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: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @09:16AM
>related to nuclear explosives
China has been investing heavily in Thorium.
Chances are, they're using the super computers to further their research.
Lockheed's fusion will flop, China will dominate energy production with LFTR, and I'll die right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @06:40PM
a bussard collector wont work in interstellar space if it needs to collect thorium atoms and you might want to die on this planet .. others don t.