this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2024
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Technology

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Supercomputing icon warns that China could have the world's fastest supercomputers (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 3 months ago by yogthos@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.ml
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[–] utopiah@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Why is anyone surprised that the country [...] that has historically dominated the Top500 list, has the fastest supercomputers?

Because since then bans have been issued, specifically preventing the purchase of the "best" hardware, and that said country does not produce such hardware internally (e.g NVIDIA and AMD top of the line, and upstream with ASML). That's what why it is surprising, precisely because the situation has changed, cf e.g https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/limits-china-chip-ban leading to possibly counter intuitive effects.

I imagine most people would like to better understand what hardware is being used, especially chips and to know where they come from, i.e

  • are they still somehow top of the line the country can't have through normal channels
  • somehow an order of magnitude of older chips they can legally purchase, so wasting quite a bit of energy but still similar results
  • the most unexpected using own hardware that is believed not to be available at scale

So yes it's arguably surprising because the situation is not as it was just a couple of years ago.