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by lightsighter 1117 days ago
To be fair, it's never been easier to get access to thousands of GPUs in the cloud. It might be expensive, but that is an entirely different kind of barrier. Just a decade ago, it used to be that the only way to get access to thousands of GPUs was to get access to a supercomputer at a national lab. Now anybody with enough money can rent thousands of GPUs (with good interconnects too!) in the cloud. There's certainly a limitation on it from a money perspective, but access to the computational resources themselves is not a problem.
2 comments
tiedieconderoga 1117 days ago
"The Cloud" == "Somebody else's computers"

If your government passes a law saying that GPUs can only be purchased or rented with a license, as OP was suggesting, all of that capacity disappears with the snap of a finger.

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crumpled 1117 days ago
The GPU capacity of another country will be happy to fill the gap and export your money.
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pixl97 1117 days ago
"Dear government, yes, I was spending my money accessing an illegal minution, please don't throw me too far under the jail"

I'd like you to stop and think about this for a minute... which country is going to be exporting powerful GPUs? If the US blocked GPU resources, do you think China will suddenly start allowing everyone to have them? No, they'd jump right on board with their own limitations so they didn't have to worry about internal issues.

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crumpled 1116 days ago
Yes I've thought about it.

I'm talking about cloud services. Have you ever heard of anyone engaging in the use of illegal cloud services? I have.

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pixl97 1117 days ago
Governments: "Whoever buys over X GPU hours must register with a state identification"

Amazon: "Can do"

Government: "Any projects that pool GPU resources will also be against the law and you must prevent it"

Amazon: "Ouch"

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samstave 1116 days ago
Also Amazon: "Hey bitch, we built and run your .gov cloud infra in your NSA/CIA staffed Mormon Data Centers"

Look at me ; Who is the surveillance now

(Yes the intels use mormons a lot...)

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samstave 1116 days ago
(Why do you think we have the largest private hedge fund [aside from apple, and those other guys])
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