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  • Necessity Is The Mother Of Right-To-Repair

    From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@ldo@nz.invalid to comp.misc on Sun Jul 27 01:47:52 2025
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    There has been a lot of discussion in Western countries about the
    “right to repair”: the idea that a piece of equipment should not
    simply be discarded if/when it breaks down, but the owner should have
    the option of getting it fixed at a reasonable price.

    In China, they are being forced into providing repair facilities for
    things such as Nvidia GPU cards, which were obtained through, shall we
    say, “informal” channels, and therefore cannot simply be returned
    under warranty <https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/underground-china-repair-shops-thrive-servicing-illicit-nvidia-gpus-banned-by-export-restrictions-companies-resurrecting-banned-ai-accelerators-at-a-rate-of-up-to-500-per-month>.

    Even if the warranty had expired, could you get such cards repaired in
    your country, or mine? Almost certainly not.

    Ironic, isn’t it, that China is being forced to innovate new kinds of business models that are being discouraged by Western BigCorps™, as a
    direct result of action by Governments that are trying to prevent the
    products of those same Western BigCorps™ from falling into the hands
    of the Chinese.
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  • From not@not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) to comp.misc on Mon Jul 28 08:46:23 2025
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
    There has been a lot of discussion in Western countries about the
    "right to repair": the idea that a piece of equipment should not
    simply be discarded if/when it breaks down, but the owner should have
    the option of getting it fixed at a reasonable price.

    In China, they are being forced into providing repair facilities for
    things such as Nvidia GPU cards, which were obtained through, shall we
    say, "informal" channels, and therefore cannot simply be returned
    under warranty <https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/underground-china-repair-shops-thrive-servicing-illicit-nvidia-gpus-banned-by-export-restrictions-companies-resurrecting-banned-ai-accelerators-at-a-rate-of-up-to-500-per-month>.

    Even if the warranty had expired, could you get such cards repaired in
    your country, or mine? Almost certainly not.

    "Reuters reports that repair workshops in Shenzhen usually replace
    fans (which suggests that they service A100 and H100 cards) and can
    diagnose memory or PCB failures (which applies to both cards and
    SXM modules). They can probably also replace passive components
    like capacitors, inductors, resistors, or MOSFETs, fix damaged
    pins, and resolder GPU packages.

    One firm charges between $1,400 and $2,800 per GPU, depending on
    the repair complexity..."

    $1,400 to replace a fan? I think you'd find someone to do that in
    Western countries if you looked hard enough. I diagnosed a memory
    failure in an old high-end Nvidia GPU, then pulled it all apart.
    Replacing the fan (which was brittle and cracked from heat stress)
    wouldn't be that hard, but pinpointing and replacing which of the
    BGA memory chips was at fault and replacing that (maybe only to
    find it's actually an addressing issue in the huge GPU chip) is
    miles beyond me. Indeed reapplying the fibrous thermal stuff they
    glued on top of those chips is beyond me.
    --
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