Chinese Factories Repurposing Thousands of Nvidia Gaming GPUs for AI Use to Skirt US Export Controls
• Several factories in China have been repurposing Nvidia GeForce RTX gaming graphics cards into AI accelerators in response to US sanctions limiting access to Nvidia's commercial AI offerings.
• One factory manager reported overseeing the disassembly of over 4,000 Nvidia RTX 4090 gaming graphics cards in December alone.
• Factories are now targeting the recently released RTX 4090D for China specifically, but it may lack the power required for large language model training.
• Activity at the repurposing factories has allegedly quadrupled from 1,000 graphics cards processed in November to 4,000 in December.
• Photos from one Chinese GPU disassembly operation show they remove stock coolers and replace with blower-style coolers on the repurposed cards.