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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?"
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.
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?
"Washington 19 Oct 99 Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer called on Gov. George W. Bush to reverse his position calling for an ease on supercomputer export controls."
Googling around, I see a lot of right-wing wackiness attacking both Bush Jr. and Clinton for proposing (and actually doing, respectively) the lifting of supercomputer restrictions. One 1999 report called "RED FLAGS OF TREASON" suggests that China is pretending to know more about supercomputers than it really does, so that the gullible Americans will let down their guard and sell them the supercomputers they can't make themselves.
Now that Apple sells "supercomputer" laptops and Cringely is writing about building a clustered supercomputer in his garage, the restrictions of the 80s and 90s seem a little silly...
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.
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.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?
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