Sino-US Technology Cold War: Embargo from Huawei 5G to Supercomputer Parts

The United States has blacklisted more Chinese companies. Supercomputers, from nuclear weapons and space to cutting-edge biochemical engineering, have become the new frontiers of the Cold War.

Just a few days before the four companies and a research institute in China were listed by the US Department of Commerce as an “entity list” to limit their further access to US technology, the world’s supercomputer organization top500.org launched the world’s fastest 500 supercomputers every six months. On the rankings, the dispute between the United States and China continues.

On the list of judging criteria, the two supercomputers in the United States occupy the first and second positions, and the third and fourth are China.

But in this list, the number of Chinese supercomputers reached 219, accounting for 44% of the world, ranking first; the second largest in the United States accounted for 23% of the world.

Super-calculation

Looking at the history of the past few decades, it is not difficult to see the fierce competition between China and the United States in the field of super-calculation in recent years.

China developed the first supercomputer “Yinhe No. 1” in 1983, becoming the third country after the United States and Japan to independently design and develop supercomputers.

In 2017, China’s “Shenwei·Taihu Light” supercomputer won the throne of the world’s fastest computer in 2017. This is also the first time that a supercomputer developed in China has surpassed the United States to win in speed.

In June 2018, the US Department of Energy announced that the supercomputer “Summit” manufactured by the “Oak Ridge” National Laboratory under its subordinates had a computing speed of 20 billion times per second, exceeding the “Shenwei Taihu Lake”.

Just after the United States announced an embargo on China’s supercomputer, the Chinese official media “Global Times” published an article saying that China has prepared three programs for supercomputers, which are planned to be launched in 2020 and 2021, and all use domestic CPUs and accelerator.

List of entities

The competition between China and the United States in the field of supercomputers has now become a new territory for national disputes.

The embargo list announced by the US Department of Commerce on June 21, came into effect on June 24, and the five Chinese entities involved are:

Jia gnan Institute of Computing Technology

 

Zhongke Shuguang

 

Tianjin Haiguang

 

Chengdu Haiguang Integrated Circuit Company

 

Chengdu Haiguang Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd.

 

Among them, Jiangnan Institute of Computing Technology is the R&D and manufacturing unit of “Shenwei·Taihu Light”, while the other four are related companies in China’s R&D Dawn Series supercomputer.

 

Shenwei, Shuguang and Tianhe are known as the Big Three of China’s supercomputers.

 

History background

 

According to the US Department of Commerce, these five Chinese entities are leaders in the development of high-performance computers in China, and some of their products are used in the military field, such as the simulation of nuclear explosions, posing a risk to US national security or foreign policy interests.

 

According to information from the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industrial Security (BIS) website, the US government’s first list of entities began in February 1997 with the original purpose of “informing the public that activities undertaken by entities may increase exports, re-exports, and transfers. The material is manufactured as a risk of weapons of mass destruction.”

 

Later, the scope of the list of entities was expanded to include “activities prohibited by the US State Department and activities that are contrary to US national security and foreign policy interests.”

 

In June 1997, the China Academy of Engineering Physics was included in the list of entities. Later, as China’s scientific and technological strength continued to increase, more universities, research institutions, enterprises and individuals in China were listed on the export control list.

 

On May 15, 2019, the US Department of Commerce’s Industrial Security Bureau announced that it would add Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. and its affiliates to the list of regulated entities of the agency.

 

What is the function of a supercomputer?

 

Supercomputers, as the name suggests, have super-super fast computing power, composed of thousands of processors, and calculate complex topics. They are known as “the brain of modern science and technology”, and super-computing development has also become a manifestation of corporate and national technological strength. s method.

 

One of the competition points between China and the United States in the field of supercomputers is the E-class supercomputer, which is a supercomputer that operates 10 billion times per second.

 

The field of application of supercomputers is actually very extensive. In the military, code cracking and nuclear weapon development (nuclear explosion simulation) require high-speed processing of a large number of complex calculations.

 

In civilian applications, supercomputers can be used in climate forecasting, oil exploration, drug development, and automotive design.

 

In the medical field, the simulation and analysis of human blood flow can timely and effectively determine whether a patient will have a risk of cerebral infarction, DNA seque