By Joey Gardiner, 1 July 1999 16:06
NEWS The US government is today expected to announce new regulations governing the export of supercomputers. At present, any computer that can perform more than two billion theoretical operations per second is subject to trade restrictions and may need a specific licence. According to press reports, the Department of Commerce (DOC) is under pressure to relax these regulations and allow these computers to be traded freely. US companies are said to be losing potentially lucrative orders because of export regulations on what are now standard business machines. However the DOC is apparently reluctant to permit free trade due to concerns over national security. Guidelines controlling the export of supercomputers were last revised in 1995 and regulate export to certain countries such as China, Vietnam and some Eastern European nations.
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