China Tightens Control on Exports of Supercomputers, Drones

By Jeremy Hsu

China has begun putting new limits on the overseas sales of its most powerful supercomputers and drones. The move to limit some of the more advanced Chinese technologies echoes U.S. restrictions on similar technology exports.

Chinese companies seeking to export certain advanced supercomputers or drones will need to apply for export licenses, according to a 31 July announcement by China’s Ministry of Commerce and the General Administration of Customs. For supercomputers, that means anything more powerful than 8 teraflops (8 trillion floating-point operations per second),The Wall Street Journal reports. China currently has the world’s most powerful supercomputer, called Tianhe-2, at 33 petaflops (33 quadrillion floating-point operations per second.)  ….[Read more]