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Comment by janalsncm | Hacker News Reader

I listened to the SemiAnalysis folks on the Lex Fridman podcast: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_1f-o0nqpEI

They claimed that the fact that Singapore imports so many GPUs despite a moratorium on data centers was evidence of China smuggling GPUs. Of course it’s impossible to prove a negative, but it seems a bit disingenuous to omit the fact that Malaysia, on the other side of a river, has a growing data center industry.

The technical aspects of the podcast regarding DeepSeek, which I’m more familiar with, were accurate as far as I can tell.

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> They claimed that the fact that Singapore imports so many GPUs despite a moratorium on data centers was evidence of China smuggling GPUs.

Reminded me of the Belarusian shrim export suddenly soaring[1] after sanctions against Russian started.

For those who aren't too familiar with European geography, a look at the map[2] gives an indication as to why that's rather suspicious.

[1]: https://east-center.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Belarus-E...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarus#/media/File:Europe-Bel...

It is a pretty unfounded claim.

Singapore holds the headquarters of a lot of SEA megacorporations, as well as regional HQs of big tech in both USA/China.

These chips are bought from these HQs and redistributed to the rest of the world (Singapore is a major shipping hub). India imports chips through their HQs in Singapore, so does Australia, Saudi Arabia, Europe, America, etc.

Maybe you could make the case that shady companies are exporting to China, but I am fairly skeptical as there are already American officials in Singapore collaborating to investigating this issue

America imports GPUs from Singapore? I don't think Singapore is more than a drop in the bucket of America's GPU imports. America imports them from Taiwan.

This makes me skeptical of your other claims. Do you have evidence that most of the rest of the world for some reason routes their GPU imports through Singapore? That seems quite pointless.

> America imports GPUs from Singapore? I don't think Singapore is more than a drop in the bucket of America's GPU imports. America imports them from Taiwan.

Most stuff shipped from Taiwan to America goes via Singapore at least physically. It's the big shipping hub in the region.

There are plenty of other comments citing Nvidia statements, so I don't think I need to address this.

Certainly the tendency for people here to reach for the most conspiratorial theories is bizarre to me.

"Bill to" vs "ship to," as Nvidia claims, doesn't explain why Singapore's share of revenue increased from 9% to 22% in two years, unless you think that American multinational companies didn't bill to Singapore until two years ago, and suddenly all switched — which there is no evidence for. Coincidentally, "two years ago" lines up with when the Hopper chip ban went into effect. That's obviously sketchy, which is why people are suspicious.

There's definitely something fishy going on.

Singapore only has about 2% of global data center capacity. It's floor space, power and transit costs are at least twice that of the US and EU making it an unattractive place to do model training.

Nonethless, it accounted for 28% of NVIDIAs datacenter GPU sales.

> 2% of global data center capacity

Let’s call the dollars per square foot the “cost density”. The claim you are repeating from the interview I mentioned is that SG data centers have an unusually high cost density.

What could account for that? It might be that there is a very expensive item (a state of the art GPU for example) taking up that space.

Another option, as I mentioned above, is that these GPUs are running inference in Malaysia which is right across the river.

Perhaps, but SEA is a very expensive place to run GPUs. High power costs, no free cooling.

Why wouldn't DeepSeek (or whoever) just export these to Northern China where power is cheap and the air is cold?

There are plenty of data centers in hot places all over the world.

Also, if you have been to Singapore, these are not people who are at all afraid of using air conditioning.

Here's a statement by NVIDIA:

"The revenue associated with Singapore does not indicate diversion to China," a statement by Nvidia reads. "Our public filings report 'bill to' not 'ship to' locations of our customers. Many of our customers have business entities in Singapore and use those entities for products destined for the U.S. and the West. We insist that our partners comply with all applicable laws, and if we receive any information to the contrary, act accordingly." (Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...)

> despite a moratorium on data centers

Singapore placed a moratorium on new data center construction from 2019 to early 2022. It was not a "15-year moratorium" as Patel claimed, so he was pulling numbers out of his behind. Since 2022 Singapore has been expanding DC capacity quite aggressively as well: https://www.edb.gov.sg/en/business-insights/insights/singapo...

The fact that Patel didn't bother to verify something so easily Googleable speaks volumes about his credibility.

And here's a statement by NVIDIA:

Honestly many of the things Patel said in that podcast (not just about Singapore, but in general) belonged on r/ConfidentlyIncorrect.

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