US Investigates Possible "Singapore" Loophole in China's Access to NVIDIA GPUs

[azrael]

Consider the lengths Jensen has to go to to secure his steady supply of gaudy leather jackets. That poor man...

 

[boidsonly]

Death by a thousand ̷c̷u̷t̷s̷ GPUs...

 

[FreedomEclipse]

But yes, you are correct. Hell I've met people shipping these GPUs to China and Russia. At an extreme markup. It did turn out to be far more profitable than selling drugs

There has been a scam going around where certain people are selling 3090s and 4090s on the second hand market But they arrive without the actually processing chip onboard. There are folks out there who are removing the chip with a heatgun to sell in China while selling the carcasses off for a tidy sum.

So far Ive only heard of this happening in some parts of the USA. Im not sure if the same happens elsewhere. Certain entities are willing to pay a lot of money for these chips.


:EDIT:

Adding some context

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

when you are profiting from an "under the table" deal, you put a smokescreen and say it's an "investigation" to get people talk about it when the truth is they've found nothing illegal and will continue doing so coz why not.

 

[Rightness_1]

I have been screamed at in this forum for suggesting that NV is still selling most of its GPUs to China... I love being proved right.

I also know that the Chinese government has circumvented nv's "D" performance nerf, a long time ago. I've also heard that card assemblers in or near China deliberately marks good chips as defective and then sells them to the government.

I would like to see nv fined hundreds of Billions, and an executive thrown in prison for it. Scream away.

 

[Caring1]

I have been screamed at in this forum for suggesting that NV is still selling most of its GPUs to China...

Proof please that you have been "screamed at"

There has been a scam going around where certain people are selling 3090s and 4090s on the second hand market But they arrive without the actually processing chip onboard. There are folks out there who are removing the chip with a heatgun to sell in China while selling the carcasses off for a tidy sum.

So far Ive only heard of this happening in some parts of the USA. Im not sure if the same happens elsewhere. Certain entities are willing to pay a lot of money for these chips.


:EDIT:

Adding some context

This is NOT a scam, there are however stupid people buying these GPUs that are sold without Vram and Die that are scamming themselves.
This has been happening for quite some time and it's well known the cards are not working and for parts only.
You only have to check listings on Ebay to find many of them, usually sold via Hong Kong suppliers.
The same people buying these assuming they work, are the ones that see a listing for BOX only and think they are buying the actual item that usually comes inside it.
Read the listings folks, it's not that hard.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

I have been screamed at in this forum for suggesting that NV is still selling most of its GPUs to China... I love being proved right.

I also know that the Chinese government has circumvented nv's "D" performance nerf, a long time ago. I've also heard that card assemblers in or near China deliberately marks good chips as defective and then sells them to the government.

I would like to see nv fined hundreds of Billions, and an executive thrown in prison for it. Scream away.

Some of the things listed could have been true if they weren't taken out of one context and pasted into another. In any case, the way you wrote it shows that you have succumbed to propaganda, which is not good.

 

[Rightness_1]

Proof please that you have been "screamed at"

No I will not. The mods are very fragile in here and I'll get banned.

I know someone who got banned just for saying "nGr**dia" in a casual way, no crap posting, and relevant to the thread, just banned dude, so no.

Some of the things listed could have been true if they weren't taken out of one context and pasted into another. In any case, the way you wrote it shows that you have succumbed to propaganda, which is not good.

Yeah, you convince yourself of that. I couldn't care less.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Singapore's role in NVIDIA's global sales has surged, with the nation accounting for 22% of the chipmaker's revenue in Q3 FY2025, up from 9% in Q3 FY2023. This spike coincides with tightened US export controls on AI chips to China, prompting speculation that Singapore serves as a pipe for Chinese firms to access high-end GPUs like the H100, which cannot be sold directly to China.

Off course they are buying whole ships with nVidia hardware and then resell it to the Chinese Corporations, it's mind blowing that only about now they figure it out this maneuver. And it's not only Singapore. Malaysia, Hong-Kong and Even Taiwan are doing the exact same thing. This was happening right from the day 2. Did the US Congress really thought they could stop this from happening? Hilarious.

 

[R0H1T]

You need plutonium level of control if you want to completely restrict China, but that would be catastrophic to the economies of scale needed to produce such hardware.

Except the US allowed uranium & plutonium(?) to be smuggled to you know where ~

The CIA agent who exposed US complicity in helping Pakistan develop a nuclear bomb

He was the CIA's expert on Pakistan's nuclear secrets, but Rich Barlow was thrown out and disgraced when he blew the whistle on a US cover-up. Now he's to have his day in court. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark report.

www.theguardian.com

This was happening right from the day 2. Did the US Congress really thought they could stop this from happening? Hilarious.

What's more hilarious is that so many people still think the US wants to stop the sale of these GPUs to China

 

[MacZ]

Except the US allowed uranium & plutonium(?) to be smuggled to you know where ~

What am I saying, is that the kind of control needed to prevent any high performance GPUs to be completely not provided to China in any way would be like the restrictions set in place for the elements needed for the building of atomic weapons. Of course the power putting the restrictions in place can disregard them if it wishes (a middle-eastern country comes to mind).

Plutonium was indeed a bad example, as while it is highly toxic, a lot more sensitive things are needed first to be able to produce a thermonuclear weapon. I should probably have said nuclear detonators or highly enriched uranium (?). I guess if you try to procure those, you may not get them but you will be lodged and fed for some time.

As for GPUs, the aim is not to prevent, but to make it harder and costlier. But that is failing to allow the chinese to compete in the AI race.

 

[ty_ger]

Nvidia just publishing in internet the next green team advertisement that includes DeepSeek.

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.

DeepSeek is open-source and can be run locally. Anyone anywhere else in the world can run DeepSeek on 5090s without worrying about the sanctions in China. NVIDIA claiming the performance edge doesn't mean they are condoning bypassing sanctions. I'm sure NVIDIA doesn't love the sanctions, but they have so much demand that it probably doesn't matter to them. But I don't think NVIDIA is openly teasing or supporting bypassing sanctions.