After the chip is stuck and the cloud is stuck again, the United States is overconfident!

Author | Xu Jiecheng

Reviser | Yun Zhao

Source丨51CTO technology stack

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI tool

America is at it again! According to Reuters, according to people familiar with the matter, the Biden administration is planning to restrict Chinese companies from accessing and using cloud computing services in the United States, including cloud computing services from companies such as Amazon and Microsoft.

People familiar with the matter mentioned that if the new regulations are passed, US cloud service providers such as Amazon and Microsoft may be required to seek permission from the US government before providing cloud computing services for artificial intelligence chips to Chinese customers. The Biden administration's move is likely to continue to intensify the already tense competition and conflict between China and the United States regarding the supply chain of advanced technology.

Card the chip first and then the cloud

The proposed restrictions on cloud computing service providers are seen as a means to close loopholes in the chip ban. U.S. national security analysts say Chinese artificial intelligence firms may bypass current export control rules by using cloud services.

The services of U.S. cloud computing providers will enable Chinese customers to obtain and use the most advanced computing capabilities directly through cloud services, such as the A100 chip of U.S. technology company Nvidia, without purchasing advanced equipment (including chips) on the control list.

"If a Chinese company wants to use the Nvidia A100, they can get that capability from any U.S. cloud service provider in a completely legal way, which is contrary to the goal of the advanced equipment ban." Georgetown Security and New Technology Center researcher Emily Weinstein mentioned in an interview.

The U.S. Commerce Department is expected to announce the ban in the coming weeks as part of an expansion of semiconductor export controls that were put in place in October, the people said. Prior to this, the policy had included A100, H100 and other data center chips, and even Nvidia's A800 chip specially launched for the Chinese market with performance lower than the threshold set by the US Department of Commerce on the export control list.

According to industry forecasts, the impact of the new policy will be detrimental to the long-term development of local cloud service providers in the United States, among which Amazon Cloud Network Services and Microsoft Azure are expected to be most affected. As for the ban on cloud services, the U.S. Department of Commerce has so far declined to comment.

China has launched a counterattack

At the same time, in the face of the continued suppression by the United States, our country has already sounded the clarion call to counterattack and adopted a series of countermeasures. In May of this year, the Cyberspace Administration of China announced the results of the review of the US semiconductor manufacturer Micron: because Micron products have major security risks and threaten my country's information security, the sale of Micron products will be banned in China.

Based on Micron's previous sales data in China, the ban is expected to cost Micron more than $20 billion. And although the Micron ban only applies to domestic companies, its impact has also radiated to a large number of Micron's customers in other countries. This has also become an obvious signal for China to fight back against the US chip ban.

In addition, on July 3, my country's Ministry of Commerce and the General Administration of Customs jointly issued an announcement to implement export controls on gallium and germanium, two rare metal-related items. As key manufacturing materials in the semiconductor field, gallium and germanium are known as the "new food" of the semiconductor industry, and are necessary raw materials for the manufacture of chips, analog devices, high-frequency components and other products.

my country is one of the largest producers of these two metals. Although the United States also has abundant reserves of germanium, its production efficiency is very low due to the lack of mining skills. Most of the high-tech manufacturing companies in the United States, Japan and the European Union need Both gallium and germanium need to be imported from China.

In the context of the escalating technological competition between China and the United States, China's decision to restrict the export of rare metals is also regarded as a tough countermeasure. Unsurprisingly, as soon as the news of the restriction came out, many technology companies in Silicon Valley also expressed strong opposition in the media, believing that the move would slow down the development of the United States in various technological fields.

Opportunities and challenges for domestic cloud vendors

Returning to the issue of the Biden administration restricting Chinese companies from using cloud computing services, what impact will this US policy have on the domestic cloud computing industry and cloud service providers?

According to the statistical report released by IDC in April, by the end of 2022, Ali, Tencent, Huawei, Telecom, and Amazon are the top five companies in China's cloud computing market share. However, the top four Chinese companies accounted for more than 64% of the market, compared with Amazon's 8.6%.

From the report, it is not difficult to find that the current Chinese cloud service market is mainly dominated by a number of domestic companies headed by Ali, and they have established a mature domestic cloud service system. Although Amazon and Microsoft have a certain market in China, their share The market share is not large. The effect of the Biden administration suppressing the development of China's cloud computing industry by restricting cloud services may not be obvious.

The move to ban the U.S. cloud will likely inspire Chinese cloud service providers to further improve their technical capabilities and competitiveness to meet the needs of more different industries and users. At the same time, Chinese cloud computing companies can also take this opportunity to actively promote technical cooperation with cloud service providers in other countries to form a broader ecosystem.

However, a large enough share does not mean that there are no problems. Don't forget, the domestic cloud market is now at an important juncture of a new wave of AI transformation. If cloud computing services such as Amazon and Microsoft withdraw from the Chinese market in a large scale, it seems that domestic manufacturers will have more customers and needs to undertake. But this also means that the road we want to borrow "A100 computing power" from foreign manufacturers will be blocked. In the final analysis, it is still a big question mark whether we have prepared enough ammunition for this wave of AIGC arms race that "requires super-large computing power".

This is not a small problem, and it is likely to bring some challenges to the development of domestic AI technology. Due to the lack of high-performance chips, compared with American cloud vendors, most of China's cloud vendors still have some shortcomings in basic capabilities such as AI computing power.

In the face of the AI2.0 wave, a large number of technology companies are relying on the computing power provided by cloud vendors to support building their own large-scale models. The soaring demand will also quickly amplify the disadvantages of domestic cloud service providers in artificial intelligence chips. If cloud service providers cannot rely on self-research to improve their capabilities in this area in the short term, the severe computing power gap will become a huge mountain across the road of China's artificial intelligence development.

Fortunately, some domestic companies have already made a certain forward-looking layout. In terms of self-developed high-performance chips, many Internet giants have their own exploration results. For example, Baidu's "Kunlun Chip"; Alibaba's "Hanguang 800"; Huawei's "Shengteng Chip" and so on. Although the performance of the self-developed chips of these domestic manufacturers is still difficult to match the top products such as Nvidia A100, it is believed that as more and more domestic companies devote themselves to this and the update iterations of leading companies, domestic cloud manufacturers will be more powerful in terms of computing power. The short board will become smaller and smaller.

write at the end

In the context of Sino-US technological competition, improving technological independence is an important issue that all domestic companies need to address. For cloud vendors, self-developed technologies and server chips can not only reduce their dependence on third-party supplies, but also effectively reduce costs, allowing cloud service providers to optimize efficiency and cost in each business process.

Building a mature closed-loop ecosystem will also help cloud vendors achieve faster innovation while ensuring service security and flexibility. Today's far-sighted and ambitious cloud computing companies no longer regard business expansion as their core goal, but focus more on deepening the underlying technology, striving to provide users with high-quality services that are more cost-effective and meet differentiated needs.

In the final analysis, although in most industries, self-research often means a huge amount of time and financial investment, whether it is the recent success of mobile self-developed chips, or the case of Alibaba's early self-research by learning Amazon cloud technology , They are constantly reminding us of a truth: technological independence and technological innovation are the key to the development of enterprises and countries at any time. Only through independent research and development and technological innovation can we remain invincible in the competition.

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