guess you could try to make a GPU with just programmable compute but Intel attempted that and it didn't go very well.
ZiiS · 21h ago
They would need very complex drivers writing.
abracadaniel · 21h ago
At this point it seems like most of what goes into the driver must be per-game tweaks to fix mistakes or optimize unoptimized code.
chickenzzzzu · 21h ago
Thats from the opengl days, that has mostly been shifted to vulkan and dx12 now. still, you end up having the hw vendor employees do the work in the game company's codebase
washadjeffmad · 21h ago
Seems like not a bad add-in card for OpenCV/2.
OsrsNeedsf2P · 21h ago
Certainly big for China, but if it can't run CUDA then it's not going to help them catch up in the AI race
LeoPanthera · 21h ago
Macs can't run CUDA but everyone is buying those for AI anyway.
jszymborski · 21h ago
GP was likely referring to training, not inference.
wolfgangK · 20h ago
Only those who don't care/know about prompt processing speed are buying Macs for LLM inference.
com2kid · 19h ago
Even 40 tokens per second is plenty enough for real time usage. The average person reads at ~4 words per second, 40 tokens per second is going to be 15-20 words per second.
Even useful models like gemma3 27b are hitting 22 t/s on 4bit quants.
You aren't going to be reformatting gigabytes of PDFs or anything, but for a lot of common use cases, those speeds are fine.
esseph · 20h ago
Don't know and don't care are definitely things that I could be, but it also makes sense if they want to keep lookups private.
sliken · 18h ago
Dunno, training maybe, for inference pytorch and llama seem more important.
chermi · 20h ago
I thought they were already working around cuda?
aswanson · 21h ago
Maybe they'll make a better abstraction layer than cuda.
chickenzzzzu · 21h ago
Vulkan already achieves 95% of cuda, with the remaining 5% being scheduling.
sciencesama · 19h ago
There was an nvidia hack that was related to china, they got all the technology they need now !
atlgator · 19h ago
How many do I need to run the full DeepSeek 671B?
robotnikman · 19h ago
Using a rough estimate where 1B parameters requires 1GB of VRAM, you would need at least 7
nextworddev · 20h ago
Just a matter of time till they steal the recipe
doe88 · 8h ago
Now US has just to copy & paste the reasons for export restrictions and implement brand new import restrictions, hence China will then just flood EU with their cheap GPUs.
jiggawatts · 21h ago
So… five to ten times worse TOPS/W compared to NVIDIA, if I’m reading this correctly.
It wouldn’t have a market if it wasn’t for the tensions between the USA and China, unless it’s super cheap.
diggan · 20h ago
> It wouldn’t have a market if it wasn’t for the tensions between the USA and China, unless it’s super cheap.
It is super cheap, compared to what's available if you want 96GB for ML inference in a single card (ignoring the other aspects one might care about). I'm seeing it on Alibaba for 1200-1500 EUR which is like 7-8 times cheaper than I can buy a RTX Pro 6000 for locally.
enlyth · 21h ago
It has shitty LPDDR4X memory
LargoLasskhyfv · 2h ago
LPDDR4X 96GB or 48GB, total bandwidth 408GB/s
Support for ECC
@150Watts
cuuupid · 20h ago
I predict the tech reaction will be underwhelmed/disappointed and the wall street reaction will be panic selling NVDA
kittikitti · 21h ago
This is really great. Things like CUDA support are not a requirement for my purposes. The DDR4 speeds seem like a bottleneck but the VRAM in GPU's are most often also a bottleneck. I look forward to more technical reports on their AI accelerator.
rvz · 21h ago
No need to panic, given that it is not compatible and cannot run CUDA....yet.
But don't ignore this at all. This industry can change in 1 or 2 years very quickly.
rowanG077 · 21h ago
Why panic? It's great that finally there is AI hardware coming out of china. This can only be good for everyone.
beeflet · 21h ago
except for humans
artninja1988 · 20h ago
Why? I'm a human and I like competitive markets and hate monopolies
beeflet · 20h ago
What's your opinion on being tortured by a machine for eternity?
Ifkaluva · 20h ago
Ok doomer
beeflet · 17h ago
If it's not OK then it's not the end
hereme888 · 21h ago
Let's see how it performs in the real world. The website makes some outlandish claims, like 1.86 TOPS/W leads the industry... NVIDIA's comparable RTX 6000 Pro gives out 6.67 TOPS/W.
Qualcomm's Cloud AI 100 Ultra has like 100 TOPS/W.
koolala · 21h ago
Why is 1.86 TOPS/W outlandish? Why does 1.86 TOPS/W lead the industry?
sho_hn · 21h ago
I think they are saying the website claims that 1.86 TOPS/W is industry-leading while it is not.
Insanity · 21h ago
I guess the outlandish claim is that it’s industry leading while it’s not, as other GPUs outperform it.
hereme888 · 21h ago
Because, as I showed, 1.86 is nowhere near industry-leading.
I am not saying whether retaining an edge is good or bad or that I have a different answer if one thought it was good. Just curious what you guys think.
There's a few hurdles for China to overcome first, most notably catching up on high-end manufacturing processes, but it's naive to assume that won't happen eventually.
For consumer and prosumer gear that they can get it done is already obvious, cf. people generally having no problem with buying DJI, BambuLabs or Anker.
I would be astonished if the backroom deal wasn't "If you take Taiwan now, we'll have to stop you, if you wait until we're self sufficient, we won't interfere."
Stop looking at China through a Western lens. No one knows what China will do, so this statement is false. Considering their history and culture, they will first use all other tactics to take over the island. They said they want to do it by 2049, and they could succeed without firing a single bullet, as the commenter below noted.
> I would be astonished if the backroom deal wasn't "If you take Taiwan now, we'll have to stop you, if you wait until we're self sufficient, we won't interfere."
None of the cutting edge nodes are, or will be, produced in the US by TSMC. They are all produced in Asia, and the fabs in US will be X years behind.
I don't doubt you, and I think you'll be right for some time.
I also think it's foolish to count out Intel. They're down, but so was AMD. More pointedly, this is not Intel's first time playing "This works or we go under"
No, it is not. Do you know why?
It's an opinion, clearly. Clearly, as few claim to be prescient. Dismissing my opinion, because I am not psychic and prescient is a very, very strange thing to say and do. You may say "that won't happen, your opinion will turn out to be wrong", but you cannot say my opinion as a statement is false, unless you are claiming I am lying about my own opinion?
And really, it is exceptionally silly to say "No one knows what $x will do", because of course not it's the future. We're all employing prediction trees, when we offer opinions on future events. Saying "no one knows the future" is just plain silly in this case. What are you even trying to assert? That we should all just never use our life experiences, knowledge, to attempt to provide some idea of what may come? Absolutely absurd! All of what I've just said is also understood as part of normal discussions of the future, so please try to keep this in mind.
Because trying to invalidate opinion by saying "you can't tell the future" makes no sense
And beyond that, after you discount my opinion because you claim people cannot tell the future (eg, no one knows what China will do), you immediately provide your own rendition of "what China will do".
What?!
So presumably, what you really mean in your first paragraph is that only you may predict the future outcome of events? I suggest, and I mean this honestly, that you drop this weird tactic from future debates. You cannot invalidate opinion in this way.
Moving on, it is strange to claim I am using a "Western lens". Are you trying to claim that China is somehow a land of pure people, free of all aggression and expansionist drive? And which will engage in no warlike actions? Which will not use force when it suits them? Such a rendition of any grouping of people is truly bizarre, and it is the only possible way your statement may be read. It is also very strange for you to throw this in.
You seem to be using trigger words, and pre-packaged conceptualized methods in an attempt to invalidate things people assert or say. Throwing 'Western lens" around is an attempt at impinging my worldview, it is logical fallacy, an ad hominem attack.
Please drop these sorts of tactics. If you want to realistically refute something I am saying, just refute the specific thing. Don't use ad hominem attacks. Don't refute a method (opinions of future actions), then employ them yourself.
Back to the meat of it. Surprisingly, for China, you and I seem to agree here, for you claim that China will try to use other tactics. Not will, but try as in "first use all other tactics". No kidding, ya think? Everyone tries other tactics first. Look at how many years Russia spent trying to subvert the Ukraine, before invading.
So you're not disagreeing with me. Not one bit. Because when I say China will invade Taiwan, I know all of this. Pretty much everyone you talk to knows that China has spent decades trying to subvert and take over Taiwan via sneaky, tricky subversion of Taiwan's political system. This isn't news to anyone, they've been trying for decades and endlessly failed. They've already tried those other tactics. Forever. They've failed. Over and over again.
And no, they aren't closer than ever before. Not much has changed in this regard.
So my assertion is that all of that will fail, as it has failed for decades. And that, as I said:
"China will 100% invade Taiwan."
Back to TSMC. There is more to the world than TSMC. There are other FABs coming online. There will be more money spent. And that's the whole crux of my comment.
Because the US does not want a war with China, any more than China with the US. Yet the US absolutely, positively, will not give control of Taiwan to China ever, under any circumstances, as long as the very prosperity of the US depends upon it.
Not going to happen. Not via political means. Not via a direct attack. Not via invasion. Never, never, never.
China will never ever be allowed control of Taiwan, until the US no longer needs it.
And so yes, there is an understanding between the US and China. You and I and everyone very much should want there to be an understanding. We should all want the US to have all the fabs it needs.
Because the alternative is a lot of death and destruction.
The closest parallel is, if a country cannot feed itself, and its stomach is filled by the bread of another land? And you invade that land? You will immediately be at war.
Instantly
This is entirely the same. So you should very much hope I am correct.
Canon, Nikon, ASML all used to have competitive lithography machines.
Now it’s just TSMC and Samsung at the edge, and only ASML supplies the latest lithography machines.
China will probably catch up quickly but the pace will be nonlinear and illusory. They will hit diminishing returns just like everyone else has.
They’ve probably stolen every bit of semiconductor IP they can through economic coercion or espionage.
All they can do now is out-innovate everyone else and that will take a long time. But who knows, their pace of advancement since Mao died has been impressive.
The legendary Zeiss is producing the lithography lenses for ASML, so it looks like China is pouring lots of effort to photography lenses to bootstrap their lithography lens capabilities.
I don’t know about the other parts needed for chip fabbing but I kinda expect then to encourage and subsidize other technological fields related to it as well.
Intel 3 has been shipping since last year and is only very slightly behind TSMC N3.
TSMC is almost certainly doing far more volume on their leading node though.
They will surpass us on chips just like they surpassed us on EVs. The leading edge of chip design is very complex so it will just take more time than EVs. But it is inevitable.
Even if China could get their hands on all the NVIDIA GPUs they wanted they would still try to make their own as fast as possible.
Since you are from this domain:
1. Why will they master it? Because they dedicate their industrial strategy and hence resources to it like they did in the other technological domains and flood the market?
2. Is the only way out a strict decoupling from the Chinese market in these domains? Or would it be a strategy that involves protecting domestic industries with other levers?
The US has export restrictions on certain computing devices to certain regimes which included the Sony Playstation 2, a gaming console from the double noughts [0]. Apparently the military thought it could be used to create nasty weapons. Two decades later and nobody cares whether a PS2 is shipped to Iran. We still track FPGAs I guess, though I haven't checked what's on the ITAR/EAR list in a while.
Embargoes typically work until the embargoees(?) develop the technology to build or acquire what they need. If AI is only a strategic advantage because of hardware alone, then yes. But Deepseek kinda maybe killed that idea. China has never been the first mover. They optimize. But it looks like today, AI embargoes to China will get the US months at most.
[0] https://www.pcmag.com/news/20-years-later-how-concerns-about...
I highly doubt these will overtake the modded 48gb 4090 usage in China, but still it's a clear indicator that the chip embargo has lit a fire under Chinese industry to accelerate their own offerings in the semiconductor sector. It'll be interesting to see how these evolve in the coming months/years, as I suspect their iteration cycles will be shorter than US counterparts.
Also worth trying to better compare on efficiency. I don't know how this shakes up, but TOps/W is another figure of merit that also matters a lot, maybe more than absolute TOps count. I don't know how good 1.86TOps/W measures up here, but knowing that this is 150W is quite time where-as a 4090 or whatever is way way more reasonable than how most cards get built.
I'd very much like whatever card can run LLMs with Ollama or vLLM without bankrupting me and hopefully with somewhat low power usage.
Nvidia L4 cards seem to fit the bill when it comes to the power usage and getting things done, but the costs are way out there, not functionally different from H100s (I can afford neither).
So I'd very much welcome the Intel B60 Pro cards or honestly anything I could actually buy online. Until then, I'm stuck throwing money at OpenRouter and other API providers every month.
A 24GB affordable GPU can easily power an entire house worth of AI work, from real time voice chat, image generation, simple tool calls and task running, reminders, alerts, smart home integrations, etc.
IMHO a large set of potential use cases is being held back by Nvidia's high prices.
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1. If you look at a world map you will quickly notice that the island of Taiwan is adjacent to the asian subcontinent and mainland China. If you had one of those physical globes with a world map on them, you would not even see the United states of America when looking at Taiwan. This fact alone should make you realize that the US has no business whatsoever interfering or warmongering about anything going on over there.
2. The reason for all this is to, by any means, try prevent any increase in "power" for other countries in an attempt to prevent their time in the sun on the global economic field from fading away.
3. The reason why this will fail is because the strategy of trying to force others to be your friends and to blackmail/strongarm them into submissive allies does not work in the long run. Anyone who has attended the social battleground of kindergarten should have seen this to be a human fact.
4. My tip to all world leaders is as follows. Try not act like hyperagressive mentally challenged warmongering pssies and everything will be fine.
/Michael Ah. Sweden
I guess you could try to make a GPU with just programmable compute but Intel attempted that and it didn't go very well.
Even useful models like gemma3 27b are hitting 22 t/s on 4bit quants.
You aren't going to be reformatting gigabytes of PDFs or anything, but for a lot of common use cases, those speeds are fine.
It wouldn’t have a market if it wasn’t for the tensions between the USA and China, unless it’s super cheap.
It is super cheap, compared to what's available if you want 96GB for ML inference in a single card (ignoring the other aspects one might care about). I'm seeing it on Alibaba for 1200-1500 EUR which is like 7-8 times cheaper than I can buy a RTX Pro 6000 for locally.
Support for ECC
@150Watts
But don't ignore this at all. This industry can change in 1 or 2 years very quickly.