Chinese universities and research institutes recently obtained high-end Nvidia artificial intelligence chips through resellers, despite the U.S. widening a ban last year on the sale of such technology to China.
A Reuters review of hundreds of tender documents shows 10 Chinese entities acquired advanced Nvidia chips embedded in server products made by Super Micro Computer Inc., Dell Technologies Inc. and Taiwan’s Gigabyte Technology Co Ltd after the U.S. on Nov. 17 expanded the embargo to subject more chips and countries to licensing rules.
Specifically, the servers contained some of Nvidia’s most advanced chips, according to the previously unreported tenders fulfilled between Nov. 20 and Feb. 28. While the U.S. bars Nvidia and its partners from selling advanced chips to China, including via third parties, the sale and purchase of the chips are not illegal in China.
The 11 sellers of the chips were little-known Chinese retailers. Reuters could not determine whether, in fulfilling the orders, they used stockpiles acquired before the U.S. tightened chip-export restrictions in November.
The more middlemen, the higher the price, so you try to chase as many of those down so it’s less efficient to keep passing it around
I feel that would work really well for items for regular folks, but this is more for items that these researchers are going to either use directly for things that China absolutely needs, or carefully disassemble and image with a scanning electron microscope, so they can reverse engineer the billions of dollars of IP that went into building them.
But ultimately, even if the line of resellers from manufacturer to end recipient is very long, expensive and convoluted, it’s much easier to just smuggle the chips via sock puppet companies, or even just nice locals who are willing to receive a box from Intel.
Plenty of folks with enclosed porches live close to folks who don’t. It’s not a stretch to imagine a random ask with a good story about not wanting computer boxes visible from the street could make a stranger unwillingly complicit.
Exactly and for chips you need very specific and advanced machinery which company like ASML makes, but those are banned. Now this is such a specific product that China is very very willing to get their hands on via hacks or espionage. And even if you get the information, you need the brains to get it build (which shouldn’t be a super big if a deal for them). Even if that works, building a Fab is not done in a year or 2. And even then, if you are able to bake chips, it’s not a given that it goes smooth from day one. So best case they are 5 years down the road.
Point it is, for this type of systems it will be easier to keep control over banwise. But as long as consumer grade gpu’s can do the AI tasks, it’s for China much easier to obtain via grey markets.ans thus very hard to enforce.