AMD Stalls on Instinct MI309 China AI Chip Launch Amid US Export Hurdles

[AleksandarK]

According to the latest report from Bloomberg, AMD has hit a roadblock in offering its top-of-the-line AI accelerator in the Chinese market. The newest AI chip is called Instinct MI309, a lower-performance Instinct MI300 variant tailored to meet the latest US export rules for selling advanced chips to China-based entities. However, the Instinct MI309 still appears too powerful to gain unconditional approval from the US Department of Commerce, leaving AMD in need of an export license. Originally, the US Department of Commerce made a rule: Total Processing Performance (TPP) score should not exceed 4800, effectively capping AI performance at 600 FP8 TFLOPS. This rule ensures that processors with slightly lower performance may still be sold to Chinese customers, provided their performance density (PD) is sufficiently low.

However, AMD's latest creation, Instinct MI309, is everything but slow. Based on the powerful Instinct MI300, AMD has not managed to bring it down to acceptable levels to acquire a US export license from the Department of Commerce. It is still unknown which Chinese customer was trying to acquire AMD's Instinct MI309; however, it could be one of the Chinese AI labs trying to get ahold of more training hardware for their domestic models. NVIDIA has employed a similar tactic, selling A800 and H800 chips to China, until the US also ended the export of these chips to China. AI labs located in China can only use domestic hardware, including accelerators from Alibaba, Huawei, and Baidu. Cloud services hosting GPUs in US can still be accessed by Chinese companies, but that is currently under US regulators watchlist.



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[Space Lynx]

Can't we all just get along?

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Can't we all just get along?

- Basically all of human history says "no"

 

[Wirko]

That's some good marketing actually, in a twisted way. Hey look, Greenvidia can make much weaker chips, but we can't!

 

[Space Lynx]

- Basically all of human history says "no"

I disagree, we even have records/documents that prove it was largely safe to travel from village to village in medieval England for example, because everyone knew everyone else then, vast vast majority of the time it was fine. It's really only with the big cities historically and presently that crime goes up, due to the extra layer of anonymity. A small example, but an important one, because the key word is anonymous. We all feel like a number now, and we never used to. Even in Ancient Rome your reputation was everything, more so than any riches. That is because the anonymous factor was low. As it increases, so to do we lose that "genuine" part of humanity. A true shame, as I often say, we are capable of so much, yet so little.

 

[LabRat 891]

That's some good marketing actually, in a twisted way. Hey look, Greenvidia can make much weaker chips, but we can't!

I'm curious if these restrictions address "overclocking"?
I'd assume so, otherwise it'd be extremely easy to just re-sell existing (restricted) silicon at lower clocks.

Would the 'responsibility' be 'hands off' for AMD/nVidia? -it's literally operating the hardware outside of "design(ed) parameters"

 

[Wirko]

Can't we all just get along?

Total value of US-China trade (exports + imports, goods in 2023 + services + direct investments in 2022): around 800,000,000,000 US dollars. Some people just get along, I guess.

 

[bonehead123]

Given their track record of circumventing/going over, under & around the trade/export rules, I would think this problem has already by solved by the Chinese Gov't....

It's not like they can't send someone to the US or EU to buy some chips, legally or otherwise, take them home and reverse-engineer them after all, it would NOT be the 1st time

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I disagree, we even have records/documents that prove it was largely safe to travel from village to village in medieval England for example, because everyone knew everyone else then, vast vast majority of the time it was fine. It's really only with the big cities historically and presently that crime goes up, due to the extra layer of anonymity. A small example, but an important one, because the key word is anonymous. We all feel like a number now, and we never used to. Even in Ancient Rome your reputation was everything, more so than any riches. That is because the anonymous factor was low. As it increases, so to do we lose that "genuine" part of humanity. A true shame, as I often say, we are capable of so much, yet so little.

- The statement was "Can't we all just get along" and I would argue there was never a point in time in human history where we all just got along. Someone always had beef with someone, one tribe was beating up on another, some city-state was pillaging another, one kingdom was warring with another.

Somewhere, always.

In may ways, we actually live in one of the most peaceful and prosperous periods of all human history, and even then we still cannot all get along.

 

[Space Lynx]

- The statement was "Can't we all just get along" and I would argue there was never a point in time in human history where we all just got along. Someone always had beef with someone, one tribe was beating up on another, some city-state was pillaging another, one kingdom was warring with another.

Somewhere, always.

In may ways, we actually live in one of the most peaceful and prosperous periods of all human history, and even then we still cannot all get along.

fair observation, I will concede

we are a strange species, lol

 

[Vayra86]

I disagree, we even have records/documents that prove it was largely safe to travel from village to village in medieval England for example, because everyone knew everyone else then, vast vast majority of the time it was fine. It's really only with the big cities historically and presently that crime goes up, due to the extra layer of anonymity. A small example, but an important one, because the key word is anonymous. We all feel like a number now, and we never used to. Even in Ancient Rome your reputation was everything, more so than any riches. That is because the anonymous factor was low. As it increases, so to do we lose that "genuine" part of humanity. A true shame, as I often say, we are capable of so much, yet so little.

You skipped a few era's of European warfare there. From tribal strife to its movements and then the Roman Empire... Yeah, the Romans didn't quite slaughter their own randomly in the streets, true, so that must have been a peaceful time then too To satiate the lack of blood in those cities, criminals were sent into an arena instead. The same criminals that made it not quite as safe for everyone on the streets themselves.

So there was a time in England's medieval countryside that was perceived safe locally. That's great. The same thing occurs today, I can just travel through the country here and not get shot to bits or robbed blind. That's saying what exactly? We just exported our violence elsewhere, a twisted kind of funded proxy war in Ukraine, some several thousand soldiers in the Middle East from various Western nations, we have missions in Africa... the list goes on.

There are a few bright spots in the history books of areas NOT at war or somehow under some kind of conflict, those exceptions just made the rule. The one constant in history though is that when groups have it better than other groups, the other groups will try to take it from them, one way or another. Today a lot of reasons we're not shooting is because we're using money to replace bullets, and trade is clearly weaponized, just look at sanctions. Until trade fails and there's suddenly a few hundred thousand Russians on the eastern EU border.

Anonimity plays a part, but that only goes for the small scale petty local crime. You don't steal cattle from a farmer you know. That's just being stupid, its not an example of humans being nice. What is shows us is that if humans are not bound by rules or social conventions, they do whatever the fck they want and what works out best for them, often even just in the short term.

Its evolution baby. The reason we're nice to each other, is because in social constructs it is in fact a means of survival. You feel better that way, you can give and receive help, etc. But the bottom line is still survival (of the fittest). This being nice works in the local, social context best, and you're right, it gets worse as scale goes up, because the chances of people disturbing that status quo goes up.

Still I (think I) get where you're coming from. We could be a lot nicer to each other and it would probably be better too. For everyone. And it works just fine that way, until someone doesn't want to be nice...

Geopolitics of late are a good example. Nobody wants escalation, and yet, it happens, one step at a time.

 

[watzupken]

AMD: Let’s rebrand our RX 6500 XT as AI hardware to China.

US Commerce Department: Nope, too powerful.

AMD: Ah shucks.

 

[Space Lynx]

You skipped a few era's of European warfare there. From tribal strife to its movements and then the Roman Empire... Yeah, the Romans didn't quite slaughter their own randomly in the streets, true, so that must have been a peaceful time then too To satiate the lack of blood in those cities, criminals were sent into an arena instead. The same criminals that made it not quite as safe for everyone on the streets themselves.

So there was a time in England's medieval countryside that was perceived safe locally. That's great. The same thing occurs today, I can just travel through the country here and not get shot to bits or robbed blind. That's saying what exactly? We just exported our violence elsewhere, a twisted kind of funded proxy war in Ukraine, some several thousand soldiers in the Middle East from various Western nations, we have missions in Africa... the list goes on.

There are a few bright spots in the history books of areas NOT at war or somehow under some kind of conflict, those exceptions just made the rule. The one constant in history though is that when groups have it better than other groups, the other groups will try to take it from them, one way or another. Today a lot of reasons we're not shooting is because we're using money to replace bullets, and trade is clearly weaponized, just look at sanctions. Until trade fails and there's suddenly a few hundred thousand Russians on the eastern EU border.

Anonimity plays a part, but that only goes for the small scale petty local crime. You don't steal cattle from a farmer you know. That's just being stupid, its not an example of humans being nice. What is shows us is that if humans are not bound by rules or social conventions, they do whatever the fck they want and what works out best for them, often even just in the short term.

Its evolution baby. The reason we're nice to each other, is because in social constructs it is in fact a means of survival. You feel better that way, you can give and receive help, etc. But the bottom line is still survival (of the fittest). This being nice works in the local, social context best, and you're right, it gets worse as scale goes up, because the chances of people disturbing that status quo goes up.

Still I (think I) get where you're coming from. We could be a lot nicer to each other and it would probably be better too. For everyone. And it works just fine that way, until someone doesn't want to be nice...

Geopolitics of late are a good example. Nobody wants escalation, and yet, it happens, one step at a time.

I understand where your coming from, but even the European mainland wars in medieval times was due largely to anonymous factors imo, its easy to convince a English peasant that the French deserved what was coming to them, most of the English had probably never even met a French person, so it was still that alien anon factor at play.

Now this is the beauty of the Erasmus Program that Europe does, now in EU and UK any high school/secondary student can study abroad easily for decades now, integrating the youth with other cultures, it would be much much harder to have war now, because that Anon factor is limited.

Europe's most genius program has been the Erasmus Program which started in 1987, if only the world did it at the same level they do... it would be a better place I would estimate. True, the rest of the world does have study abroad options, but not near to the level or frequency or easiness factor of doing it that the Erasmus Program provides.

Overall, I understand where both of you are coming from though and am willing to concede.