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US Blocks Intel From Selling Xeon Chips To Chinese Supercomputer Projects

Posted by Soulskill on from the demands-recall-of-intel-inside-stickers-too dept.

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.

6 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. Hello? The 21st Century Calling by gtall · · Score: 4, Funny

    So China is somehow incapable of buying the chips through a 3rd party? Maybe we could sell the Department of Commerce to China...nice regulatory agency, cheap, bit of wear around the edges and maybe a bit dated but it would fit well within China's Stupidity Index for Chinese What are Involved in Security against...errr...for the People.

    1. Re:Hello? The 21st Century Calling by LWATCDR · · Score: 5, Funny

      You mean like Lenovo?

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    2. Re:Hello? The 21st Century Calling by cheesybagel · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      You are wrong. The Chinese do not have the FABs. In fact no one else but Intel has FABs at that node. Everyone else is like 2 years behind and the Chinese FABs are like 6 years behind. There are export restrictions on advanced lithography equipment and the only litho manufacturers are in the US, Europe and Japan. Namely Ultratech, ASML, Canon and Nikon.

      Their chip design is over a decade behind the west. Just look at Longsoon or the licensed ARM processors companies like Mediatek manufacture.

    3. Re:Hello? The 21st Century Calling by pla · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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?

  2. Soon this will be impossible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Someday soon, the US will be unable to bully people into this kind of bullshit. Soon enough, it will make more sense economically to say "Fuck US" and pull out. This can't happen soon enough.

  3. Re:Awesome job guys! by slykens · · Score: 5, Informative

    If (yeah, I know) the Chinese are developing nuclear bombs, this will hold them up for maybe a couple of years.

    China has been a declared nuclear weapons state since 1964.

    They are doing what we are doing now - modeling how the weapons work because many of us agreed not to physically test them any more over twenty years ago.