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US Gov't Blocks Sales To Russian Supercomputer Maker
Nerval's Lobster writes "T-Platforms, which manufactured the fastest supercomputer in Russia (and twenty-sixth fastest in the world), has been placed on the IT equivalent of the no-fly list. In March, the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security added T-Platforms' businesses in Germany, Russia and Taiwan to the 'Entity List,' which includes those believed to be acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States. U.S. IT companies are essentially banned from doing business with T-Platforms, especially with regards to HPC hardware such as microprocessors, which could be used for what the government views as illegal purposes. The rule, discovered by HPCWire, was published in March. According to the rule, Commerce's End-User Review Committee (ERC) believes that T-Platforms may be assisting the Russian government and military conduct nuclear research — which, given historical tensions between the two countries, apparently falls outside the bounds of permitted use. An email address that T-Platforms listed for its German office bounced, and Slashdot was unable to reach executives at its Russian headquarters for comment."
These artificial limitations on what and with who US companies can work with are just creating a wall between US and other countries. The nations that mainly benefit from this are Russia and China and they can do a lot of business and even military research together. Not only that but Russia and China have always been good friends, even after soviet russia fell down.
Therefore, both Russia and China wins and US loses.
Just let China/Taiwan sell it to them !!
Slashdot was unable to reach executives at its Russian headquarters for comment."
Executive's secretary: "Sir, Slashdot wants to talk to you."
Russian Executive: *rolling eyes* "That's OK. No need to respond I know what they're going say. 'In Soviet Russia Super Computers you!'"
Hi, this is Timothy from Slashdot, I'd like to speak to...
*click*
I find it very amusing to think of Timothy calling up a company in Russia for comment on why they just got blacklisted by the US Gov't. I'm not sure why, though it could be because every time I see his name on the editor line I think of the monkey from ThinkGeek.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
As if any HPC silicon is actually manufactured in the US today.
If it is to use russian space station, they are good enough to be friends, but if it is to actually lend them some computer power, they become enemy!!! No, really, what the heck!
And, just for the record, i don't see how this ban would stop them to buy the parts directly from the manufacturer, China.
gotcha, caught 'ya, General Ivan
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Gimme a break. We won, they lost, you know? It's been in a couple of the papers.
No, not the listees. The lists. That is, the USoA government.
Yes, the parallels with the TSA's no-fly-lists are apt. The bullying is entirely comparable, too.
No problems, China can just manufacture any kind of electronics component the Russians are interested in buying, and then deny sales of the same components to the US citing the same reasons. Now the rest of the world can trade and grow together while the US can isolate itself and sit in the Atlantic being as superior as it wants.
Da, may I have 10,000 PS4s please?
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Our executives have been offshoring all of our technology. As such, all we did was move this company over to China who using our technology, some stolen, but far too much was given. Just for a few dollars.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Sometimes it is necessary to remain vulnerable and trusting in order to not be a paranoid asshole... Supercomputers and other potentially useful stuff made outside of the US is scary? the US govt needs to understand that it is not the centre of the fucking world.
This is fairly common knowledge in the electronics industry, that anything that can be used in nuclear weapon R&D is export controlled and taken very seriously by the Commerce department. I work for a company that makes extremely fast oscilloscopes. We can't sell anything without an export license that can acquire data faster than a certain sample rate to Russia, Isreal, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, and several other countries due to nuclear non-proliferation. This is a separate restriction from ITAR, which bans anything related to weapons R&D from export without a license. This doesn't mean that you can't export these things, just that you need approval to do it. Much of Europe and countries who are friendly with the US have similar legal constraints.
Only this time it's a wall for commerce :P ... this would be brilliant, USA has to learn fair trade the hard way, now you can be your own bitch USA.
In response Russia should ban someone like Microsoft for working against its foreign policy interests. Russia is already a nuclear power -- what advantages or threats is this going to bring to the world? This is about undermining Russian industry and nothing else. It's a sort of economic warfare.
An email address that T-Platforms listed for its German office bounced, and Slashdot was unable to reach executives at its Russian headquarters for comment."
That's because T-Platforms has gone out of business. Most unfortunate.
However, there's somebody here from a new supercomputer company "U-Platforms", that would like to speak with you about purchasing some HPC microprocessors...
Why did the USSR and Red China have governmental policies against formal religious organizations and structures?
A: They didn't want dog-dick sucking (advocates), dog shit eating (fanatics), religious zealots banding together and taking over the financial framework of the nation. Green eggs and ham is a crime "against the state".
Hindsight is always 20:20. We see how it worked out. The secret international ba-ra (joke ra, joke sultan) ca-ca (shit) eaters union has been around for much longer than the USSR or Red China.
learn more @ http://mapfortu.wikidot.com
Yikes, who knows what kind of things would happen if the Russians ever get their hands on a nuke! We've got to stop them from developing nucular weapons at all costs, or they'll corrupt our precious bodily fluids!
T-platforms is a Russian company headquartered in Moscow. This is no more surprising than Boeing selling military equipment to the USA.
US export control on computers needs to stop. The need for it ended decades ago. All US nuclear weapons were designed with computers below 10 MIPS, and in many cases below 1 MIPS. (The most recent US nuclear weapon design is from the mid-1970s.) The problem isn't getting any harder.
I mean there's Intel.. wait, no, they fab their stuff almost entirely in the US, though also some in Israel. Ok well those bastards at AMD... wait, no, they use Globalfoundries who is in Germany, the US, and Singapore (the NY plant being where the new stuff comes from). Ok well IBM surely those cheap... wait, no, they are in the US as well for fabrication (NY and NJ).
So, ummm, precisely which US chip maker do you think has their stuff in China? Because I don't know of one.
Attributed to Vladimir Lenin, though I am unable to verify. Either way, all the world's governments are confirming the statement.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Since when did Slashdot start doing real journalism?
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
Like anything electronic is manufactured in the US anymore... Heck most of is is probably designed overseas now too. The end result is some fat cat American business buying cheap shit from China/Korea/etc, and reselling it to the Russians is SOL. They will just buy it directly from the Chinese/Koreans/etc. Now its going to come with a lenovo/asus/etc logo instead of an Dell/IBM/HP/CISCO one. The one or two components they can't buy from China/etc (large infiniband switch?) will be redesigned in a couple years by some Foreign company that sees a buyer.
upto I saw the draft four $8907, I accept that my neighbour was like actualey earning money in there spare time online.. there best friend started doing this for less than twenty one months and just cleared the dept on there home and bought a new Ariel Atom. we looked here, BIC5.COM
This particular article was in fact exactly what I had been looking for!
www.tvgoog.com
ARM CPU's manufactured at TSMC completely removes the US from the supply chain. Paying royalties to a British company and manufacturing in Taiwan.
It's a bit late to stop their development. Also, there is no longer an east/west divide. There are countries fully capable of building super computers that are more then willing to do business with Russia.
Isn't this a breach against WTO. Russia is a member, USA has no business blocking them.
I think you should come down a bit from you high horse and realize you can build massively powerful systems even if you have "just" 1GHz of clock. Intel CPUs are very wasteful with transistors and not at all energy-efficient.
If you have lots of capital, some clever people and a white sheet of paper, you can build a competitive supercomputer entirely without Intel and Xilinix technology. You do NOT need the latest 20nm technology. 65nm will be fine, especially when you integrate traditional, GPU and FPGA-style elements on a single chip.
The more you embargo Russia and China, the more money will be spent on replacing Intel and Xilinx technology. I think they call it "shooting your own foot".
If I were to run a covert nuke design/building program I would not advertise that by buying supercomputers. Instead, I would set up a "high-end-PC-gaming" trade company. I would actually buy and sell 90% of PCs and then set up a warehouse with the other 10%, wire it up with 10GE Ethernet and use FOSS software to do the simulation.
They key element is not the computing hardware and software, but the scientists and software engineers who write proper code and validate simulation results in actual experiments.