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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.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday April 09 2015, @06:26AM
That's a pretty pathetic and useless gesture. The only real effect is going to be to encourage China to move to processors that they make in-country. Meanwhile, if they need Intel stuff, they will just buy it through an intermediary.
Anyone in the know about US-China relations? Is the US really this clueless, or does this political grandstanding have some purpose?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday April 09 2015, @06:37AM
May be a bit worse than that.
Seems like a pissing contest is in progress, on who has the fasterest super-computer [pcworld.com].
If so, I wonder what's the fuss? Like... why having the biggest dick matters when it comes to supercomputing? Does it matter enough to hurt your own industry?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by t-3 on Thursday April 09 2015, @07:48AM
International politics is just gangbanging on a grand scale. It doesn't make sense because it shouldn't to any rational minded modern human.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Thursday April 09 2015, @01:23PM
Supercomputers are nowadays essential for weather forecasting.
And superior weather forecasting was essential in timing the successful D-day invasion years before I was even born.
I'm not sure there's a valid syllogism here, but...
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Thursday April 09 2015, @02:32PM
and drug design, nuclear weapons safety, fusion reactor models and design, car design, airplane design, clinical statistics etc...
Computers (super or not) are the the engine that turns ideas into things that can be manufactured, for much less physical outlay.
The more detail you need, the more maths you need, the bigger the computer you need.
Many physical problem scale at N^2 or worse...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 09 2015, @09:03PM
Would purely the need is the driver, why not: "we built it because we need it", but "we must build a bigger one only because China beat us. And to make sure it won't happen again soon, we embargo the tech for China"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mrchew1982 on Saturday April 11 2015, @04:00AM
Could be related to the territorial disputes in the south china sea. China knows that the US is hamstrung in the middle east (and China might be helping behind the scenes to destabilize things there to keep the US busy...) So they've been throwing their weight around in Asia pretty much unchecked.
The US might have erred too much in neutering Japan after WW2, although China's rise to power was pretty much inevitable... Probably wouldn't have mattered. If you look though, the west has invaded pretty much all of those territories at one time or another; Korea is still a mess which won't end any time soon.
Back to the processors, I agree its just an annoyance. Even so, It's not simple to switch processors when you've standardized a supercomputer on a particular architecture. And It does have to make them wonder how far we'll go if they push the west further, for them to build it in the first place I would bet that they never thought that we'd do something like this. The embargoes against Russia have succeeded pretty well in stalling their economy, so China has to be ever so slightly worried. Without markets for their goods it would be interesting to see what would happen to China...