Bush Admin contemplating the quarantine of super computers made in the US.

December 24, 2001 10:04 PM

Bush Admin contemplating the quarantine of super computers made in the US.
posted by HoldenCaulfield (11 comments total)

why worrry about supercomputers when you can get a bunch of pretty nice but not quite super ones and network!
posted by atom128 at 10:07 PM on December 24, 2001

This is exactly what he said he wasn't going to do. Anyways, as it stated, just get a bunch of PIII's together and you've got yourself one lean mean hacking machine! MTOPS* that is.

*Millions of Theoretical Operations per Second if you read the article
posted by HoldenCaulfield at 10:22 PM on December 24, 2001

There is still time to bid on this Genuine CRAY J90 Supercomputer!!!! ebay: if we don't have it you don't need it.
posted by Mack Twain at 10:56 PM on December 24, 2001

Hmph. Ok, so this will cause problems for those who have to research linear problems; however, it does nothing for parallel-approachable problems.

I'm not sure this will actually make any difference.
posted by hadashi at 11:17 PM on December 24, 2001

More political technophobia. US-based computer users (aka "hackers") are scary enough; the notion that foreigners might also buy high-end systems for scientific research is terrifying.
posted by Loudmax at 12:28 AM on December 25, 2001

Seems like Apple is ahead of the curve once again.
posted by Fofer at 1:45 AM on December 25, 2001

All that I can say is that this new scheme, if implemented, will fail just as spectacularly as all of it's predecessors. Pretty much any rogue nation can make a Beowulf cluster out off-the-shelf PCs, get a third party to buy a high-end system for them, simply steal one off of the back of a truck, access a system in a non-controlled country via high-speed network, or even retro-engineer them.

During the cold war, the Russians and Chinese actually produced their own version of Cray and Control Data systems simply by photocopying the boolean equations and wiring charts out of the service documentation or else by stealing copies of the die masks from chip manufacturers.
posted by MrBaliHai at 8:11 AM on December 25, 2001

Hmph. Ok, so this will cause problems for those who have to research linear problems; however, it does nothing for parallel-approachable problems. The injustice of this world, oh me!
posted by rschram at 9:26 AM on December 25, 2001

...a move that would reverse a campaign pledge by President George W. Bush..

I'm used to seeing this now, not that I ever expected anything else from the Bush Gang.
posted by BarneyFifesBullet at 10:39 AM on December 25, 2001

I bet they're loving the people that put together Beowulf right now. It was even put together by NASA.
posted by helloboys at 7:41 PM on December 25, 2001

Looks like export controls were relaxed after all.
posted by darukaru at 7:11 AM on January 4, 2002