Cerebras Boss Calls Nvidia ‘Un-American’ for Sanctions-Swerving GPUs
Believes US firms should follow not just the letter, but the spirit of the rules.
Nvidia has been remarkably nimble in its GPU specification tweaking in response to the US sanctions on tech flowing to China. However, Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman reckons the green team’s activities are a classic case of following the letter but not the spirit of the law. “I think Nvidia armed China single-handedly,” Feldman said to The Register, before accusing the firm of lacking “moral responsibility.” Moreover, any firms looking to circumvent, limbo under, or find loopholes in matters of national policy were called out by Feldman for being “un-American.”
In his complaints about Nvidia, the Cerebras CEO makes it quite clear that rules and regulations put in place as a matter of national policy, with implications for national security, are a special case. “We believe very much in the US doing business with its allies, and when the Department of Commerce or when the President sets a rule, that you obey the spirit, not just the letter,” said Feldman to The Register. “When someone says this is a national policy, and here's some rules and you run up to within an inch of it, and you try, and try and circumvent the intent with a loophole, you make yourself look un-American.” Specifically, Nvidia “ran right up to the edge of the guidelines,” on China, Feldman complained.
Cerebras hasn’t done business in China, even before sanctions came into place. However, recent US tech export rule changes still affect its business as they cover several other countries. It didn’t go without comment in the source publication that Intel and AMD are also amenable to tweaking high-performance chip designs to limbo under China chip sanctions. Perhaps if Nvidia, Intel, AMD, et al didn’t act like this, in the pursuit of the best profits, shareholders might be quite unhappy.
We don’t expect any serious backlash against companies that don’t follow Cerebras' philosophy. But this could easily change if China ever uses any of the exported tech in a conflict affecting Western interests.
Cerebras and Nvdia at SC23
The rival-poking and thought-provoking comments by Feldman were made at the currently running SC23, where both Cerebras and Nvidia have been quite busy taking care of business.
At SC23, Cerebras announced it was behind a newly completed four-exaFLOP AI Supercomputer. It also highlighted (PDF) how its Cerebras CS-2 “is 130x faster than Nvidia A100” on a nuclear physics simulation workload. Cerebras has maintained a booth at the conference venue and hosted several SC23 sessions this week.
Nvidia’s big news at SC23 was its Grace Hopper GH200 GPU super chip and news of machines like the 1 ExaFLOP Jupiter Supercomputer. However, just before the kickoff of SC23, we reported that Nvidia had already prepared three new GPUs for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) applications tailored for the Chinese market. According to sources, the Nvidia HGX H20, L20 PCle, and L2 PCle GPUs were already being shipped to China server makers. No time seems to have been wasted, as US sanctions on China were adjusted just a few weeks ago.
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
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edzieba "Company whines that more successful competitor is entirely compliant with sanctions".Reply -
atomicWAR
While true, there is some level where things become more murky.edzieba said:"Company whines that more successful competitor is entirely compliant with sanctions".
Yes Nvidia is following the letter of the law. But rushing faster chips to China while they still can to keep profits up before sanctions kick/kicked in is/was not a good look...that makes it appear that cutting down chips when required by law is more of a PR move politically both here in the US and in China, than real concern.
There comes a point where Nvidia invites such criticism with these kind of moves. Fair or not.
Now does it rise to the level claimed by Cerebras CEO? Yes and no imho. But not enough so that I would have said something IF I were in his place as it can just look petty even if its rooted in some level of fact and (maybe) truth. -
-Fran- There's no better way to pay your respects to the 'MURRICAN flag than following the money, no matter the consequences.Reply
Or was that Capitalism? Heh.
Regards. -
atomicWAR
Sometimes you crack me up....-Fran- said:There's no better way to pay your respects to the 'MURRICAN flag than following the money, no matter the consequences.
Or was that Capitalism? Heh.
Regards. -
endocine Not sure what this CEO wants, his words ring hollow because his company sells in the same market. He isn't wrong about "arming the enemy" but if there is a "spirit" about something, it needs to be defined in the law. Is Feldman asking for a complete embargo, and how does that exactly get enforced since China is able to get around existing restrictions through various means, buying from 3rd party countries, industrial espionage on a global scale, imitative innovation, and home grown development.Reply -
gg83
I agree. N-greediaatomicWAR said:While true, there is some level where things become more murky.
Yes Nvidia is following the letter of the law. But rushing faster chips to China while they still can to keep profits up before sanctions kick/kicked in is/was not a good look...that makes it appear that cutting down chips when required by law is more of a PR move politically both here in the US and in China, than real concern.
There comes a point where Nvidia invites such criticism with these kind of moves. Fair or not.
Now does it rise to the level claimed by Cerebras CEO? Yes and no imho. But not enough so that I would have said something IF I were in his place as it can just look petty even if its rooted in some level of fact and (maybe) truth. -
helper800 It is certainly impossible to completely prevent certain products from getting through sanctions such as this. The intent of the law is what is being violated by Nvidia, but they are a public company which means they have to pursue any and all profit as long as it is in the confines of legality. In fact, one could argue that if Nvidia did not do such things to make massive profit they would be failing their prerogative as a publicly traded company to seek any and all profit for their stakeholders.Reply -
vanadiel007 This guy would do the same if he had the opportunity. Companies are not there to follow spirits, they are there to legally generate profit.Reply -
ThomasKinsley It's getting harder to separate tech from politics, but an argument can be made both ways. One can argue Nvidia shouldn't be dealing with China at all given the political climate, and yet the other side of the argument is that US officials should be giving tech companies clearer guidelines so American companies don't wind up in unsavory situations. Nvidia went out of their way to make a sanction-compliant chip only for the US to ban its sale after it was produced. Setting politics aside for just a moment, this kind of dithering only hurts American tech companies that could've dedicated their resources elsewhere.Reply