Remix.run Logo
zicohacks 5 hours ago

US chip export restrictions may actually be an advantage for China's AI Infrastructure. Chinese companies are forced to speed up developing their own AI chips

menaerus 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It was evident that this will happen.

> Compared with our initial baseline on the same hardware, we achieved a 3× improvement in end-to-end serving performance, reaching hardware efficiency and per-token cost comparable to mainstream NVIDIA GPUs. This demonstrates that Chinese chips can support frontier-model inference efficiently and economically at scale.

HSO 42 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> It was evident that this will happen.

ok, show it

i`ve recorded a few people who saw this coming in 2022 and i can tell it wasnt many

menaerus 35 minutes ago | parent [-]

Look into the history clases will be enough. Why would I need to prove anything to a random stranger on the internet?

verdverm 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

you can also derive some stats from the ~10T tokens a day on 100k devices, 100M / device / day, but then one has to account for the multi-gpu model size, and I need coffee before I go there

gpt5 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I’ll just note that NVidia’s moat has never been inference, and there are many chips used at a much larger scale than Chinese chips for inference like TPUs and AMD chips.

The other part is that it’s a bit of a meme here to say that the chip restriction is actually helping China (or shall I say, coordinated effort?). For once, we know that China has put a lot of pressure on the US to relax these controls multiple times. In addition to large chip smuggling networks (e.g. 22% of NVidia’s worldwide revenue magically comes from Singapore, and the ratio has been growing).

Lastly, assuming acceleration in AI (which we ARE seeing), there might not be time to China to catch up. The best estimate right now is that the first EUV chips from China will not come out before 2030. By that time who knows how powerful AI will be.

All I’m saying is that the discussion is so one sided and a bit baselesss with no nuance, that it seems either a meme/groupthink in the community or coordinated. If anything, the data suggests that the US should increase its export controls and better track the tech supply chain if it wants to further curb Chinese progress.

menaerus an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Why do you think the Chinese are not using their ai chips, which afaics are from huawei, to train their models? If that is true, which I think it is, we don't have to wait until 2030 to see if they're gonna match the performance of nvidia GPU. The evidence is already here - glm is among the most competitive models out there.

gpt5 an hour ago | parent [-]

Look up reports by The Information, DeepSeek’s training of its big models are all done on NVidia’s chips (more than that - on smuggled Blackwell as well). There have been attempts by many Chinese labs to train on Huawei h chips, but they have all been limited to more minor models or distillations of the bigger ones.

menaerus 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

Unless you have the source for the latter it's nothing more than propaganda. Also, DeepSeek report is 2-3 years old, and at that time there were no huawei chips, at least not known to the public. This is a different model, in different age where huawei chips are already delivered into the production as we see

edgyquant an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The idea that China wasn’t working hard to build their own chips is a political talking point period. Nothing has been sped up here, China was always going to do this and the backlash you see from people who are against it is only proof that restrictions do hurt them

true_religion 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I do believe your first sentence, but the second one ... doesn't really follow.

The unnatural and sudden nature of the US chip embargo has galvanized the Chinese companies to speed up development. It makes economic sense to do so rather than pay inflated rates to essentially smuggle a necessary good, while never knowing if the embargo will be tightened and those under-the-table supply chains dry up as well.

Yes, there was a plan, but what was planned for 5 years from now is being done today, because if you wait 5 years, you'll be so far behind thanks to the effect of the embargo.

dominotw an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> The idea that China wasn’t working hard to build their own chips is a political talking point period.

never heard of this 'talking point' . who is even saying this?

stanfordkid an hour ago | parent [-]

It's an implied corollary: when folks say that "blocking US Chips is what led China to build it's own" they are implying it is US export restrictions that pushed China to innovate. OP is saying this isn't necessarily true. I don't think it is either: China seems to have succeeded due to a centrally planned economy that values independence, with high amounts of strategic government led technology investment.

vcryan 43 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It can be both. They were already doing it and the situation made it more urgent.

dominotw 39 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> OP is saying this isn't necessarily true.

but your supposed corollary was

> China wasn’t working hard to build their own chips

kind of dishonest ?

miroljub an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> All I’m saying is that the discussion is so one sided and a bit baselesss with no nuance, that it seems either a meme/groupthink in the community or coordinated. If anything, the data suggests that the US should increase its export controls and better track the tech supply chain if it wants to further curb Chinese progress.

Or, to put it bluntly, you are a proponent of the trade war.

aurareturn 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

US chip export winners and losers:

Winners: Huawei, SMIC, CXMT,Chinese ASML-competitors, OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta.

Losers: Chinese AI labs, Nvidia, AMD, TSMC, Micron, SK Hynix, Samsung, Intel.

Any company that depends on Nvidia hardware such as OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS are winners. It means less competition for Nvidia chips and services. If you think Nvidia chips are expensive now, imagine if Chinese companies can buy them freely. Also for American AI labs, it also means they can stay ahead of Chinese AI labs in compute capacity.

The American hardware makers lost the lobby fight in Washington.

throwaw12 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I wonder why Chinese AI labs are losers?

In the short term maybe yes, in the long term, maybe they are the winners, they can build on top of cheap inference stack and eventually win on pricing

aurareturn 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Because having unrestricted access to both American and Chinese hardware is better than only Chinese hardware. Long term or short term. More suppliers the better.

bigmadshoe an hour ago | parent [-]

Perhaps the future Chinese hardware would not be so cheap or performant had Nvidia export controls not been put into place.

Catloafdev 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Intel shares are still up over 100% since the Trump admin invested in them and started going to bat for them.

I don't think your information is entirely accurate.

mullingitover an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Such a great move by the government. Imagine what we could do for US industry if the government took a stake in all major corporations? Many people are saying that the healthcare industry should be next.

aurareturn 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not being able to have unrestricted access to the world's second biggest market does not relate to Intel being up over 100%.

Just logic.

Catloafdev 2 hours ago | parent [-]

So we're basing winners and losers on vibes rather than money or performance?

aurareturn 22 minutes ago | parent [-]

A simple ChatGPT can explain it to you.

Intel being up 100% has nothing to do with China market being restricted. They could be up 200% instead if the China market is free.

christina97 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nobody pretended that Chinese firms would just lay back and twiddle their thumbs when faced with import restrictions. The question was whether they would be far enough to be able to catch up without much issue or so far behind that they wouldn’t ever effectively catch up or that by the time they did, it wouldn’t matter.

Half-arsed export restrictions are the best of both worlds for these firms: enough of an incentive to take homegrown hardware seriously, yet not aggressive enough to cause meaningful handicap in the meantime.

brazukadev an hour ago | parent [-]

> Half-arsed export restrictions

What's the alternative other than a military/naval embargo?

chvid an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Of course it is - how else could Huawei and a number smaller companies compete with NVIDIA.

HarHarVeryFunny 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

China themselves recognize this. After Trump relaxed sanctions and allowed NVIDIA H200 sales to China on a case by case basis, the Chinese government stepped in to essentially block it!

In addition to Huawei who make the Ascend series that Ziphu are using, there are also at least a half dozen or so other Chinese companies also making their own AI accelerators.

0xbadcafebee 4 hours ago | parent [-]

And this wouldn't have happened if we had tried to get them to buy our hardware rather than trying to gatekeep. Protectionism never works in the long term.

freakynit 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

US companies should now be more worried about Chinese companies flooding the market with their, hopefully, very affordable GPU's. The scale at which they can manufacture stuff is unmatched anywhere else. Nvidia can kiss goodbye to their 75%+ profit margins.

Almost everyone knew that these sanctions would backfire within a few years. You can't really put sanctions that have noticeable negative effects on bigger economies. They only work for small to medium economies. I believe sanctions on any economy in top 10 would fail.

aurareturn 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

China is gated by not having EUV machine access. They're also bottlenecked by ASML's DUV machine production like everyone else. There are already talks of banning China from even purchasing DUV machines from ASML.

So until China solves the ASML problem, there won't be any flooding.

Catloafdev 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>until China solves the ASML problem

Which they are in progress on: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/how-china-built-its-manh...

aurareturn 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, but we don't know how well they work or what nm can they print or how machines they can make.

HarHarVeryFunny an hour ago | parent [-]

They've overcome every hurdle to go from nothing to having working machines, so all these questions are presumably a matter of how fast they will improve and ramp up production (initially 5 this year, 20 next year), not whether they will.

China have been really squeezing all they can out of DUV machines, but I'm not sure how much node size really matters for AI competition - more of a cost issue (more chips/power for same FLOPs) than anything, and TSMC & NVIDIA's healthy profit margins need to be considered too.

aurareturn 25 minutes ago | parent [-]

I'm well aware of how good China is at manufacturing. However, DUV/EUV machine manufacturing is unproven.

What is the timeline like? 1 year? 5 years? 10 years?

HarHarVeryFunny 5 minutes ago | parent [-]

They already have working machines, and are slated to ship the first 5 early production ones right about now (before the end of 2026), and are projecting 20 for next year.

Small numbers perhaps, but this is happening right now.

What will the numbers be in 5-10 years time? Who knows, but ASML took about 5 years to go from 20/yr to 100+/yr.

Of course politically the world may well be quite different in 5 years time, as may be the AI market.

HarHarVeryFunny 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> There are already talks of banning China from even purchasing DUV machines from ASML

A bit late for that now that they are moving into early production with their own.

verdverm 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

pretty sure they'll be fine for a while, between the build out and import bans, I don't expect demand to slow enough to let supply catch up

Nvidia are likely more concerned about AMD taking market share, and I suspect that geopolitics will leave US/China GPUs with largely non overlpping customer bases.

overfeed 2 minutes ago | parent [-]

> I suspect that geopolitics will leave US/China GPUs with largely non overlpping customer bases

That's not what's happening in the auto-industry, Chinese EVs are easily outselling American ones. Why would GPUs be any different?

pjc50 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There seems to be a belief that the post-war 20th century order would be a fixed feature rather than a contingency of history. That the US would be #1, Europe #2, and the rest of the world would remain "developing" in rural poverty forever. That somehow China could be prevented from catching up. Now they are, and behind them India. I think people are going to be even more surprised in the latter half of the 21st century when South America and Africa start catching up as well.

Brazil is one to watch if they manage to achieve political stability, as is Nigeria if it can transition from being a petrostate.

0xbadcafebee 15 minutes ago | parent [-]

And the end started when China was admitted to the WTO. They had this huge cheap labor force, a government that could centrally plan (in addition to ignoring little things like environmentalism or rights), and an immense wealth of resources. It was like a bunch of sheep letting a baby wolf into the barn. Now the wolf's all grown up.

skybrian 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’m under the impression that industrial policy has been pretty good for some Asian companies but there have also been notorious failures like the Jones Act.

So I think it can be summarized as “it all depends” and “skill issue.”

ipsod 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Look at how China does it. They'll happily sell us everything we want - more than enough of it, cheap enough, to put all of our own manufacturers out of business.

Seems to work for them.

ffsm8 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Protectionism never works in the long term.

You seem to misunderstand what Protectionism is. This is not an example of it not working. If anything, it is any example of it working. Because Protectionism is about protecting your industry from foreign competition - exactly what China decided to do.

HarHarVeryFunny 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Same thing with Trump not helping Ukraine and berating NATO. He thought he held all the cards, but now Ukraine has a thriving battle-tested drone industry, UK and France have stepped in to replace the US with advanced missiles and anti-missile systems, stepping up their own production and transferring IP to Ukraine.

Now, the US is left out in the cold with little influence left, themselves now the ones with an anti-missile shortage.

abtinf 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Where the US sees itself penalizing China with an export restriction, China sees the US gifting it with zero-political-cost “protective” import tariff.

You can’t really hurt a country that has a culture with a positive attitude toward growth.

NorthSouthNorth 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Didn't everyone make fun of Jenson for saying exactly this?

edgyquant an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Yes it was a dumb thing to say and it doesn’t follow at all that restrictions on chips has “sped up” anything. China was always going to build their own chips and their pace is unrelated to a lack of nvidia chips.

verdverm 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not sure, but there are definitely people around the president on both sides, some who think they can addict the Chinese to our silicon, like its the new opium war or something

aatd86 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yup. That was really short sighted. And good for China. And actually the overall global market market since supply will augment and competition will decrease pricing as well.

stogot 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It created demand that would not have been there without restrictions