Friday, January 31st 2025
US Investigates Possible "Singapore" Loophole in China's Access to NVIDIA GPUs
Today, Bloomberg reported that the US government under Trump administration is probing whether Chinese AI company DeepSeek circumvented export restrictions to acquire advanced NVIDIA GPUs through Singaporean intermediaries. The investigation follows concerns that DeepSeek's AI model, R1—reportedly rivaling leading systems from OpenAI and Google—may have been trained using restricted hardware that is blocked from exporting to China. Singapore's role in NVIDIA's global sales has surged, with the nation accounting for 22% of the chipmaker's revenue in Q3 FY2025, up from 9% in Q3 FY2023. This spike coincides with tightened US export controls on AI chips to China, prompting speculation that Singapore serves as a pipe for Chinese firms to access high-end GPUs like the H100, which cannot be sold directly to China.
DeepSeek has not disclosed hardware details for R1 but revealed its earlier V3 model was trained using 2,048 H800 GPUs (2.8 million GPU hours), achieving efficiency surpassing Meta's Llama 3, which required 30.8 million GPU hours. Analysts suggest R1's performance implies even more powerful infrastructure, potentially involving restricted chips. US authorities, including the White House and FBI, are examining whether third parties in Singapore facilitated the transfer of controlled GPUs to DeepSeek. A well-known semiconductor analyst firm, SemiAnalysis, believes that DeepSeek acquired around 50,000 NVIDIA Hopper GPUs, which includes a mix of H100, H800, and H20. NVIDIA clarified that its reported Singapore revenue reflects "bill to" customer locations, not final destinations, stating most products are routed to the US or Western markets.
The company emphasized compliance with export laws but acknowledged Singapore's significant growth in trade. Meanwhile, Howard Lutnick, a Trump nominee to lead the Commerce Department, accused DeepSeek of evading US restrictions during his confirmation hearing, pledging rigorous enforcement of chip sales limits if appointed. Authorities have yet to conclude investigations, leaving questions about Singapore's role unresolved.
Source:
via Tom's Hardware
DeepSeek has not disclosed hardware details for R1 but revealed its earlier V3 model was trained using 2,048 H800 GPUs (2.8 million GPU hours), achieving efficiency surpassing Meta's Llama 3, which required 30.8 million GPU hours. Analysts suggest R1's performance implies even more powerful infrastructure, potentially involving restricted chips. US authorities, including the White House and FBI, are examining whether third parties in Singapore facilitated the transfer of controlled GPUs to DeepSeek. A well-known semiconductor analyst firm, SemiAnalysis, believes that DeepSeek acquired around 50,000 NVIDIA Hopper GPUs, which includes a mix of H100, H800, and H20. NVIDIA clarified that its reported Singapore revenue reflects "bill to" customer locations, not final destinations, stating most products are routed to the US or Western markets.
36 Comments on US Investigates Possible "Singapore" Loophole in China's Access to NVIDIA GPUs
EDIT: ah yeah, probably something to do with the Trump administration....
www.techpowerup.com/331776/amd-details-deepseek-r1-performance-on-radeon-rx-7900-xtx-confirms-ryzen-ai-max-memory-sizes
When there is demand, there is a market (even black). It just makes things harder, not impossible. Are not hard drugs prohibited in the US ?
You need plutonium level of control if you want to completely restrict China, but that would be catastrophic to the economies of scale needed to produce such hardware.
This is a performative announcement as people should expect from politicians.
It was reported a while ago that renting H100 compute time was cheaper in China than the US.
You can obtain half an ounce of Plutonium, just need NRC form 30.37 I believe (I forget the form number) and $$$. Element collectors can do it and stuff.
But yes, you are correct. Hell I've met people shipping these GPUs to China and Russia. At an extreme markup. It did turn out to be far more profitable than selling drugs
Both the 4090 and 7900xtx have nothing to do with the GPUs that are actually used to train such big models (think A/100/H100/B200 from Nvidia and the Instinct lineup from AMD).You can't run the actual MoE model in a reasonable manner with any kind of consumer hardware tho.
:laugh:
You can't sanction design wins or good ideas. Religion tried very hard at that and failed miserably, its just science :)
once it leaves the U.S and is within another countries borders the U.S Govt should have no say over what happens to it from there
And as Singapore is not a U.S State U.S restrictions don't apply
Oh yes, when Ngreedia was selling directly to miners and by the truckload then pretending to care for gamers.
i wont pretend to ignore that both scenarios do end up being the correct one since those customers are willing to pay more but their hypocrisy and lies are something else.