US eases supercomputer export restrictionsWashington 05 January 2001 TheUSA government will ease export restrictions on high-speed supercomputers. It will expand the list of nations to which US companies can ship powerful systems without obtaining prior approval from the Department of Commerce
The new rules will eliminate the need for companies to obtain individual licenses before shipping supercomputers to Lithuania, South and Central America, South Korea, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and most of Africa. For other countries there are still restrictions. This holds for India, Pakistan and the former Soviet Union. The ceiling on processing power for these countries has been raised: licensing requirements will only be needed for computers that can perform at least 85,000 MTOP/S
(million theoretical operations per second), up from 28,000 MTOP/S.
How useful these limits are remains to be seen. Everyone cal build his own 85,000 MTOPS machine by networking together eighty-five 1000 MTOPS computers, or approximately fifty PCs. With Linux-based Beowulf clusters, home brew supercomputing comes easily within reach. The US government realises this: "the single most important challenge to the ability to effectively control computer hardware."
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