Experts blast US for blocking supercomputer tech exports to China

Horst Simon, a supercomputer expert and deputy director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, held similar view, telling the Wall Street Journal that "The Chinese will be more incentivized to develop their own technology, and US manufacturers will be seen as less reliable and potentially not able to satisfy foreign orders."

The newspaper reported that the US government action means US companies must seek an export license to sell technology to be used by the four Chinese centers but such licenses are "usually subject to a policy of denial."

Therefore, the move "effectively blocks Intel and others from selling newer chips" to update Tianhe-2, it said. Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy told Xinhua that his company sells Xeon processors and Xeon Phi coprocessors to Chinese computer maker Inspur, which helped build Tianhe-2, rather than directly to the Chinese centers, and has stopped shipment of the products for some time.

"We don't believe the license was necessary. In August the US Department of Commerce notified us that a license was necessary, and that we need to stop the shipment of products until we get a license," Mulloy said over the phone. "So we stopped shipment of the products immediately. And consistent with the notification of the Department of Commerce, we applied for a license to export the products, that license was subsequently declined."

Mulloy emphasized that the Intel products being used for Tianhe- 1A and Tianhe-2 "are off-the-shelf products that are available worldwide" but "the US government reached its own conclusion."

The website VR World, which was the first to focus the ban, said in a report that the US government is doing something like "cutting your nose to spite your face."

"NUDT and Tianhe may be the losers for now, but only short term. They will simply speed up their" supercomputer chip plan, the report said. "Intel comes out the big loser from this ... Then comes Uncle Sam himself: they lost even that little bit of influence on the high end China HPC (high performance computing)."