What’s a supercomputer? How the U.S. will decide who to punish with China tech curbs

Oct 7 (Reuters) – Deciding who will get harm by sweeping new U.S. curbs on promoting expertise to China will come down partially to what constitutes a “supercomputer,” specialists instructed Reuters.

All over the world, the semiconductor trade on Friday started to wrestle with wide-ranging U.S. restrictions on promoting chips and chip manufacturing gear to China.

Shares of chip gear makers drooped, however trade specialists mentioned a brand new U.S. definition of a supercomputer may very well be pivotal to the brand new guidelines’ affect on China.

Supercomputers can be utilized in growing nuclear weapons and different army applied sciences, and specialists say tips on how to outline them has lengthy bedeviled regulators attempting to pin down an ever-advancing technological goal.

The brand new American guidelines outline supercomputers broadly when it comes to computing energy in an outlined house: a machine with 100 petaflops – the power to hold out 100 trillion operations per second – in 41,600 cubic ft, with another caveats.

Senior authorities officers mentioned in a media briefing that their intention was to focus on solely China’s most superior programs that might characterize a nationwide safety menace to america fairly than business exercise.

However specialists puzzled whether or not Chinese language tech giants’ densely packed information facilities owned by the likes of Alibaba Group Holding (9988.HK) or TikTok-owner ByteDance would possibly quickly attain supercomputer standing primarily based on the brand new definition, even when that isn’t what U.S. regulators meant.

“Information middle build-outs like Alibaba or ByteDance would have the potential to achieve petaflop build-outs,” mentioned CCS Perception chip analyst Wayne Lam mentioned.

The brand new definition is unlikely to alter as trade expertise improves. Present-day Chinese language supercomputers could in the future grow to be the company normal, however they’ll nonetheless face the bounds imposed Friday to cease any chip made with U.S. gear or expertise from going into China. Corporations “could very effectively run into supercomputing limitations throughout the subsequent couple of years,” Lam mentioned.

Jack Dongarra, a professor of pc science who helps lead a gaggle known as TOP500 that ranks the world’s quickest supercomputers, mentioned he disagreed with the static definition.

“The difficulty is that the definition of a supercomputer will change over time,” he mentioned by electronic mail.

Main Chinese language corporations with large information facilities equivalent to Baidu, Alibaba and ByteDance didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. Tencent declined to remark.

The definition of computing energy per cubic foot additionally could supply room for artistic workarounds. For example, mentioned one knowledgeable, use fiber optic cables to tie collectively immense computing energy over a bigger house.

“They might unfold their supercomputers out over a bigger house,” mentioned one chip and information middle knowledgeable who requested anonymity as a result of politically charged nature of the brand new guidelines.

“The typical supercomputer architect would say, ‘That is not how issues are finished!’ However not with the ability to do it one other approach breeds lots of creativity, and willingness to do issues in a different way.”

Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco and Jane Lanhee Lee in Oakland, California; modifying by Peter Henderson, Ken Li and Richard Chang

: .