Dell Allegedly Prohibits Sales of High-End Radeon and Instinct MI GPUs in China

[AleksandarK]

AMD's lineup of Radeon and Instinct GPUs, including the flagship RX 7900 XTX/XT, the professional-grade PRO W7900, and the upcoming Instinct MI300, are facing sales prohibitions in China, according to an alleged sales advisory guide from Dell. This restriction mirrors the earlier ban on NVIDIA's RTX 4090, underscoring the increasing export limitations U.S.-based companies face for high-end semiconductor products that could be repurposed for military and strategic applications. Notably, Dell's report lists several AMD Instinct accelerators, which are integral to data center infrastructure, and Radeon GPUs, which are widely used in PCs, indicating the broad impact of the advisory.

The ban includes discrete GPUs like AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT, which, despite their data-center potential, may still be sold under specific "NEC" eligibility. This status allows for continued sales in restricted regions like sales of NVIDIA's RTX 4090. However, the process to secure NEC eligibility is lengthy, potentially leading to supply shortages and increased GPU prices—a trend already observed with the RX 7900 XTX in China, where it's become a high-end alternative in light of the RTX 4090's scarcity and inflated pricing. The Dell sales advisory also lists that sales of the aforementioned products are banned in 22 countries, including Russia, Iran, Iraq, and others listed below.



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[ZoneDymo]

dont get it, wasnt this all about preventing or stalling China from progress in the AI space?
Werent Nvidia cards just miles better hence the big one, the 4090 got banned by not the 4080 etc?
So why ban AMD cards then?

 

[A Computer Guy]

All these countries will do is cause them to use their sleeper agents to buy domestically then ship them overseas. Barely an inconvenience.

 

[evernessince]

dont get it, wasnt this all about preventing or stalling China from progress in the AI space?
Werent Nvidia cards just miles better hence the big one, the 4090 got banned by not the 4080 etc?
So why ban AMD cards then?

Nvidia cards aren't necessarily miles better at AI, they just had a much more established software ecosystem. Something AMD has been chipping away at with ROCm. In addition, AMD cards are more accurate. Level1Techs has a good video on the topic on their channel where they demonstrate an Nvidia and AMD card both running a LLM with the AMD card producing a better result.

 

[P4-630]

they demonstrate an Nvidia and AMD card both running a LLM with the AMD card producing a better result.

But .. But, that's impossible!!

 

[Dristun]

All these countries will do is cause them to use their sleeper agents to buy domestically then ship them overseas. Barely an inconvenience.

Don't even need sleeper agents for that, plenty of people are always willing to do business even when the governments don't.

 

[Crackong]

So why ban AMD cards then?

Since the Vega era, AMD cards generally had better raw compute power than the eq. model from Nvidia.
But Nvidia generally had much more developed eco system so Nvidia had advantage translating more raw compute power to actual performance in more general aspects, like gaming.

In specialized workspace like supercomputers,
Software are developed in-house by specialized teams to utilize all compute power available.

And that's where AMD cards get chosen for their relatively high raw compute power, and a complete eco system integrating with highest performance x86 processors currently available (EPYC).

 

[Prima.Vera]

3rd party vendors rejoice.

 

[Vya Domus]

No way they'd never do that... again.

 

[Assimilator]

I find it strange that it's Dell enforcing this prohibition, not the US government.

Level1Techs has a good video on the topic on their channel where they demonstrate an Nvidia and AMD card both running a LLM with the AMD card producing a better result.

Imagine if you'd actually linked to the video to support your claim.

 

[lewis007]

China will just find a way to make their own, Americas futile attempts to slow China will end in an ocean of tears. So pathetic.

 

[R-T-B]

China will just find a way to make their own,

That sounds slow.

 

[dragontamer5788]

This is about nuclear breakout, not about AI.

MI300 is a beast in 64-bit computation. That's physics simulation, aka nuclear research.

I find it strange that it's Dell enforcing this prohibition, not the US government.

I presume there's a law that's forcing Dell to do this somewhere. I'm no legal expert though. There's been an uptick this year in China's nuclear stockpile that's been reported in various circles I've followed that likely has more to do to these high-end GPUs than this current AI-hype cycle.

Even without any AI / neural net stuff going on, these GPUs are dangerous enough as it is. "Strategic" purposes is a government keyword meaning nuclear. EDIT: I guess space is also "Strategic", so maybe its not "necessarily" nukes, but that's my reading of this issue. But even then: space is usually a keyword for "ICBM research", which has nuclear implications and is therefore "Strategic".

China will just find a way to make their own

That's the entire damn point. We know that much smaller countries can do this (ie: Iran). But there's no reason why we should help China on their "strategic" initiatives.

 

[cjcox]

World wide economics is "difficult". Not sure it's easy to say who comes out ahead when things like this are done.

From a pure technology point of view, I just see the "damage".

IMHO, if it (restrictions) does "work" the impact is short lived.