US block Intel's China supercomputer update

US block Intel's China supercomputer update

| Source: BBC Author: Mark Campbell

US block Intel's China supercomputer update

The US government has refused to let Intel help China update the world's biggest supercomputer, the Tianhe-2, over fears that China will be conducting Nuclear Research on it.

The Tianhe-2 is the world'd largest supercomputer which is comprised of 80,000 Intel Xeon CPUs, giving it a 33.86 petaflops of CPU performance, making it the world's most powerful supercomputer for the last 18 months.

China currently wants to upgrade the machine's capacity to over 110 petaflops over a series of upgrades this year, but this relies heavily on Intel being allowed to ship new Xeon chips.

The US department of commerce has published a an online notice saying that it refused Intel's application to export chips and components for China's Tianhe-2 and 3 other Chinese Supercomputers over fears that the Chinese are using these supercomputers for Nuclear research. The statement also said that places where the supercomputers are located were "acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States".

Intel has complied with the order made by the US government, meaning that China will have to accelerate their efforts to fabricate their own chipmaking efforts in order to upgrade their supercomputers.

In the US Intel has also recently signed a deal worth $200 million (£136m) with the US government to build a new supercomputer for one of the country's national laboratories.

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The US government has refused to let Intel help China update their Supercomputers. http://t.co/slLaBq6xeU pic.twitter.com/Sn68QKyzqF — OC3D (@OC3D) April 10, 2015

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