It has become clear that China has acquired NVIDIA AI chips that should have been banned by the United States from Dell, Gigabyte, and Supermicro servers
Due to concerns that China may use high-performance chips for military purposes such as AI-equipped weapons and cyber attack tools, the US government has restricted semiconductor manufacturers such as NVIDIA from exporting high-performance chips to China. However, it has been pointed out that some research institutes and universities in China are circumventing these restrictions by purchasing servers equipped with NVIDIA chips from Dell, Gigabyte, and Supermicro through resellers.
China acquired recently banned Nvidia chips in Super Micro, Dell servers, tenders show | Reuters
Tech war: China acquires US-restricted Nvidia AI chips built in Super Micro, Dell and Gigabyte Technology servers, tenders show | South China Morning Post
China somehow got its hands on advanced Nvidia chips, despite the sanctions | TechRadar
https://www.techradar.com/pro/china-somehow-got-its-hands-on-advanced-nvidia-chips-despite-the-sanctions
As the United States faces a deepening conflict with China, it has banned semiconductor manufacturers such as NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel from exporting data center chips above a certain threshold to China or Russia.
US government orders NVIDIA and AMD to 'restrict export of AI chips to China' - GIGAZINE
However, Reuters reports that between November 20, 2023 and February 28, 2024, 10 research institutions, including the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Shandong Artificial Intelligence Institute, the National Aviation Research Center, the Space Science Center, the Hubei Earthquake Management Bureau, Shandong University, and Southwest University, purchased server products from Dell, Gigabyte, and Supermicro equipped with NVIDIA chips.
The purchase was carried out in the form of an auction, with bids ranging from $10,000 (approximately 1.55 million yen) to $259,000 (approximately 40 million yen).
The US government stepped up its restrictions on October 17, 2023, but these research institutions are said to have purchased servers through 11 resellers in China that had purchased products before the restrictions were tightened.
At the time of writing, there are no laws in China regulating the buying and selling of chips, so even after the U.S. tightened regulations, NVIDIA's high-performance chips will continue to be sold to Chinese research institutes.
'The products that ended up in the hands of Chinese research institutions are widely available products that were exported before the tightening of export controls, and do not represent any violation of U.S. export control regulations by our partners, including Dell, Gigabyte or Supermicro,' an NVIDIA spokesperson said.
'We will continue to investigate further and if we determine that products have been resold in violation of U.S. export control regulations, we will work with our customers to take appropriate action,' NVIDIA said in a statement.
Similarly, Supermicro said it 'complies with U.S. export requirements for the sale and export of GPU systems to jurisdictions and entities that require licenses, but if it becomes apparent that a third party is exporting or reselling such systems without obtaining the required licenses, we will investigate the matter and take appropriate action.'
Daniel Gerkin of the law firm Kirkland & Ellis said the reason they were able to get their hands on high-performance chips that were supposed to be export-controlled was because of a 'lack of visibility into the supply chain from one vendor to another.'
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in Hardware, Posted by log1r_ut