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.
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
I mean all the database stuff is obvious low hanging fruit for inference engines.
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The mainstream consensus on PRC silicon has been "the gap exists, but is closing" for a long time[1][2]. I think you might be confusing the algorithmically-cast shadows on the cave wall that you're sat in front of for a reasonable and unbiased sample. Can you provide any reason to believe that your data points are actually generalizable? From your tone it sounds more like you're a victim of getting outrage baited into engagement, and mistaking observations made in that envelope for a high quality data source. You gotta watch out for that mate.
[1] - https://www.eastwestcenter.org/sites/default/files/private/i...
[2] - https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/journals/chinese_semi...
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It was one of the reasons why Jensen was against the export controls
well, yknow, apart from his vested interest in having 1.4 billion more people to sell GPUs to
for sure, but like the other respondent said, he was talking his own book
and also, arguably jensen`s track record is such that i wouldnt exactly lump him with the mainstreamers )))
Isn't it common knowledge that every better mouse trap breeds smarter mice?
Future AI systems will eke out every last blood drop of performance from any kind of hardware. Not even a single bit flip will go to waste.
Third party here, I feel like I'm missing something. Your comment seems somewhat pointed and I don't understand what exactly you're asking for?
Weren't they just saying that it's self-evident that preventing a manufacturing superpower - one with a significant pool of industrial engineers and effectively unlimited money & government backing - from acquiring some good is a temporary measure? Because if they have sufficient incentive, they would just... Learn to build it themselves?
After all, their entire nation is built around building things, and catching up / leap-frogging is much easier than starting from scratch.
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> in 2022, mainstream and westoid virtualism opinion was ``china is cut off from the future now`` (cue the clownface here). ``we cut off chinas legs`` yadayada
maybe where you were paying attention. were they also certain that americans wouldn't be paying the tariffs?
but lots of people who saw what china was doing with renewable energy and EVs rightly suggested this would put them on the path of independence w/r/t GPUs and LLMs.
this isn't like the ol' days where "japan can't do software". we knew china can.
your attitude isn't warranted.
Yes - I am old enough to remember the Biden admin’s October 7th sanctions, and the chatter about the US having another unipolar moment.
Look into the history clases will be enough. Why would I need to prove anything to a random stranger on the internet?
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.
When you say AI will be powerful, what do you mean? Like in terms of national power, will AI let the US fight and win a war against China despite China's size, manufacturing base and possession of nuclear weapons? Will AI let the US beat the Chinese in manufacturing costs and scale despite China's greater adoption of industrial robots and larger number of skilled workers? Or will AI just be really good at writing software?
Because if the AI is just really good at writing software, I am not sure why China has to "catch up". Seems to me China can just treat AI like other technologies. Let the US pay most of the R&D costs, then come after and treat the technology as a commodity. Sell it better and cheaper and at scale.
I am not sure why it's a big deal for China if China is a few months behind the US in terms of the very frontier AI. Just like I'm not sure if it's a big deal which country has the biggest super computer in the world.
If AI is super human, it can beat any nation with today’s technology. It can recursively self improve while suppressing any other lab (think about how good it is in hacking computer systems).
I am not inventing a winner take it all scenario, that is what driving the race.
But, like, how does that smarts lead to beating nations with today's technology? How would an AI stop an incoming nuclear ballistic missile? I've heard on podcasts with MIT professor Ted Postol that based in the laws of physics intercepting these is basically impossible, because of the speeds and physics involved. Can AI discover new physics to overcome those limitations?
If AI cannot stop nuclear ballistic missiles, then how does AI give the US power over China? Seems to me that after AI we have the same mutually assured destruction we have today. In which case America cannot really stop China from progressing or threaten China too much.
Seems to me being super human intelligent does not inherently guarantee power. Just like the smartest person in the world does not always win in a fist fight or a gun fight or war. I.e. Stephen Hawking might have been smart, but he did not have physical strength and power. Power and smarts are not always related.
I just gave you a scenario above - that it hacks every computer system in China, including those controlling nuclear missiles. But a super intelligent AI can invent scenarios that almost by definition we cannot think of.
I would assume that the computer systems in China that control nuclear missiles, as well as our computer systems that control nuclear missiles, are air gapped and therefore not hackable no matter how smart the AI is.
This only demonstrates imposed limits you are able to imagine, not what’s possible in all scenarios. A super intelligent AI can bribe, social engineer and do anything it wants. No system is foolproof.
Well yes in an imaginary world everything is possible. We are less close to what you’re describing than to having flying cars.
Gotta love the bot accounts here
Superhuman does not mean actual superpowers. You still need a path to victory and it's not obvious that there's one that we're just too dumb to see.
Historically civilizations that have been only at a slight technological advantage have completely dominated those that are slightly behind.
And we already see AI’s super human ability in computer systems. It will be able to be Omni present and completely control every computer in any place, and bribe and social engineer and mimic any person digitally. All while doing in an instant what a team of humans would require years.
I’m really surprised by the lack of logical thinking in HN when it comes to China.
You might as well use “magic” in your comments instead of “AI” and you would make an equal amount of sense.
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.
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.
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
The Information have reports on this as recent as this summer
Do you have a link?
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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
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.
The AI revolution has led to everyone including US companies working to build their own GPUs there is zero proof or reason to think embargo’s are the cause. As I said, China was already working to build their own capacity
> 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?
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.
It can be both. They were already doing it and the situation made it more urgent.
> 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 ?
> 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.