As every aspect of modern life becomes digitized, not just the economies of nations but their sovereign influence will increasingly rely on the command of technology, with supercomputers being a centerpiece of the competition.
On Oct. 7, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced sweeping new export controls that will cut China off from cutting-edge chipmaking equipment and certain advanced semiconductor chips made with U.S. technologies, regardless of whether the chips were manufactured in the United States or not.
The move is Washington’s latest effort to hamstring China’s military modernization and the development of its supercomputers.
Under the new rules, leading U.S. chipmakers such as Nvidia and AMD will be banned from selling their high-end artificial intelligence (AI) and supercomputing chips to Chinese companies….