IBM Warns of China Closing the Supercomputer Gap 238
eldavojohn writes "China is digging a massive hole to house a computer building with the intent of usurping the United States' lead in the field of supercomputing, claims IBM. As of earlier this year, Oak Ridge Lab was beating China's Shenzhen Center. But now, an IBM representative has said to a Washington, DC forum, 'You have sovereign nations making material investments of a tremendous magnitude to basically eat our lunch, eat our collective lunch.' China has long been a contender in this regard, and Europe and Japan have similar goals to build an exascale supercomputer. To achieve this by 2020, the US will need to focus on 'co-design,' where hardware is developed in tandem with every other aspect of the computer, from applications down to optics. This isn't the first time a 'space race' style supercomputing push has been spurred by international competitiveness."
Re:Since when does IBM care about the U.S.? (Score:3, Informative)
Since they sell the vast majority of their HPCs in the US.
Re:What do they exepect? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:eh (Score:3, Informative)
(It's amazing how short our memories are. All I hear about today is how bad the economy was under Bush, yet from 2003-2007, we were booming, but no one care remember anything more than 2 years back)
It's also convenient to forget that in 2007, the Democrats took control of Congress, and that things really went south afterward. The Executive Branch has a lot of power (and perhaps more than originally intended), but legislation originates in the House of Representatives. Nothing substantial can occur without their approval.
Is there truly a direct cause-effect relationship, with no time lag? I don't think so. But, if one is going to blame the Bush administration for everything that occurred under its watch and (so far) two years later, then one has to also acknowledge that the Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress for the past 4 years.
Re:Nice marketing strategy (Score:3, Informative)
Well, what if we just fixed our defense spending to twice that of our nearest competitor? That would be a 2/3 reduction [wikipedia.org] from where we are now.