Comments on: Huawei’s HiSilicon Can Compete With Nvidia GPUs In China

By: emerth

emerth — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 06:14:53 +0000

@Calamity Jim. Good points all. Only quibble: for AI – the claimed reason for the sanctions – if Huawei ports Tensorflow and Pytorch over then it is pretty much finished on the software front. Those two toolkits should be pretty portable.

By: emerth

emerth — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 06:04:39 +0000

So, yeah, if your estimates for FP32 on the Huawei B and C models are correct then all I really want to know is where can I buy them and at what price.

Halfway sane power dissipation and freaking PCIe cards that fit in normal-person ISV computers. What’s not to like? AMD stopped serving ppl like me after the 210, and nVidia top end cards are priced for hyperscalers and national labs not small companies.

By: Mehdi Zoghlami

Mehdi Zoghlami — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 19:26:40 +0000

bool sanctionsHurtChina = true;
bool americaIsHurt = false
do
{
PutMoreSanctionsOnChina();
}
while(americaIsHurt == true)

void PutMoreSanctionsOnChina()
{
sanctionsHurtChina = false;
americaIsHurt = !sanctionsHurtChina;
}

By: Eric Olson

Eric Olson — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 16:13:13 +0000

In reply to Calamity Jim. The above analysis of the impact of the GPU export bans seems plausible to me. From what I can tell the ban reflects political virtue signalling rather than practical foreign policy or economic decision making. Said another way, this is not about killing the golden goose so much as an entire flock of them.

By: Calamity Jim

Calamity Jim — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 10:48:54 +0000

Interesting analysis! The PRC seems to me to be mainly executing on its 2015 high-tech-oriented “Made in China 2025” plan (MIC2025), and export restrictions probably help slow them down a bit on that path. They did develop competitive bullet trains, solar panels, 5G hardware, inexpensive EVs (sponsored?), a space program, and advanced weapons systems, that can challenge our industry as well as our relative ability to negotiate and promote win-win solutions for geopolitical conflicts worldwide (from 2018: https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/Jane%27s%20by%20IHS%20Markit_China%27s%20Advanced%20Weapons%20Systems.pdf ). I think that with unrestricted access to TSMC, and ASML’s High-NA EUV, they would have hopped along on that plan and developed an Ascend 910C that would have been a more compelling competitor to H100 and MI300, to our detriment (less expensive than our offerings, available to our opponents, …). The question of software might however remain, as it currently seems to influence a lot of hardware purchase decisions.

But yes, export restrictions likely strengthen the PRC’s resolve to hasten its execution of MIC2025, and the question becomes whether restrictions are sufficiently successful in offseting that drive from the technological side, until that time horizon where (best-case scenario) China becomes an ally!

By: Vinci Chow

Vinci Chow — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 03:43:20 +0000

Tim,

Your are right on the mark on ultimate impact of the export ban. I just want to point out one minor mistake—there was a SXM version of A800, with 80GB of VRAM. We have one HGX A800 unit at where I work, acquired back when it was still exportable.