One and a half years in a row the Chinese system of Tianhe-2 fails to hold first place in the ranking of the most productive supercomputers in the world, but in order to move forward, they must constantly upgrade existing equipment. In its current state Tianhe-2 produces more than 33 petaflops of performance, but the US government has instructed the company Intel to provide the necessary components for Cray supercomputer to create the Aurora project performance of 180 petaflops. In Aurora operation will be commissioned in 2018, and in addition to purely civil settlements, will solve the problem of defense.
And when it comes to national security, in the struggle for its invulnerability all good. As reported by the BBC, the US government has not approved the export of 80,000 processors Intel Xeon, which were intended for the modernization of Chinese supercomputer Tianhe-2. The refusal was motivated by the fact that this system can be used for calculations, allowing to create nuclear weapons. Note that after the upgrade using the new processors Xeon, Chinese supercomputer could raise the bar on performance up to 110 petaflops.
Intel representatives without unnecessary emotions expressed their willingness to obey the decision of the US authorities. Chinese experts have also speed up work on import substitution in the field of components for supercomputers.