Nvidia Builds Location Verification Tech That Could Track Where Its AI Chips End Up (reuters.com)
- Reference: 0180354685
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/12/10/1448224/nvidia-builds-location-verification-tech-that-could-track-where-its-ai-chips-end-up
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/business/nvidia-builds-location-verification-tech-that-could-help-fight-chip-smuggling-2025-12-10/
The technology will first be available on Nvidia's newest Blackwell chips, though the company is examining options for its older Hopper and Ampere generations. U.S. lawmakers and the White House have pushed for location verification measures as the Department of Justice has brought criminal cases against smuggling rings allegedly attempting to move more than $160 million worth of Nvidia chips to China.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/nvidia-builds-location-verification-tech-that-could-help-fight-chip-smuggling-2025-12-10/
The Chinese will love this feature (Score:2)
Nothing like having phone home beacon in your imported tech.
How Fucking Cool?! (Score:3, Insightful)
So now you'll need to give your GPU internet access in order to allow it to function. How fucking cool is that?!?!
That's a hard pass for me, Bro.
Re: (Score:2)
Where do you think cars are going? You already have to wait for permission to use your car as it boots up. And then there's the data tracking built into the vehicle which is relayed to third parties. This will only be the next step in people being given permission to use something they thought they purchased.
The eventual goal is to have people rent their PC or phone and all the software they use.
Re: (Score:2)
You aint running a data center .... without internet genius.
Re: (Score:2)
But you are training AI without internet. Do you really think every node in the AI cluster or in the cluster rendering the next Pixar movie has internet access while doing its job?
Will this feature get into the Open Source driver? (Score:2)
Vaporware. If this feature doesn't make it into the Open Source driver so that I can know where my computer is, then I'm not going to buy any Nvidia hardware!
What's the point? (Score:2)
Jensen and Trump have already demonstrated they're ready and willing to sell out America's interests to China for the previous generation chip - it's only a matter of time before they do the same with Blackwell too.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it's more of a gamble that the 2nd gen chip is "better" than what China is currently manufacturing internally so they will continue to use our ecosystem, but the current Gen chip is enough better for the U.S./West to maintain an AI lead (if they have a lead at all.) By all accounts I've read, switching between architectures particularly for Transform operations requires system-level redevelopment, so keeping the competition hooked on our domestic architecture has a strategic advantage. Remains to
Re: (Score:2)
where there is money to be made, there is a way.
art of deal baby
DRM breaks products and erodes consumer... (Score:1)
DRM breaks products and erodes consumer rights. Also, this means that these products aren't actually going to where Nvidia and the rest of Big Tech have been claiming they've been going to. For the past 2 years they've been telling us about these billion dollar chatbot datacenters eating up the GPU supply but no one's ever seen them and no one can describe a use-case. The only way this makes sense is if they're trying to crack down on the GPU black market. Cool story but we all know that they're the ones wh
Soooo, customers track themselves? (Score:1)
That sounds stupid. Must be some political thing.
"optional software tool that customers install" (Score:4, Funny)
So... never?
Makes some bad assumptions, certainly (Score:2)
I guess they're doing a little more on top of NTP... get your time synced with a pool of time sources, and then check the difference with the designated gold server... and hope that they're not on starlink and you just bricked a customer's billion dollar datacenter running on their third-tier backup connectivity because copper thieves don't know the difference between copper and glass.
Thus Confirming that nVidia is Evil (Score:2)
So, they are going to track everyone--just so that they can sell GPUs the the Chinese to crack our passwords? --All in the hopes of using a killswitch and a backdoor?
China was already trying to discourageusing NVIDIA (Score:2)
Since China was already trying to get local chips used rather than NVIDIA, they'll probably be in favor of this move.
"taps into confidential computing capabilities" (Score:2)
Buyers beware. Nvidia chips are spyware enabled which record your every move and transmit it to Big Bro.
Next up (Score:4, Insightful)
Location-based DRM and over-the-air updates bricking your GPU randomly every week.
Re: (Score:3)
And you thought it was bad when your cloud-dependant IoT device or game bit the dust when the server went away? Imagine a data center or AI based business going dark when Nvidia decides it's time for them to upgrade.