Big Brother is watching your video card

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Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.

Last week, a U.S. congressman announced a plan to introduce a bill that would mandate producers of high-performance AI processors to track them geographically in a bid to limit their usage by unauthorized foreign actors, such as China. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas then introduced a legislative measure later in the week. The bill covers hardware that goes way beyond just AI processors, and would give the Commerce Secretary power to verify the location of hardware, and put mandatory location controls on commercial companies. To make matters even more complicated, geo-tracking features would be required for high-performance graphics cards as well.

The bill covers a wide range of products classified as 3A090, 4A090, 4A003.z, and 3A001.z export control classification numbers (ECCNs), so advanced processors for AI, AI servers (including rack-scale solutions), HPC servers, and general-purpose electronics of strategic concern due to potential military utility or dual-use risk. It should be noted that many high-end graphics cards (such as Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 5090) are also classified as a 3A090 product, so it looks like such add-in-boards will also have to add geo-tracking capabilities.

The first and central provision of the bill is the requirement for tracking technology to be embedded in any high-end processor module or device that falls under the U.S. export restrictions. This condition would take effect six months after the legislation is enacted, which will make the lives of companies like AMD, Intel, and Nvidia harder, as adding a feature to already developed products is a tough task. The mechanism must allow verification of a chip's or device's physical location, enabling the U.S. government to confirm whether it remains at the approved endpoint. Yet, exporters would be obliged to keep track of their products.

The bill authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to verify the ownership and location of regulated processors and systems after export and maintain a centralized registry of current locations and end-users. Nvidia, as well as other exporters, would also be obligated to inform the Bureau of Industry and Security if there is evidence that a component has been redirected from its authorized destination. Additionally, any indications of tampering or manipulation must be reported.

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This is just a proposal for a law, I have no idea how much support this bill will get, but the fact that it even exists means there's a good chance it will go ahead. It's just crazy that one of the ramifications of this law is that future owners of high end Nvidia/AMD cards could end up in a central registry. There's a high chance that in the future this geo tracking capabilities will be used to block high end video cards from being used at all.
 
They'll know when I play Stellar Blade with bbl mods?

Joe Biden Oops GIF by The Democrats
 
Nice. Someone will hack it then people will pay to track the fuckers that got them in some online game. Also is they don't require power, it can be used to track scalpers.
 
What constitutes a "high-end processor module"? Are we talking about adding more shit to the DIE? Or just have a tracking chip on the card?
 
What makes you think they can't and aren't already doing this?

Websites can already narrow down who you are based on your configuration.
 
This is just a proposal for a law, I have no idea how much support this bill will get, but the fact that it even exists means there's a good chance it will go ahead. It's just crazy that one of the ramifications of this law is that future owners of high end Nvidia/AMD cards could end up in a central registry. There's a high chance that in the future this geo tracking capabilities will be used to block high end video cards from being used at all.
Let's forget about everything related to politics, because qhat im about to say is valid for every political spectrum... how the heck the mere existence of a proposal means that said proposal will go ahead ?!
 
Let's forget about everything related to politics, because qhat im about to say is valid for every political spectrum... how the heck the mere existence of a proposal means that said proposal will go ahead ?!

Because it has bipartisan support.


Foster's bill has support from fellow Democrats such as Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking member on the House Select Committee on China. "On-chip location verification is one creative solution we should explore to stop this smuggling," Krishnamoorthi said in a statement.

Republicans are also supportive, though none have yet signed on to specific legislation because it has not yet been introduced. Representative John Moolenaar, who chairs the committee, supports the concept of location tracking and plans to meet with lawmakers in both the House and U.S. Senate this week on potential legislative approaches.

"The Select Committee has strong bipartisan support for requiring companies like Nvidia to build location-tracking into their high-powered AI chips — and the technology to do it already exists," Moolenaar told Reuters.
 
Because it has bipartisan support.


Foster's bill has support from fellow Democrats such as Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking member on the House Select Committee on China. "On-chip location verification is one creative solution we should explore to stop this smuggling," Krishnamoorthi said in a statement.

Republicans are also supportive, though none have yet signed on to specific legislation because it has not yet been introduced. Representative John Moolenaar, who chairs the committee, supports the concept of location tracking and plans to meet with lawmakers in both the House and U.S. Senate this week on potential legislative approaches.

"The Select Committee has strong bipartisan support for requiring companies like Nvidia to build location-tracking into their high-powered AI chips — and the technology to do it already exists," Moolenaar told Reuters.

You did not answer the quesiton :) I can remember a almost infinite number of proposals that make noise and disappear.
 
I learned over the decades that in IT there is always a way to overcome "restrictions". So I think this is useless. What US can do is only to limit China's access to these technologies on a huge scale but impossible to completely block it.
 
Government backed Nvidia can do what it wants and it wants to raise prices.

At this point, I wish AMD and Intel would just get out of the gpu market. All they do is provide cover for Nvidia by being just large enough to remove any talk of a monopoly but still shitty enough that nobody should actually buy them.
 
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What makes you think they can't and aren't already doing this?

Websites can already narrow down who you are based on your configuration.

The Nvidia app has a lot of telemetry, if you monitor the traffic you will see that it is constantly phone home.

nvidia-blocked-dns.png


 
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