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

By Jane Lanhee Lee and Stephen Nellis

(Reuters) – Deciding who will get harm by sweeping new U.S. curbs on promoting know-how to China will come down partly to what constitutes a “supercomputer,” specialists informed 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 tools to China.

Shares of chip tools makers drooped, however trade specialists mentioned a brand new U.S. definition of a supercomputer might be pivotal to the brand new guidelines’ influence on China.

Supercomputers can be utilized in creating nuclear weapons and different navy applied sciences, and specialists say the way to outline them has lengthy bedeviled regulators making an attempt to pin down an ever-advancing technological goal.

The brand new American guidelines outline supercomputers broadly by way of computing energy in an outlined house: a machine with 100 petaflops – the flexibility to hold out 100 trillion operations per second – in 41,600 cubic toes, with another caveats.

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

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

“Knowledge 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 vary as trade know-how improves. Present-day Chinese language supercomputers might sooner or later grow to be the company customary, however they may nonetheless face the bounds imposed Friday to cease any chip made with U.S. tools or know-how from going into China. Firms “might very effectively run into supercomputing limitations throughout the subsequent couple of years,” Lam mentioned.

Jack Dongarra, a professor of laptop 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 firms with large information facilities akin to Baidu (NASDAQ:), Alibaba and ByteDance didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. Tencent declined to remark.

The definition of computing energy per cubic foot additionally might supply room for artistic workarounds. As an illustration, mentioned one professional, 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 professional 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 achieved!’ However not with the ability to do it one other method breeds numerous creativity, and willingness to do issues otherwise.”