[Fwd: IP: Fact Sheet on Export Controls on High Performance Computers]

[Greg Lindahl]

The important things about this announcement:

1) Their internal group of experts decided that parallel commodity machines
are powerful enough to solve about any problem. Nice endorsement.

2) They didn't extend the classes of software that are export controlled.
So, for example, the Scyld Beowulf Distribution isn't export controlled even
though it could be used by Iraq to build a machine more powerful than the
limit.

If (2) wasn't the case, all heck would break loose in the marketplace. But
I'm pretty sure that most people realize that building a medium-sized
cluster just doesn't take that much effort, so extending the software
controls probably wouldn't work to prevent proliferation.

-- g