US Gov't Blocks Sales To Russian Supercomputer Maker 116
Nerval's Lobster writes "T-Platforms, which manufactured the fastest supercomputer in Russia (and twenty-sixth fastest in the world), has been placed on the IT equivalent of the no-fly list. In March, the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security added T-Platforms' businesses in Germany, Russia and Taiwan to the 'Entity List,' which includes those believed to be acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States. U.S. IT companies are essentially banned from doing business with T-Platforms, especially with regards to HPC hardware such as microprocessors, which could be used for what the government views as illegal purposes. The rule, discovered by HPCWire, was published in March. According to the rule, Commerce's End-User Review Committee (ERC) believes that T-Platforms may be assisting the Russian government and military conduct nuclear research — which, given historical tensions between the two countries, apparently falls outside the bounds of permitted use. An email address that T-Platforms listed for its German office bounced, and Slashdot was unable to reach executives at its Russian headquarters for comment."
Re:US vs. Russia & China (Score:2, Informative)
...Russia and China have always been good friends, even after soviet russia fell down.
I guess you never heard of the Sino-Soviet Split then? Other than that, I agree with you. The US is only harming itself by alienating Russia and China. They will now have more incentive to work together, and with the amount of money their economies are pulling in it will only be a matter of time before they overtake the West.
Re:US vs. Russia & China (Score:4, Informative)
Not only that but Russia and China have always been good friends, even after soviet russia fell down.
Actually this statement is inaccurate. Russia and China have been antagonistic toward each other through most of the past. There was a short period of cooperation after the Chinese civil war but that quickly turned sour as the two countries differed in their approaches to communism. Relations only began to improve after the fall of the USSR
Anything related to Nuke research is controlled (Score:3, Informative)
This is fairly common knowledge in the electronics industry, that anything that can be used in nuclear weapon R&D is export controlled and taken very seriously by the Commerce department. I work for a company that makes extremely fast oscilloscopes. We can't sell anything without an export license that can acquire data faster than a certain sample rate to Russia, Isreal, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, and several other countries due to nuclear non-proliferation. This is a separate restriction from ITAR, which bans anything related to weapons R&D from export without a license. This doesn't mean that you can't export these things, just that you need approval to do it. Much of Europe and countries who are friendly with the US have similar legal constraints.
T-platforms is a Russian company (Score:4, Informative)
T-platforms is a Russian company headquartered in Moscow. This is no more surprising than Boeing selling military equipment to the USA.
Re:US vs. Russia & China (Score:5, Informative)
Argentina tried to buy 5 nVidia TESLA units. We bought 4 and when we ordered the 5th (a public university here in Argentina) the US export controls kicked in. They had to send someone to the US to explain why they wanted "so much computing power".
We were developing a UHD 3D video codec.
(We as in Argentina. I have no participation in that).
Argentina is not China, Russia, and has never been an enemy, or at war, with USA.