Comment by DrBazza
10 days ago
I guess if the new model has the capability to do 'something' that's national security threat, then this makes sense. Otherwise this move makes zero sense, and actually is a drag on innovation - who wants to invest money and people to make a better model that can't actually be sufficiently sold to make a return on investment? Meanwhile other models from Europe or China that are better steal market share. Though that's not to say they won't do the same thing for the same reasons.
> Are we heading to a world where GPU use is regulated
Well, there was the kerfuffle around PS3 (IIRC) and 'supercomputers'. I suppose that would be the 2020s version of that. What's old is new again. Ultimately you can just continually wire together less powerful hardware to come up with something that can do the job.
>Well, there was the kerfuffle around PS3 (IIRC) and 'supercomputers'.
There were no export restrictions on the PS3.
They were probably thinking of the PS2, which Japan did, in fact, temporarily restrict: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-apr-17-fi-20482...
They meant PS2. Japan was worried the processor was powerful enough to control missiles and put restrictions on how many can be sold to a single person and banned certain countries.
I probably did ;)
Double precision cell chips were reserved for military, I think (or maybe also blade processors). So doing any serious physics on them was dead in the water - same with macs tbh
PS3 had not the same Cell chips as the sones for data centers.
I said kerfuffle. I didn’t say ‘export’.