Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by on Thursday April 09 2015, @05:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the my-processor-can-beat-up-your-processor dept.

According to VR World and HPCwire, the U.S. government has blacklisted "high technology" shipments to the National Supercomputing Center Changsha (NSCC-CS), National Supercomputing Center Guangzhou (NSCC-GZ), National Supercomputing Center Tianjin (NSCC-TJ), and the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) in China. This effectively means that these major supercomputing facilities can no longer purchase Intel Xeon chips. Tianhe-2, the world's fastest supercomputer since June 2013 according to Top500, is located at the NUDT in Guangzhou and uses a total of 32,000 Intel Xeon and 48,000 Xeon Phi chips.

The main claim of the Bureau of Industry and Security's End-User Review Committee (ERC) is that NUDT, which used US-manufactured parts to produce the Tianhe-1A and Tianhe-2 supercomputers located at the National Supercomputing Centers in Changsha, Guangzhou, and Tianjin, is believed to be engaged in activities related to nuclear explosives.

The U.S. also uses supercomputers for nuclear weapons research.

The news coincides with the Intel Developer Forum 2015 in Shenzhen, China, at which the company announced new Braswell, SoFIA, and Cherry Trail chips, among other products. VR World speculates that the move could cost Intel $1 billion on lost Broadwell-EP Xeon E5v4 sales and accelerate the development of homegrown Chinese processors.

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday April 09 2015, @02:13PM

    by looorg (578) on Thursday April 09 2015, @02:13PM (#168335)

    Couldn't they just buy AMD? Otherwise I guess this might just be the thing that will fuel China's desire to make their own chips and CPU then. I do wonder if they will be x86/64 compatible or they'll make something new. As long as they are totally compatible I guess the winner could be the consumer with new and lower prices. I'm sure they could reverse-engineer some Intel chips by now without to many problems.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2