Russia skirts sanctions, acquires Nvidia and AMD chips through Dell servers from India

[midian182]

In brief: Russia has been circumventing sanctions imposed on it by sneaking tech into the nation since the war with Ukraine began. According to a new report, one of the methods it is using to acquire high-end processors is to purchase Dell servers from an Indian pharmaceutical company.

The US and the European Union restrict the export of dual-use goods to Russia that could be used in its military industrial complex, a ruling put in place following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Bloomberg News reports that between April and August 2024, Shreya Life Sciences, a mid-sized Indian pharmaceutical company, exported 1,111 units of Dell's PowerEdge XE9680 servers, which have an average price of $260,000, to Russia.

The servers were equipped with 4th-gen Xeon Scalable CPUs and Nvidia H100 or AMD Instinct MI300X accelerators optimized for AI operations. Data available for 998 of the shipped servers show they were equipped with the H100 chips.

The servers, worth an estimated $300 million, were legally exported under India's trade regulations. They were sent to two Russian trading companies, Main Chain Ltd. and I.S. LLC. Bloomberg writes that these were just the latest in a series of technology exports Shreya made to Russia since September 2022.

While the servers shipped to Russia from India, they originated in Malaysia. Between March and August 2024, 1,407 PowerEdge XE9680 units were shipped from Malaysia to India. Neither Malaysia's Investment, Trade and Industry Ministry nor the Prime Minister's Office responded to an email from Bloomberg seeking comments.

India does not participate in the US and EU sanctions imposed on Russia, which it relies on for military equipment and increased oil imports.

Shreya was founded in Moscow in 1995 by Sujit Kumar Singh. It started by distributing and marketing pharmaceutical drugs before creating its own manufacturing plants. Between January 2022 and August 2024, it sold $22 million worth of pharmaceutical products to Russia. The first record of non-medical exports was in September 2022, when it shipped computer hardware to Russian firm Lanprint Ltd worth $755,333. Lanprint was later added to the US sanctioned company list.

India is the second-biggest supplier of restricted tech to Russia after China. It was reported in 2022 that Russia was buying chips from the Chinese gray market. A risky move, considering 40% of them were found to be defective.

China is also subject to US sanctions on certain tech. In April, it was reported that Chinese entities, including research institutes and universities, were able to obtain high-end Nvidia AI products by purchasing server products, such as those from Dell, embedded with the chips from resellers.

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Russia skirts sanctions, acquires Nvidia and AMD chips through Dell servers from India

 

[VitalyT]

Where there is a will, there is a way. Sanctions or not, money always talks in the end.

 

[AndreV]

Maybe someone in the know can answer this question pertinently: how come the countries/governments always want/need PC tech, servers, etc? Are they consumable like food, gas, etc? Where are the the ones they got last time?
The reason "for extra performance of the latest release" is kind of weak in light of slower and very incremental improvements of the latest years while simultaneous the price is increasing dramatically.

 

[The Talking Tech]

Shocker....No wonder India is not part of NATO as they want their cake and eat it too with one foot in and one out.

 

[VitalyT]

Shocker....No wonder India is not part of NATO as they want their cake and eat it too with one foot in and one out.

Indian gods have many hands, for multitasking.

 

[toooooot]

Maybe someone in the know can answer this question pertinently: how come the countries/governments always want/need PC tech, servers, etc? Are they consumable like food, gas, etc? Where are the the ones they got last time?
The reason "for extra performance of the latest release" is kind of weak in light of slower and very incremental improvements of the latest years while simultaneous the price is increasing dramatically.

There are tons of used hardware from servers on eBay Amazon and who knows how many other places.

"The reason "for extra performance of the latest release" is kind of weak in light of slower and very incremental improvements of the latest years"
Many companies keep their servers for more than just a few years. Therefore, a small increment argument does not stand. 5 years is a very decent upgrade in speed and power saving, 10 is another level.
Try to run a modern AAA game on a relatively older hardware. Surely, you can lower graphics, lower resolution, but there is no way to be able to see the latest and greatest tech that was created for newer hardware.

 

[Underdog]

I am always disappointed when I hear how cosy India is getting with Putin. They should know better.

 

[antiproduct]

I am always disappointed when I hear how cosy India is getting with Putin. They should know better.

One authoritarian loves another. I think India's PM is pretty problematic too.

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

The West tries to stifle Countries like China and Russia with sanctions, complains about them while China and Russia remains silent and runs circles around the sanctions.

 

[Axeia]

Sanctions never work. They only help the middleman. Instead of going from A to C it goes from A to B to C. With B making a nice profit.

This war has been great for India as a proxy. They get crude oil super cheap from Russia, refund it and sell it with a nice profit margin to Europe/the US.
They buy sanctioned stuff from Europe/The US and sell it with a nice profit margin to Russia.

They have no loyalty to either side and are making the most of it. As the prime minister put it India just thinks of India and who can blame them.

On the flip side they're realising that they'rte military projects with Russia have to be revaluated. Instead of joint efforts for a lot of it they'll either want to work with the west instead or develop it themselves entirely. Not only had the war pointed out some quality issues with Russia's offerings they also need it all for themselves now. They'll probably end up licensing Russian designs to manufacturer domestically and then set Russia aside when it's time for the next generation (much like China has done/is doing)

 

[Eldrach]

Maybe someone in the know can answer this question pertinently: how come the countries/governments always want/need PC tech, servers, etc? Are they consumable like food, gas, etc? Where are the the ones they got last time?
The reason "for extra performance of the latest release" is kind of weak in light of slower and very incremental improvements of the latest years while simultaneous the price is increasing dramatically.

Well - reasons are many around the globe, but for Russia I think it’s mainly brute force capabilities when breaking into foreign databases, satellites, infrastructure etc.
They are also desperate for guiding chips for missiles as they keep bombing Ukraine - and those are literally blown to pieces with every use

 

[MasterAce]

We should just add everyone found going around on the same sanctions list as russia.

 

[Emu81]

Maybe someone in the know can answer this question pertinently: how come the countries/governments always want/need PC tech, servers, etc? Are they consumable like food, gas, etc? Where are the the ones they got last time?
The reason "for extra performance of the latest release" is kind of weak in light of slower and very incremental improvements of the latest years while simultaneous the price is increasing dramatically.

The Nvidia H100 is up to 30 times faster for AI workloads than the previous A100. Remember that this is top of the line enterprise gear being talked about rather than the consumer grade gear. Even on the consumer level the top of the line gear is a massive boost in performance over previous generations with the 4090 being 50%-80% faster than the 3090 and the 4080 is around 25% faster. It is when you get down to the middle and budget tiers where the performance upgrades start becoming incremental and the price per performance generational increase starts to become flatter.

For what it is worth, with computational workloads that mainly involve GPUs (e.g. anything AI related), the CPUs are only there to provide the GPUs with work orders and data so the CPU performance starts to become irrelevant (it only needs to be good enough to supply the work orders in a timely fashion) and the ability to provide vast amounts of IO via more memory channels and PCIe bandwidth becomes far more relevant.

 

[Liranan]

One authoritarian loves another. I think India's PM is pretty problematic too.

Yeah, I am also disappointed that Russia doesn't democratise dozens upon dozens of countries from 30 thousand feet with B52's.

 

[Tyme4LeClarity]

The West tries to stifle Countries like China and Russia with sanctions, complains about them while China and Russia remains silent and runs circles around the sanctions.

I'm sure Vladdy is finding that sanctions are annoyingly effective now that his
Ruble is collapsing, and railroad won't run for want of western parts. Causing a choice between missiles for his "Special Military Action" or trucks for his RR cars. and commerce is bankrupted by 21 % interest rates.
Now, while shopping centers are spontaneously combusting. Six out of a dozen of his " Grey Fleet" tankers are floating full of LNG because other countries won't let them embark and his fancy Siberian LNG project was shut down.
In grocery stores butter is sold in protective anti-theft packs. It's imported from the UAE and ironically supplied to them by Putin's enemy Ukraine. Middle aged women are going to jail for theft of butter.
Sanctions are not designed as an instant solution. They take time. They are an imperfect tool in an imperfect world and when properly enforced (which is possible) they are supposed too save lives.