The U.S. targets Chinese Supercomputing industry through restrictions

The U.S. Commerce Department has announced that it had included a few Chinese high tech companies and several government-owned institutes to its national security “Entity list” which will restrict them from buying U.S. parts and components.

Among those in the list now are Sugon, the Wuxi Jiangnan Institute of Computing Technology, Higon, Chengdu Haiguang Microelectronics Technology, and Chengdu Haiguang Integrated Circuit. The Department believes that these entities could be using the supercomputers for military applications.

China developing supercomputers has been a widely-known concern particularly for the Pentagon which fears that the Chinese military may use the technology to test and develop a range of defense applications.

China has developed several high-performance processing chips but they still rely somewhat on American chips. But some experts opine that the move by the U.S. Commerce Department may be a setback to U.S. chip manufacturers like Intel and AMD on the short term and boost Chinese ambitions of developing their own components on the long run.

So far, China has not responded to the move by the U.S. But the move by the U.S. government could further escalate the tensions. The two presidents of China and the U.S. are slated to meet this week to solve the trade stand-off.