Despite US sanctions, Russia is reportedly gaining access to NVIDIA’s top-of-the-line chips through a rather “smart” back end, which is said to be linked to a pharmaceutical company with a presence in India.
Russia and China pursue AI computing power through “inevitable” bypasses
Efforts by the Biden administration to reduce the influence of American technology on world markets do not appear to have had the desired results, as sanctioned nations have found new ways to get their hands on cutting-edge AI hardware. From GPU rental services to a black market presence, NVIDIA’s AI chips are present in markets they shouldn’t be. According to a new report from Bloomberg, Russia appears to be getting access to NVIDIA’s H100 AI chips through the aforementioned back end in India, with the total value of the supplied equipment reaching as much as $300 million.
The report claims that Indian pharmaceutical company Shreya Life Sciences has reportedly shipped 1,111 units of Dell’s most advanced AI clusters, the PowerEdge XE9680, which come with top-of-the-line AI accelerators, notably from NVIDIA and AMD. Specifications of the shipped devices show that Russia has access to NVIDIA’s H100 AI chips, which are integrated into Dell’s server units. Interestingly, Russia is banned from receiving Team Green’s AI chips, a clear violation of US and European export laws.
Russia is said to be using its AI computing power to advance military and warfare applications, as well as to promote domestic AI efforts, which is a worrying situation for US authorities, especially as the equipment is being used against the current aggression in Ukraine. However, India is not the only country involved in this situation, as according to cargo manifests, Dell PowerEdge servers are imported from Malaysia and then shipped from India to Russia, so the entire supply chain involves not just a few parties; in fact, it’s about the entire network.
Given that India has key relations with Russia, the trade is not a violation of domestic laws, but for global powers it could be a red flag, given that India is a developing country when it comes to AI capabilities. Recently, the CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, visited India and informed about the integration of Blackwell processors in domestic AI clusters. However, given that the country is involved in supplying advanced equipment to hostile states like Russia, the US could make drastic decisions to cut off the supply.
This is why we say that simply banning the export of a certain product will not bring results, because people will find ways around it, and we have had many such cases. Since these markets are too large for NVIDIA to ignore, the company cannot simply cut off supply, so adequate supply chain regulations have become mandatory for the US and its allies to prevent technology transfer.
The post Russia Allegedly Gets Access to NVIDIA’s High-Quality AI Chips Through a ‘Backend’ in India, Violating US Export Laws appeared first on ITNetwork.
Source: www.itnetwork.rs
