If you can't beat him, then you scold him? CEO of US AI chip company blasts Nvidia

At SC23, Andrew Feldman, CEO of U.S. AI chip startup Cerebras, criticized Nvidia for lingering under U.S. semiconductor export restrictions to China, calling such behavior "un-American" and labeling graphics processors The giants liken AI arms dealers.

"I think Nvidia single-handedly armed China," he told The Register. "If you think about China's AI capabilities... Nvidia supplies them with a lot of Nvidia GPUs. There's no other way to look at it. It's legal, but that doesn't mean it's not ethically responsible."

Like Nvidia, Cerebras designs processors for accelerating machine learning applications and other intensive workloads; the startup's main claim to fame is its unorthodox dinner-plate-sized chips.

Feldman's comments were in response to U.S. regulatory concerns over the export of artificial intelligence to a region of concern, namely China. In October, the Biden administration imposed stricter performance caps on artificial intelligence accelerators sold to China.

The rules effectively cut Beijing off from most U.S.-designed high-end GPUs and accelerators used in artificial intelligence and high-performance computing applications. In response to these restrictions, Nvidia will reportedly launch a new round of chips for China that will be slightly slower than the U.S. Commerce Department's speed limits for chips.

As far as we know, these chips (H20, H20, and L2) are just slower versions of their siblings, as their die area remains the same. This makes sense because, in addition to performance, chip area is also a factor in determining which devices the rules apply to.

Efforts to regulate sales of U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure to China have been a concern for chip companies such as Nvidia, which has issued several documents to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission warning investors of the possible impact of the rules.

Feldman, whose Silicon Valley business secured a $900 million contract this year to build nine artificial intelligence supercomputers for the United Arab Emirates' G42 based on its WSE-2 wafer-scale chips, has a different view on trade restrictions. .

"I think the policies that you see, the policies that they set out in the presidential order and the Commerce Department ruling seem to me to be very sound logic," he argued.

"This is a powerful new technology and we're not sure where it's going to go. We think it's prudent to have some guidelines and some controls in place. We think it's prudent not to push our technology too early on. Friend and foe provide us with the best technology [that] makes sense to me and I support it.”

Cerebras decided early on not to do business in China, although it remains subject to export restrictions — such as those governing shipments of artificial intelligence hardware to the Middle East. To us, Cerebras seems unimpressed with Nvidia's response to the export restrictions.

"We all received a letter saying we needed a license to ship to certain countries in the Middle East," Feldman said. "I don't think it's unreasonable either, as long as we can get the permit in a reasonable amount of time."

On the regulatory front, Feldman believes that U.S. chip companies should follow the spirit and letter of the rules rather than finding ways to avoid the fine print. Regarding sales in the Middle East, he said he is committed to ensuring that restricted equipment does not arrive in one location, then disappear and show up somewhere where it does not belong. Therefore, he does not expect export controls to have any impact on the company's ability to do business with G42 in the future.

"We believe very much that the United States does business with its allies, and when the Commerce Department or the president sets rules, you should follow the spirit, not just the letter," he said. "When someone says this is a national policy, here are some rules, And when you approach it and try to exploit loopholes to circumvent that intention, you make yourself look less American."

"The government says we don't want you to ship product to China, and there are some guidelines here, but they've reached the edge of the guidelines," Feldman complained about Nvidia.

Of course, Nvidia isn't the only processor giant to weaken its chips to comply with U.S. export restrictions. Earlier this year, Intel released a tweaked version of its Habana Gaudi accelerator that will be sold in the Chinese market. However, the latest round of trade restrictions looks set to prevent these chips from continuing to be sold to China. AMD has also said it is willing to overcome Uncle Sam's difficulties and continue selling chips in China, although it is unclear if and when these plans will proceed.

Nvidia declined to comment on the record for this article.

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