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Does A Pentium 4 Need A Weapons License?

Posted by timothy on from the it-can't-even-carry-a-gun dept.

WindBourne writes "It appears to be that the U.S. house of Reps. want to classify Pentium 4 and above CPUs as weapons. This would mean that all these will require export licenses. Apparently, they have not heard about that the far east has developed large CPUs as well that are used in beowulf clusters." According to the article, this clause is unlikely to appear in the final version -- but stranger things have happened.

4 of 766 comments (clear)

  1. How would this help? by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Informative

    Foreigners could simply obtain SPARC or MIPS specs and fab a multi-GHz version of those. Since these chips are better designed for multi-processing, foreign powers could scale them just as high as a PIV cluster, and run their nuclear simulations. Time to worry more about refined Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239.

    --
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  2. Re:It's about time they catch up by goMac2500 · · Score: 5, Informative

    It was actually the G4 because it was the first processor that could pull a gigaflop.

  3. Re:Get it right... by mopomi · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the article:

    The dramatic tightening of export regulations is included in the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual military funding bill that has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives. Though the proposed rules are only a tiny portion of the 630-page bill, they could have a devastating impact on the computer industry.

    Emphasis mine. It's already left the house.

  4. Re:I tought... by confused+one · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes it does. "Fab 30" and "Fab 36" are in Dresden. They make the Athlons at "Fab 30". I'm not sure if "Fab 36" makes Athlons or Opterons.