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US Blocks Intel From Selling Xeon Chips To Chinese Supercomputer Projects
itwbennett writes: U.S. government agencies have stopped Intel from selling microprocessors for China's supercomputers, apparently reflecting concern about their use in nuclear tests. In February, four supercomputing institutions in China were placed on a U.S. government list that effectively bans them from receiving certain U.S. exports. The institutions were involved in building Tianhe-2 and Tianhe-1A, both of which have allegedly been used for 'nuclear explosive activities,' according to a notice (PDF) posted by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Intel has been selling its Xeon chips to Chinese supercomputers for years, so the ban represents a blow to its business.
Exactly.
"You aren't allowed to sell Xeon parts to but you are still allowed to ship millions of them to Lenovo. And if a couple pallets of CPUs fall off the back of the 747... well, whatyagonnado?"
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I'm sure the Chinese Gov't would be more than happy to have the US Gov't check the serial numbers on those Xeon chips to tell were the source is. Obviously not. As long as the chips are allowed to be exported to China for general business use I don't see any way for the US to control it. At best whatever quasi Gov't agency in China has to buy through a 3rd party and falsify some paperwork
It's not like China doesn't have FABs and engineers that could make a similar CPU. What Intel fears the most is this will kickstart some national pride that's going to end with gov't funded R&D to make high end CPUs and GPUs.
Are you somehow incapable of understanding how export control laws work? If they're banned from certain US technology and for purpose, then any route around that through any 3rd party would be illegal.
Aaand... China cares about that why?
"Yes, we'd like to order 33,000 ThinkStation P700s, please? Yes, two E5-2697's, please. No, no OS. No memory either. Also no storage. Video card... hold on, let me ask our chief res... er... office manager... Okay, yes, how many Tesla K80's can you fit in one of those? Let's go with that, then. Do you take UnionPay? No? Hmm, gold bullion? Wow, rough checkout process here! Paypal? Great! Oh, can I get a tracking number when you ship it? Thanks."
Are you somehow incapable of understanding that you can't magically stop someone from getting milk while continuing to sell them live cows?
Actually China's nuclear arsenal is a fraction of the US and Russian arsenals. It's about the same size as France's (250 - 300 warheads) but China doesn't have a deployable ballistic missile submarine fleet to provide the sine qua non of the Big Boys, a guaranteed second-strike retaliatory capability. They're working on building that capability but it's not operational at the moment.
China has signed but not yet ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) but its last shot was in 1996 after 45 tests in total. The only other nation in the Big Five who has not ratified the CTBT is the US who stopped testing in 1992 after firing off over 1000 devices.