Compute stock is at most a declared amount

Why it matters

An accurate chip count underpins other checks on compute. Proposals rely on it in several ways:

• Shavit's monitoring framework has three stages: on-chip logging, proofs about training runs, and monitoring of the chip supply chain ¹. The third stage exists so that no actor can avoid discovery by amassing a large quantity of untracked chips ¹. Without it, a prover could covertly acquire chips and train on them without ever notifying the verifier, bypassing checks on the chips it did declare ¹.
• Sastry and colleagues describe AI-relevant compute as detectable, excludable and quantifiable, and produced through an extremely concentrated supply chain ². They list an international AI chip registry among possible mechanisms for regulatory visibility ².
• A draft international agreement would prohibit concentrations of more than 16 H100-equivalents outside monitored facilities ³. It would consolidate existing chips into those facilities and track new production ³. Chips would be located through supply-chain tracking, mandatory reporting, intelligence gathering, open-source intelligence, power monitoring, challenge inspections and whistleblowers ³.
• Scher and Thiergart argue for locating AI chips at an initial point in time and then keeping them monitored, rather than relying on detecting secret data centres later ⁴.

Why it is hard

The claim is negative: it asserts that no chips exist beyond the declared total.

• The existing stock. Shavit noted in 2023 that hundreds of thousands of ML chips had already been sold, many lacking the security features his framework needs and possibly not locatable by governments ¹. Scher and Thiergart write that millions of AI-relevant chips already exist with no central tracking, which could make an initial inventory difficult ⁴.
• Tracking must start at the fab. Shavit's design monitors the small number of fabrication facilities that make leading-edge chips ¹. It records each chip's burned-in serial number in a directory of chip owners, kept up to date when chips are resold or damaged ¹. Responsibility for any missing chip precursors lies with the most recent holder ¹.
• Supporting methods have gaps. Wasil and colleagues note that customs data is less useful against countries that can manufacture components domestically, and that financial intelligence is limited because many hardware purchases have legitimate uses ⁵. Inspections of chip fabrication plants are resource-intensive and put intellectual property at risk ⁵. The same authors list local chip manufacture and the use of older chips as evasion routes, and note that chip location tracking would apply only to new chips ⁵.
• Chips are not a fixed unit of capacity. RAND's framework counts a cluster as large-scale if it has the computing power of thousands of high-end AI chips controlled by a single entity ⁶. Sastry and colleagues caution that algorithmic progress can reduce the compute needed for a given capability, and that decentralised training could undermine the detectability of compute ².

The claim is closely tied to There is no undeclared relevant compute, which asks whether any compute lies outside the declared stock, and to Chips are where they are declared to be, which asks whether declared chips are where they are said to be.