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IBM Warns of China Closing the Supercomputer Gap
eldavojohn writes "China is digging a massive hole to house a computer building with the intent of usurping the United States' lead in the field of supercomputing, claims IBM. As of earlier this year, Oak Ridge Lab was beating China's Shenzhen Center. But now, an IBM representative has said to a Washington, DC forum, 'You have sovereign nations making material investments of a tremendous magnitude to basically eat our lunch, eat our collective lunch.' China has long been a contender in this regard, and Europe and Japan have similar goals to build an exascale supercomputer. To achieve this by 2020, the US will need to focus on 'co-design,' where hardware is developed in tandem with every other aspect of the computer, from applications down to optics. This isn't the first time a 'space race' style supercomputing push has been spurred by international competitiveness."
So everyone's trying to make a big, fast computer.
What's at stake?
Bragging rights? China beats IBM, we can no longer say that we're the most technologically advanced country and that's what I want. If that happens, maybe we'll get a boost in science education like post-Sputnik.
What does the winner win?
The best and brightest immigrants?
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
If they're worried about China advancing in computer technology, maybe they shouldn't build research labs there!
This is the same company that sold most of it's commodity hardware business to Red China. The same company that's heavily investing in research... in China and India. The same company that continued to sell the Nazi's computing hardware used against allied forces and for managing the Holocaust via their their Brazilian unit. IBM has had a long history of selling out America in order to maximize profits.
IBM is entitled to all the handouts they want - it's only the unemployed and welfare mothers that aren't entitled to handouts. Christ are you some kind of socialist?
IBM is not an American company. They've said so repeatedly, every time they been asked about all the thousands of jobs they've off-shored.
What they ARE, though, is a large multi-national trying to stir up fear and pseudo-patriotism in the hopes of snagging huge, profitable government contracts for projects to build things we really don't need right now.