THE NVIDIA AI GPU BLACK MARKET | Investigating Smuggling, Corruption, & Governments
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cross-posted from: https://piefed.ca/post/152656
Much easier black market than drugs, because it is legal to import it, and no one checks when you export it.
Nvidia has 18%-28% of its sales to Singapore. They defend this by saying only 2% of their product is shipped there, but they don't say which countries receive the bulk of shipments that are billed through Singapore.
some 5090 cards in Hong Kong (from OP) are the same price as the US, which makes it hard to understand why US people have been charged with smuggling, and shows complicity of entire supply chain to funnel to China. Premiums over MSRPs in US would be zero or lower if this was all above board. You also can't find a 5090 on Amazon, but you can in Hong Kong boutique?
Prohibition for the loss, as always.
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You could also buy the Apple Studio with its large amount of unified ram for a similar price of a 5090. Of course it’s not as fast but it could run a model that needs more ram.
barebones 780m amd mini pc. 128gb ddr5600. About $700. Under $800. Vulkan is good, non AMD supported version of ROCm works for some, because AMD says fuck you to its users. $2000 higher end mini pc with 8600s gpu is other option for high ram with under double the performance, but closer for cheaper than apple solution.
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It's not explicable why AMD is not breaking rank on VRAM and vGPU, same reason as failing Intel.
But the reason is not mentionnable in polite company and it relates to why AMD exists at all.
By all accounts, AMD should have gone under decades ago, instead they're one of the only x86 platform licensee and they got that basically because of a fluke in history.But here's the real deal, because of the regulatory environment, monopolies are technically illegal.
Of course since 1980s enforcement of that has been a total joke as proven with the failure of the Microsoft anti-trust case.
Anti-trust is currently neutered and even back then it wasn't really "anti-trust", merely anti-monopoly.
That is the playbook for Intel and Nvidia that allows AMD to continue existing. They exist so that the other two aren't monopolies.
They are kept alive as long, some market segments will have some competition and other will simply not be touched by Intel and AMD, dynamically decided, kind of like splitting territory, so that AMD can always survive.So that Intel and Nvidia don't became actually illegal monopolies.
This is a very conservative playbook as since the 90s they could have very well become monopolies and the neolibs wouldn't have squeaked. They would have cheered !That's why you're not getting that actually threatening to Nvidia amounts of VRAM and vGPU from AMD and why they're dropping support for their 2018 datacenter GPU if they get a little too much of a good deal on the used market.
The solution is simple, destroy nvidia, not a calculated and gentle trust bust, no, break the company so it stops existing as a coherent entity.
Nvidia is a bunch of software and PNGs on top of TSMC. Break Nvidia, break Intel, break microsoft, break cisco, broadcom, break everything in silicon valley and put it all in a blender. And if anything grows too big again, break it the duck up again.
the playbook for Intel and Nvidia that allows AMD to continue existing.
This isn't a good explanation for why AMD would act stupid. But there still needs to be one.
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the playbook for Intel and Nvidia that allows AMD to continue existing.
This isn't a good explanation for why AMD would act stupid. But there still needs to be one.
It's not stupid of AMD not to start a turf war where both they and they patron saint are hurt.
They get to eat the scraps and have the occasional win so that nvidia and intel don't face impotent mealymouthed anti-trust procedures.
You can either come up with a better alternative explanation, I can lawyer up a perfectly cromulent explanation that doesn't require exposing the corrupt underbelly of the silicon industry, or you can think that everyone at AMD is an idiots snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
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It's not stupid of AMD not to start a turf war where both they and they patron saint are hurt.
They get to eat the scraps and have the occasional win so that nvidia and intel don't face impotent mealymouthed anti-trust procedures.
You can either come up with a better alternative explanation, I can lawyer up a perfectly cromulent explanation that doesn't require exposing the corrupt underbelly of the silicon industry, or you can think that everyone at AMD is an idiots snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
It’s not stupid of AMD not to start a turf war where both they and they patron saint are hurt.
AMD is far ahead of intel in iGPUs. Key to laptop and mini pc segments. Desktop motherboards are bad at USB 4, and so 4 monitor support, and performance per watt. Desktop PC vendors, with external GPUs, don't promise exact number (3+) of monitors supported.
Intel is the one that needed AMD to survive to avoid monopoly designation many years ago. That hasn't stopped AMD from kicking Intel's ass in iGPUs. 2+ generations ahead where latest high end intel barely outperforms 680m, with AMD having 780m cheaper, and 8600s and 890m. AMD is not "being thankful" to Intel by refusing to compete with it.
Nvidia was never under monopoly scrutiny. AMD making stupid decisions on drivers and memory configurations has no explanation. Industry underbelly NVIDIA bribes to CEO would be an explanation.
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The tone deafness is it, you've put it better words that I could. It doesn't matter to me whether he was right or wrong about it, he still manages to come across as abrasive at best or smug and shitty at worst. Like, let Luke talk about it instead or something.
The thing is, he does that fairly rarely, and seems to have mostly learned (to at least keep his mouth shut).
And TBF I don't think he could build a company like that without a bit of cockyness, and he certainly does deserve recognition for what he achieved.
The vast majority of stuff they do - even if it's a fuckup - they actually handle well and make everyone whole. In away they're sometimes forced a bit by circumstances but in general I feel like they're genuinely trying to do their best and be fair.
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cross-posted from: https://piefed.ca/post/152656
Why did you link an image instead of the video?
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Yes... for an individual, those are the prices (if only there was some 3 hour youtube video about adding more memory to cards...).
The issue is that even a downstream isn't buying 100 dollars of VRAM. They need to buy that in bulk. And then they need to retool their factories to support that configuration. And if they can't sell enough of those units to justify the retooling and the purchases?
I mean... look at EVGA
And then you have the marketing/brand implications which I already spoke to.
That's what I'm saying, there is no retooling. Some of AMD's existing OEMs are already making W7900s.
Here's the bulk of the process on the OEM side, other than maybe leaving an ECC chip off:
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Take finished W7900.
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Change ID in firmware (so the CAD drivers don't recognize it)
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Apply a different sticker, put it in a different box
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Do the paperwork of making a new SKU, like they make for overclocked cards
That's not that expensive. If it doesn't sell a lot, well, not much skin off thier back. And it would make AMD boatloads by seeding development for their server cards (which the workstation cards to not do because they are utterly pointless at those prices).
This is all kind of a moot point though, as the 7900 series is basically sunsetted, and AMD doesn't have a 384 bit consumer card anymore (nor a GDDR7 one to use the new, huge GDDR7 ICs).
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Why did you link an image instead of the video?
Good question and thanks for asking!
As far as I'm currently aware, due to YouTube constantly changing things, YT thumbnails often will not load unless directly linked to the video's thumbnail (at least here on the Fediverse).
Because of this, it allows me to link to alternative sources within the post such as Invidious (YT alt ad-free frontend), Peertube, Bandcamp, etc.
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cross-posted from: https://piefed.ca/post/152656
Aaand they got their video taken down, link to post on YT
Here's a mirror on internet archive.
