As you note, TSMC is building fabs in the US (and Europe) to reduce this risk.
I also think that it’s worth noting that, at least in the short run, if the US didn’t have shipments of new chips and was at war, the US government would just use wartime powers to take existing GPUs from whichever companies they felt weren’t using them optimally for war and give them to the companies (or US Govt labs) that are.
Plus, are you really gonna bet that the intelligence community and DoD and DoE don’t have a HUUUUGE stack of H100s? I sure wouldn’t take that action.
I meant more “already in a data center,” though probably some in a warehouse, too.
I roll to disbelieve that the people who read Hacker News in Ft. Meade, MD and have giant budgets aren’t making some of the same decisions that people who read Hacker News in Palo Alto, CA and Redmond, WA would.
No clue if true, but even if true, but DARPA is not at all a comparable to Intel. Entity set up for very different purposes and engaging in very different patterns of capital investment.
Also very unclear to me why R&D is relevant bucket. Presumably buying GPUs is either capex or if rented, is recognized under a different opex bucket (for secure cloud services) than R&D ?
My claim isn’t that the USG is like running its own research and fabs at equivalent levels of capability to Intel or TSMC. It’s just that if a war starts, it has access to plenty of GPUs through its own capacity and its ability to mandate borrowing of hardware at scale from the private sector.
This makes no sense. Wars are typically existential. In a hot war with another state, why would the government not use all of industrial capacity that is more useful to make weapons to make weapons. It’s well documented that governments can repurpose unnecessary parts of industry (say training Grok or an open source chatbot) into whatever else.
Biden used them for largely irrelevant reasons. This indicates that with an actual war, usage would be wider and more extensive.
As you note, TSMC is building fabs in the US (and Europe) to reduce this risk.
I also think that it’s worth noting that, at least in the short run, if the US didn’t have shipments of new chips and was at war, the US government would just use wartime powers to take existing GPUs from whichever companies they felt weren’t using them optimally for war and give them to the companies (or US Govt labs) that are.
Plus, are you really gonna bet that the intelligence community and DoD and DoE don’t have a HUUUUGE stack of H100s? I sure wouldn’t take that action.
What, just sitting in a warehouse?
I would bet that the government’s supply of GPUs is notably smaller than that of Google and Microsoft.
I meant more “already in a data center,” though probably some in a warehouse, too.
I roll to disbelieve that the people who read Hacker News in Ft. Meade, MD and have giant budgets aren’t making some of the same decisions that people who read Hacker News in Palo Alto, CA and Redmond, WA would.
I don’t think the budgets are comparable. I read recently that Intel’s R&D budget in the 2010s was 3x bigger than all of DARPA.
No clue if true, but even if true, but DARPA is not at all a comparable to Intel. Entity set up for very different purposes and engaging in very different patterns of capital investment.
Also very unclear to me why R&D is relevant bucket. Presumably buying GPUs is either capex or if rented, is recognized under a different opex bucket (for secure cloud services) than R&D ?
My claim isn’t that the USG is like running its own research and fabs at equivalent levels of capability to Intel or TSMC. It’s just that if a war starts, it has access to plenty of GPUs through its own capacity and its ability to mandate borrowing of hardware at scale from the private sector.
When I look at the current US government it does not seem to be able to just take whatever they want from big companies with powerful lobbyists.
Wartime powers let governments do whatever they want essentially. Even recently Biden has flexed the defense production act.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/story/article/2128446/during-wwii-industries-transitioned-from-peacetime-to-wartime-production/
Did he do it in a way that hurt the bottom line of any powerful US company? No, I don’t think so.
While the same power that existed in WWII still exist on paper today, the US government is much less capable to take actions.
We’re not at war. If we were in a war with real stakes, I’d expect to see those powers used much more aggressively.
This makes no sense. Wars are typically existential. In a hot war with another state, why would the government not use all of industrial capacity that is more useful to make weapons to make weapons. It’s well documented that governments can repurpose unnecessary parts of industry (say training Grok or an open source chatbot) into whatever else.
Biden used them for largely irrelevant reasons. This indicates that with an actual war, usage would be wider and more extensive.