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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."
Cool, maybe now the Mac fanatics where I work will stop bragging about how THEIR computers are so powerful they can't be exported from the country.
...now we can re-export playstation 2's.
eBay.ru, here I come.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
The tanks that were being used to guard the
iMacs got sent over to Afghanistan.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Aren't american supercomputers made in China and programmed in Pakistan anyway?
RMN
~~~
I think after a long time of several users being modded down for this comment, it still has its meaning:
"Imagine a beowulf cluster of theese..."
The power definetely lies in clustering, who wants to/can control which clusters are built?
Some nice 2.2 Ghz Northwoods add up number crunching power very quickly...
As I read it, the scale at which this is working from is substantially over your average desktop machine. Why not just use a cluster of pc's/macs?
Yes, I am aware that network bottlenecks can be an issue with certain varieties of calculations. I work in a national lab. I administer clusters. But I don't think there is an export restriction on myrinet, or any other high performance network. Not to mention that most of the countries that this applies to don't have a lot of money to work with anyways, so perhaps desktops with fast/gigabit ethernet is more the order of the day.
Not only that, but there are other companies that make supercomputers. Hitachi comes to mind, and I think Fujitsu as well.
Perhaps what they should rather do is not require DOE facilities to buy American unless it truly is the better product.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
... just bought themselves another couple of years or so worth of computing progress before mainstream small-busines servers fall into the restricted category. [sigh] This is just as stupid as restrictions on encryption software. When the hell are the feds going to learn that the US isn't the world's only source for computing technology (hardware, software, and combinations thereof) and the only thing these export restrictions accomplish is to weaken US companies against foreign competition?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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
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.
/. doesn't seem to have years attatched to its articles.
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
Start Running Better Polls
2100 MTOPS is a 900MHz P3. 5333 MTOPS is a 2GHz P4 .
Here is a nice reference from Intel.
~ fact is not dependant upon your belief therein. ~ ~ Have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?
The article was written in such a way that pretty much everything in it was misleading. Poor journalism at it's best.
Last time I checked the "real" site (may not now be current) the big loser was Motorola and IBM for home desktops (from a chipmaker's perspective). G3's and G4's did math better than the Intel chips (using the math instruction speed criteria used) and were restricted further than P3's and P4's. Again, it may not be current now, but 800Mhz Itaniums were faster at math than Pentium family computers at 2Ghz and were similarly restricted as G4s.
No mention of strong encryption in the article either (some SW and things like wireless cards were affected).
There are 4 tiers, also poorly noted in the article. Go to the US Department of Commerce's site at:
http://www.bxa.doc.gov/HPCs/Default.htm
Note: does not seem to reflect changes mentioned in the article; nonetheless a lot of good background that will help put the new rules into perspective.
The New York Times is also running the story, mostly the same info but with a few interesting facts not mentioned in the Yahoo version.
forma3
Right on!
Why is this flaimbait? I guess "flaimbait" should be changed to "disagrees with popular opinion".
Believe me, I'm plenty tired of this "fuckstick" too, and I'm glad I didn't vote for him.
Who is the USA to say who can and can't have knowledge? Supercomputers, Nuclear bombs, etc.?
Is the US God? I think not. If someone in India is smart enough to figure out how to make a nuclear bomb, who are we to say anything against it?
Anyway, your post is right on the mark, and I agree completely.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
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.
.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
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?
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.
--
.sig seperator
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If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I think we all agree that beyond the shadow of a doubt this will drastically increase world terrorism. Super computers obviously play a huge role in organizations like al Qaeda. Terrorists will use them to carefully calculating the results of catastrophic activities as well as inform their operatives with strong, uncrackable crypto. (arf arf)
Why bother.
Can Russia, China, and Pakistan?
-Get DVD players in those "super computers"?
-Create a Q3 Clan and attack us with these "super computers"?
-Can their "super computer" do this?
-Will the pr0n banks be depleted as those countries begin the massive dowloading of Anna Kournikova and Stevana?
-Surf the web and see what great pricing we have on our "super camera" the X10?
-Will they be able to run Outlook on these "super computers"?
-Will evil frogs be _more_ evil in Daikatana?
This
Is the US God?
No it isn't. But the responses to this are enlightening. I remember how there was a great clamor to boycott and embargo DeClerk's South Africa. Anyone who had business interests there had to divest themselves. It was the "moral" thing to do. Divestiture was the same as saying, "We don't like how you run your country and we refuse to have anything to do with you." If a company or university didn't divest itself, it was ostracized and or boycotted until it did.
So for years, the US has had a policy regarding the exportation of certain kinds of technology to certain kinds of countries. These certain kinds of countries have a history of slaughtering thier own peasants and enslaving smaller countries. It was as much a "moral" statement as a political one.
Unfortunately, these countries are on Noam Chomsky's list of Approved Nations so people like you oppose opposing them.
But the responses to this are enlightening.
How about this response?:
The "certain countries" you mention are often no worse, civil-rights-wise than many of the countries we have actively sold arms to. The US banned exporting high tech to them because of their way of government, not their way of life. Communism was threatening democracy, and we reacted by attempting to cripple it in any way possible. The foriegn policies of the US have never had anything to do with human rights. We only prop up that old cover whenever it's convenient. I'm glad we've finally stopped pretending we care.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy