Politics vs. Technology
When politics gets involved in technology, very few good things come out of it. This time, the one who got his feet wet is Intel, because the US government denied it an export license to sell thousands of Xeon processors to China, necessary for the upgrade of the Tianhe-2 supercomputer. The excuse? The Eastern Red Giant would be using that system for the development of nuclear weapons.
Beyond its chilling processing power, a supercomputer by itself can do nothing. Each system is assembled according to the needs of its developer, which can range from weather prediction to gas and oil exploration. Even if we don't like the idea, evaluating nuclear technology through simulations is a frequent task for this class of computers, and personally, I prefer simulations to "live" tests. The latest news on supercomputers leads us to the Tianhe-2, the fastest in the world according to the last four editions of the TOP500 list. These are 33.86 PetaFLOPS that so far have no rival, but the next barrier to overcome for the Tianhe-2 is not technical, but political.
According to information that circulated over the weekend, the US Department of Commerce denied Intel an export license that would allow it to sell tens of thousands of Xeon chips to the Chinese government for the upgrade of the Tianhe-2. As we already know, the supercomputer is made up of 32,000 Xeon E5-2692 units and 48,000 Xeon Phi units. With the new hardware it would reach the mark of 110 PetaFLOPS, but in this case, the Santa Clara giant finds itself tied hand and foot. It is an American company, and as such must obey current export laws. The reason the Department of Commerce gave for denying the license is that the Tianhe-2 is being used in "activities related to nuclear detonations", and the regulations block any commercial operation that assists in the "design, development and/or manufacturing" of nuclear weapons. In short: national security knocked on Intel's door, and it had to let it in.
From an economic point of view, Intel loses less than it appears, since it received a contract to supply its chips to the Aurora project, a supercomputer that will be stationed at Argonne National Laboratory, and that should reach an impressive 180 PetaFLOPS when it goes online. The problem is the same as always: hearing the US talk about nuclear restrictions when its armed forces are sitting on 1,900 warheads that can strike any region of the globe in a matter of hours is contradictory at least, and the other point is that China already possesses a nuclear arsenal, therefore it is unlikely that 80,000 Intel chips can alter the status quo.
