Chinese companies are finding innovative solutions to develop artificial intelligence (AI) tools after the US imposed export restrictions on high-performance processors. According to industry experts, Chinese companies have been repurposing chips from gaming graphics cards to overcome the lack of high-end processors available in the country.
The chips from Nvidia gaming graphics cards, which are designed for consumer gaming, are stripped of their core components in factories and workshops. These modified chips are then installed on new circuit boards to be used for AI applications. While the gaming cards have raw computing power, they are not as effective in handling the high-precision calculations required for training large language models with extensive data sets.
The demand for these repurposed components has surged in recent months, with thousands of Nvidia gaming cards being disassembled and repurposed for AI use. However, modifying Nvidia’s products may pose legal risks and violate the company’s intellectual property rights. There is also a possibility that some of the gaming cards could be banned from being sold to China at any time.
To comply with export controls, Nvidia released a slower version of the banned graphics cards. However, some industry experts suggest that the performance gap between the modified and original versions may be significant, potentially making the slower version inadequate for large language model training.
While Nvidia has developed chips tailored for the Chinese market, these chips are weaker than previous versions and will not be widely available until March. Chinese customers have also raised concerns about the pricing of these inferior processors, which are similar to the more powerful banned counterparts.
With limited options for alternative chip ecosystems in China, some companies are turning to Nvidia’s gaming chips as a temporary solution. The success of repurposed chips remains uncertain, but it offers companies a viable option in the short term.
Overall, Chinese companies are showing resilience and resourcefulness by adapting gaming chips to meet their AI needs in the face of export restrictions and limited alternatives in the market.
The source of the article is from the blog agogs.sk