MFLOPS Export Restrictions Lighten Up

blowdart sent us a news.com story that talks about changes in the super computer export laws to developing nations. Numbers are all over the place, but at least they are up from 2,000 MTOPS (which rendered a dual P3 and the new Playstations as unexportable!)

Comments

Re:Would the PSX2 be affected anyway?

[tgd]

The news stories covering the PSX2 issue a few months ago said that although the Playstation II is going to be manufactured overseas, Toshiba (who makes the Emotion Engine chip used in it that's actually the part that was covered by the export restriction) is building the chip in a plant in the U.S. I guess you can't sell a restricted part to a company in a non-restricted country if that part ends up in a unit that can be sold to a restricted country. My understanding was that Sony would've had to:

1) not sell Playstation II's or other units using that chip to any restricted nations (places like China, Iran, Iraq, and suprisingly Isreal...)

and

2) Provide documentation to that effect to the U.S. Government.

There was crap with waiting times on sales and things like that too, which would've caused supply chain problems where Sony would've ordered a batch of chips and the waiting time and paperwork would've made it difficult to predict when they'd actually get the shipment.

Raising the bar is useless

[rde]

So 10000 MTOPS is the new limit... bfd. It's only going to be a few years before that limit is obsolete, and we've got to go through the same shit again.

Mandating future limits on computers based on their current ability is a waste of time.