THREAD: The US government's new export controls are wreaking havoc on China's chip industry.

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Teardown of Huawei's new phone shows China's chip breakthrough

Huawei Technologies and China's top chipmaker SMIC have built an advanced 7-nanometer processor to power its latest smartphone, according to a teardown report by analysis firm TechInsights.

www.reuters.com

Teardown of Huawei's new phone shows China's chip breakthrough​

Reuters
September 4, 20233:10 PM EDT
Updated 7 hours ago

[1/2]A staff member introduces the new Huawei Mate 60 smartphone to customers at the Huawei flagship store in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China August 30, 2023. REUTERS/David Kirton/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights

Sept 4 (Reuters) - Huawei Technologies and China's top chipmaker SMIC (0981.HK) have built an advanced 7-nanometer processor to power its latest smartphone, according to a teardown report by analysis firm TechInsights.

Huawei's Mate 60 Pro is powered by a new Kirin 9000s chip that was made in China by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), TechInsights said in the report shared with Reuters on Monday.

Huawei started selling its Mate 60 Pro phone last week. The specifications provided advertised its ability to make satellite calls, but offered no information on the power of the chipset inside.

The processor is the first to utilize SMIC's most advanced 7nm technology and suggests the Chinese government is making some headway in attempts to build a domestic chip ecosystem, the research firm said.

The firm's findings were first reported by Bloomberg News.

Huawei and SMIC did not immediately reply to Reuters' request for comment.

Buyers of the phone in China have been posting tear-down videos and sharing speed tests on social media that suggest the Mate 60 Pro is capable of download speeds exceeding those of top line 5G phones.

The phone's launch sent Chinese social media users and state media into a frenzy, with some noting it coincided with a visit by U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

From 2019, the U.S. has restricted Huawei's access to chipmaking tools essential for producing the most advanced handset models, with the company only able to launch limited batches of 5G models using stockpiled chips.

But research firms told Reuters in July that they believed Huawei was planning a return to the 5G smartphone industry by the end of this year, using its own advances in semiconductor design tools along with chipmaking from SMIC.

Dan Hutcheson, an analyst with TechInsights, told Reuters the development comes as a "slap in the face" to the U.S.

"Raimondo comes seeking to cool things down, and this chip is [saying] 'look what we can do, we don't need you,'" he said.

Reporting by Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru and Max A.; Editing by Sandra Maler Cherney in San Francisco; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar

 

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https://archive.is/QtKOm

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Chinese Factories Dismantling Thousands of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 “Gaming” GPUs & Turning Them Into “AI” Solutions With Blower-Style Coolers​

Hassan Mujtaba

•

Nov 23, 2023 03:25 PM EST

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4090 "Gaming" GPUs are being turned into "AI" solutions in the thousands to cater to the growing demand within China.

Thousands of NVIDIA's Gaming "GeForce RTX 4090" GPUs Are Being Converted Into "AI" Solutions In China​

China was recently hit by major restrictions for AI hardware by the US Government. As per the new regulations, several GPU vendors such as NVIDIA, AMD & Intel are now blocked from selling specific AI chips to China. The ban on NVIDIA GPUs has been the worst with even consumer-centric Geforce RTX 4090 cards being forced out of mainland China due to its high compute capabilities.

RELATED STORY Dell Prohibits Sales of AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, 7900 XT, PRO W7900 & Upcoming MI300 GPUs In China​

Prior to the ban which went into effect a few days ago, NVIDIA was reported to have prioritized a large chunk of AD102 GPUs and GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards from its AIB partners to China. This prioritization might've been one reason why the RTX 4090 is now in short supply in the rest of the world and the card is currently hitting over $2000 US pricing. Not only that but Chinese giants in the AI field had also amassed a large stockpile of NVIDIA GPUs that could power generations of their AI models.








Now an insider from the Chinese Baidu Forums has revealed that specialized factories are being formed all across China that are receiving these GeForce RTX 4090 shipments (sent prior to the ban). A single picture shows off several hundred NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards from PALIT and it is reported that more are on the way. There are also ASUS ROG STRIX and Gigabyte Gaming OC variants pictured in the main thread. As for what purpose these cards serve, well it's obviously not gaming if that's what you were thinking.







You see, the rising prices for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs have made it out of reach for even the high-end gaming segment with prices close to $10,000 US per piece but there's one market that is hungering for these cards and that's China's domestic AI segment.

For AI purposes, the software ecosystem is already there for the RTX 4090 and it requires little to no modification on a software level to support the latest LLMs. NVIDIA recently announced bringing TensorRT & TensorRT-LLM to Windows 11 PCs which makes it even more accessible. So the software side is all set but what about the practicality of using a gaming design in a server environment, that's what these factories are built for.

Each card is a 3 or 4-slot design which means it takes up extra-ordinary space which isn't a great fit for a server AI environment. So the workers in these factories are taking each card apart. First, the massive coolers are disassembled and then everything including the GPU and GDDR6X memory is removed from the main PCB. It is stated that a specialized "reference" PCB has been designed that gives these AD102 GPUs and GDDR6X memory a new life.

A Chinese factory worker makes sure that the newly assembled RTX 4090 AI solution qualifies through various tests. (Image Source: Baidu Forums):





Image Source: Baidu Forums

Each card is then equipped with a more tamer dual-slot cooler using a blower-style design. There are multiple versions of the blower-style cooler but they all feature similar specs. A blower-style GPU cooler is tuned specifically for large server environments where several GPUs are supposed to run together and effectively dissipate heat out of the heatsink.

After assembling the new unit, the newly born NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 AI solution is taken through a rigorous testing spree in the testing labs where we can see Furmark, 3DMark, & a host of AI applications being run on them to ensure that they are meeting the demands of AI customers. Once everything checks out, these GPUs are packaged and sent off to China's AI companies.

China's Reseller Market is flooded with disassembled RTX 4090 coolers and bare PCBs that once powered $1600US+ gaming cards (Image Source: Chiphell Forums):







This process has also led to an abundance of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 coolers and bare PCBs being flooded in the Chinese reseller markets. These PCBs and coolers are now being sold at really cheap prices, often for less than $50 US since the most valuable components, the AD102 GPU & GDDR6X memory, have already been taken apart. They can definitely become a nice collection but it's also sad that all of this engineering expertise is going to waste. These PCBs might come in handy with future RTX 4090 repairs as the card still occasionally finds itself to be a victim of the flawed 12VHPWR connector.

With the ban in effect, no more NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs can be shipped to China without a license under the "NEC" eligibility rule. With that said, we hope that AD102 supply returns to normal for other regions and prices start to normalize too.