back to article Smuggler caught with 256 Intel Core processors wrapped around him in cling film

The insatiable demand for microchips amid a global supply crunch of semiconductors is perhaps behind the following smuggling capers in China that just happened to catch our eye. In one case, on June 16, customs officials noticed the driver of a truck on the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge was suspiciously shifty as his vehicle …

  1. FILE_ID.DIZ
    Trollface

    Art imitating life or do I have that backwards

    Slums of Beverly Hill, sans the probing fork to the thigh?

  2. hedge

    CPU mules should have...

    intel inside ©

  3. MyffyW Silver badge

    Polynomials

    Something tickled me about there being 256 processors smuggled - as if powers of 2 are some how the natural order.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Polynomials

      perhaps this was done on purpose, to avoid being detected...

    2. Data Mangler

      Re: Polynomials

      If he'd limited it to 88 he might have got lucky.

    3. nsimic

      Re: Polynomials

      If he stopped at 255, he might have gotten away with it

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Polynomials

        Yeah, byte overflow was his downfall.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Polynomials

      Obv, stopped, asked to reverse a bit, then wait in the overflow car park, as he passed through customs.

    5. gandalfcn Silver badge

      Re: Polynomials

      aussie

  4. Dwarf

    Zap!

    I hope he used anti static cling film, otherwise he probably had a big pile of doorstops, up to the point where they got confiscated.

    1. chuBb.

      Re: Zap!

      Was thinking same thing...

      Personally I would claim that they are acupuncture patches

      1. Spacedinvader

        Re: Zap!

        I thought Intel CPU pins were on the board, AMD has them on the CPU...

        1. chuBb.

          Re: Zap!

          Its been a while since i physically handled a cpu so probably...

    2. Cuddles

      Re: Zap!

      Based on the photos in the linked report they appear to have been inside boxes, not simply bare chips strapped directly to his body.

  5. Christopher Reeve's Horse
    Coat

    Must have taken ages

    to clean all the thermal compound off him...

  6. mihares
    Thumb Up

    It can’t be an accident

    The fact that this individual tried to smuggle 256 computer CPUs gives the whole story something /just/ better…

  7. spireite Silver badge
    Coat

    Thermal compound?

    They must have been concerned that the thermal compound was brown surely??

  8. Korev Silver badge
    Coat

    One seller is peddling second-hand GeForce RTX 3060s, for example, for just 1,760 yuan or $270; that’s nearly 60 bucks off its retail price of $329

    You mean they're cheap as chips?

    1. veti Silver badge

      That's 80% of the new retail price, for a second hand product presumably without warranty. Doesn't sound that cheap to me.

      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

        Yeah. 60 bucks off a card that has been running 24/7 for God knows how long ?

        Nope.

        I might buy it for $100, not a penny more.

        1. sev.monster Silver badge

          As long as the load was fairly constant, the wear should not be overmuch compared to equivalent gaming time. Swap out the paste/pads and it'll last you a good while. Of course, there's the chance it did get absolutely thrashed... It's just not as assured as you'd think.

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            More likely, they were running overclocked in not ideal conditions. These are coming from people who had to invest a lot of cash into their mining "farms" and were probably not into making sure everything was running for duration in a properly cooled datacentre-like environment. I think I'd rather steer clear of any second hand GFX cards with the power to used for crypto-mining for the foreseeable future.

            1. sev.monster Silver badge

              Yes, but what I'm saying is as long as the load was constant (and in a mining setup I don't see why it wouldn't be) then the fact that it ran consistently hot is going to put less of a strain on it in regards to thermal expansion. Nothing is melting even at higher operating temps; what ends up doing damage to components when placed under such a load is either not dissipating heat with crusty paste or constantly stopping and starting that loaf and causing large changes in temperature, the latter of which is not very often observed when mining 24/7. Sure, some of the components still might end up getting a good cooking if the temps get too hot and that can lower their lifespan, but at that point the card is being throttled or shut down, and any miner worth their salt will tune their performance to not allow this to maintain maximum hashing speed—even if that means lowering the OC a little.

              I have a tad bit of experience in the mining arena and know some people that do it professionally, and this is the kind of thing I've seen in almost every shop I've looked at. Anecdotal, but there you are.

        2. Potemkine! Silver badge

          For electronic devices, it's better to run 24/7 than to be turn on and off often. Degradation comes mostly from thermal stress, when the device temperature changes.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Genuine question because I have no idea how these things work.

          In a PC they need drivers. Would the drivers be monitoring the cards and throttling if necessary? Or would that be done in the hardware?

          I'm thinking that if they use rows of these in custom hardware then they would presumably manage card I/O directly and focus more on the code they need to thrash the card and produce output, possibly ignoring features designed to stop the card catching fire. Or maybe their rigs are actually PCs with drivers etc and I am talking rubbish.

          Like I said, I have no clue.

          1. doublelayer Silver badge

            They are driven by something with a CPU, and that could easily manage clocking (in fact, it almost certainly does). However, there's no way of knowing exactly how that was configured. Running the management system to avoid failures would make sense for a place that wanted to preserve their investment, but if they could obtain devices for relatively cheap, then it's also possible that they wrote the management software to run them as fast as possible to speed up their mining. Without knowing who was operating them, you don't know what settings they used.

  9. MonkeyNuts.Com

    Mr Liu, Is that an unlockable iCore9 Extreme or are you just pleased to see me?

  10. Velv
    Childcatcher

    That's once serious BDSM kink if their strapped to the thigh with cling film pins inward

    1. Dwarf

      @Velv

      Pins are so yesterday, its all pads now.

      Far fewer problems when there are no pins to bend and snap off, plus motherboards are cheaper to replace than CPU's.if the socket gets damaged.

      1. mihares

        Once it was the other way ‘round —the cost thing, especially. The first system I put together had two Xeon’s, in the early 2000’s, and the mobo costed an entire lobe of my liver.

    2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      You haven't changed a CPU in a long time, I see.

      1. nintendoeats

        AMD chips have all been PGA for basically ever. Their next gen of chips will be LGA.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    An amateur smuggler

    It would be much easier to stuff a printer (or any similar device with zero importation problems) with the chips, wrapped in anti-statics and put the device back in the original box, just paying duty on the printer in customs.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Goodbye Mr Chips

    I wonder what the penalty will be.

    Or will he join the rank of people who “never existed”?

  13. zekepliskin

    A new kind of mule.

    Where once there were and still are drug mules, now they're joined by a new breed - microchip mules. Still, could be worse, he could have tried taking them orally!

  14. BOFH in Training

    Why smuggle CPUs?

    Why does someone smuggle consumer class CPUs, to China?

    To not pay import tax? Or are all CPUs, including consumer class CPUs prohibited from sale to China now?

    I understand RAM, etc were also smuggled, so I guess it's to do with import tax?

    1. elsergiovolador Silver badge

      Re: Why smuggle CPUs?

      Seems like Ministry of State Security ordered the poor guy to bring some Intel...

    2. gandalfcn Silver badge

      Re: Why smuggle CPUs?

      I think you'[ll find they were going to HK and not onto the Mainland. They could then be easily sent overseas.

  15. elsergiovolador Silver badge

    Sinking low

    Sounds like just a new branch of Chinese medicine. They used elephant tusks, rhino horns and since it is increasingly difficult to obtain, they started using Intel CPUs.

  16. skeptical i
    Coat

    Film-wrapped to his calves and torso ...

    but no chip on his shoulder?

  17. Mike Flex

    I hope the pins were facing outwards.

    Otherwise, ouch.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Poor guy was so tired afterwards

    He fell to the ground in a terra flop…..

  19. JDPower666

    They removed the chips from his torso and legs, but the disgruntled smuggler was left with a chip on his shoulder.

  20. Bibbit

    Apologies in advance

    He was obviously trying to pull some silly con.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Intel prototyping it's chiplet technology?

    Maybe didn't use enough "Infinity cling film" to glue the chips together?

  22. gandalfcn Silver badge

    on the subject of the PRC, does this seem like bribery "HK lawmakers approve 5 more statutory holidays by 2030"?

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