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Bush Lightens Supercomputer Export Restrictions

Posted by Hemos on from the gettinghte-power-out-there dept.

MrZeebo writes "According to a story on Yahoo! News, Bush has finally decided to lift the Cold War-era restrictions on how fast an exported computer can be. Now, computers as fast as 195,000 MTOPS (up from 85,000 MTOPS) can be exported to countries such as Russia, China, and Pakistan."

3 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Not "Finally", just another step by Soong · · Score: 4, Informative

    There were a couple such steps during the Clinton administration, and probably this has been going on since the Cray 1 was a hot little number.

    I think I even missed a step, article says current limit is 85 GOPS, last I heard was 12.

    Don't forget too that there are different grades of countries we may or may not export "supercomputers" to.

    See Dec 11, 2001, Jan 11, 2001, Aug 3, (2000? 1999?

    Heh, pity /. doesn't seem to have years attatched to its articles.

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  2. How many TOPS do you have? by headwick · · Score: 5, Informative

    2100 MTOPS is a 900MHz P3. 5333 MTOPS is a 2GHz P4 . Here is a nice reference from Intel.

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  3. Basically moot... by cnelzie · · Score: 4, Informative


    With all of the stories about individual people, labs and companies building supercomputers using clustered commodity hardware with freely available tools, software and information. Why would The Bush Administration with to continue to financially hinder US-based computer manufacturers?

    It makes little sense. I mean if Cringley can run off and buy around $6000 to build a supercomputer in his garage. What is stopping someone in Russia, Pakistan or Vietnam from running out and buying tons of old Celeron 333 and slightly faster CPUs and then building a powerful Free *NIX-based supercomputer?

    The only thing that would now make those people look at the US-built supercomputers are the fact that they won't have to run out and build their own supercomputer. They can take a pre-made solution and plug it into their computer datacenter and get to work much faster, with hopefully, a lower upkeep cost.

    Ever since I first started reading about roll-your-own supercomputers, I have always wondered why the US would continue to ban the export of powerful computer systems.

    The malarky about keeping 3rd-tier nations from being able to develop nuclear weapons is rather silly as well. I mean, did the US use powerful 195,000+ MTOP supercomputers to develop Fatboy? ...um... NO. They did it with slide rules and human minds.

    Maybe they should ban the exportation of nuclear physics majors. Especially since a large number of foreign born physicists came to the US to learn how to do their thing.

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