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Bush Lightens Supercomputer Export Restrictions
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."
...Imagine if we exported a beowulf cluster of these...
Who did what now?
Certainly a number of above-average workstations or servers clustered together effectively would by far supercede the most powerful machine currently exportable.
And I don't see any limit on telecommunications or gigabit/optical switches that would otherwise limit the ability of such a cluster to be effective.
Is this finally an example of US legislation where a little ignorance actually HELPS the international tech community?
Wasn't it not all that long ago that Ashcroft (and the Bush administration) were beating their chests over the Clinton era "mistake" of lightening export restrictions on encryption software?
Anyone know what the impetus behind this move was?
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water." syrup
This is especially relevant with the whole channel-bonding thing that's been developed lately. If you use numerous 100-megabit ethernet cards and bond them logically via software into giga-bit class cards via a few switches and routers along the way, you end up with giga-bit class performance for far lower cost.
Why not just use a cluster of pc's/macs?
;-)
I think a big part of the answer might lie not in hardware, but in software.
As you know, the scientific and technical computing world still runs on Fortran. I know the SGI and Cray Fortran compilers are fantastic, especially the Cray vector-optimizing compiler; I would expect that the compilers NEC and Fujitsu use are similar. But as I understand it Absoft's Fortran compilers for Linux and Windows aren't up to those standards.
You might be able to run benchmarks or other C or assembly code as fast on a cluster as on a commercial supercomputer, but if the compilers aren't as good, your application will suffer.
It's important to note that this is just speculation on my part. I've only ever used SGI's and Cray's Fortran compilers, so everything I know about Absoft's comes to me second-hand. If Absoft rocks and I don't know it, it's not my fault.
Let's try this again.
Wouldn't clustering be a way to circumvent the law in the first place?
The problems that the law was intended to make difficult to solve (nuclear weapons simulation, aero flow analysis, cryptography, and so on) are, as far as I can tell, problems that can can be attacked in parallel, and so are good applications for clusters to tackle.
Well then, if the restriction prevented the export of any computer faster than x, couldn't a cluster of n export-legal computers of speed y (y less-than x ) produce a total throughput power Y (Y greater-than x)?
And for smaller values of y, substitute larger values of n to gain the same net power Y.
So really, I would think that clustering technology rendered (heh) the restriction moot a long time ago.
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After reading all these comments, am I the only one who recognizes the absurdity of searching for TECHNICAL meaning in a POLITICIAN's decision?
/. won't change that. If you really care, write your representatives (from the state level on up) and volunteer your technical expertise. Write papers on the subjects that concern you. Publish them. Make your voice heard, instead of shouting into the abyss about the lack of technical knowledge at the higher levels of our government.
There are arguments about how the equipment is in use in those countries anyway, how clusters of "legal" systems can outpower the "illegal" ones, how plenty of dastardly deeds can be done with my TRS-80, etc, etc.
What we have here is a political decision, made by a politician, on the advice and recommendation of other [aspiring] politicians about a technical subject they know nothing about.
If you're looking for deeper meaning behind this decision - you'll find none.
If you're just looking for an excuse to bitch about politicians, doesn't that get old?
If you're looking to impress the world at large with your technical understanding of the subject, and point out the obvious flaws in the politician's point of view... taking candy from a baby becomes the obvious parallel.
I guess I don't see the point of the argument. We've proven over and over again that [most] politicians don't understand the technical issues they make decisions about, but bitching on
Just my $.05 (inflation, you know.)
- Dave
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"