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China eyes 'dual-use' supercomputers
As of November 15, the world's fastest supercomputer officially belongs to China, according to the most recent listing of the world's Top 500 computers. China has pushed the United States out of the top spot as well as putting a third machine into the top ten, providing another indicator of China's rise as a world technological power. Yet this year's results should come as a surprise to no one.
China has been pouring investments into high performance computing for the last decade and gradually edging the United States out of the top ten. Increased funding and an official policy commitment have propelled China from a technological backwaterthat in 2001 did not have a single machine in the Top 500 into a supercomputing superpower.
Supercomputers, or high-performance computers, are an enabling technology that opens up a wide range of research frontiers previously closed to Chinese institutions, not least in defense applications. They are an increasingly important tool in intelligence as well as weapons design, and a crucial link in any national innovation chain.
China emphasizes the civilian applications of its supercomputers, but a quick glance at China's history and research and development (R&D) architecture would indicate that they will see significant military use. At the same time, while China's triumph in supercomputing is a milestone, it should not be seen as a signal that China has exceeded the innovative power of the West, but rather as a launch pad for further technological development.
A dual-use technology
By devoting national R&D resources to developing domestic supercomputing capabilities, the Chinese government is betting on a return on its investment in the form of heightened R&D capabilities in a wide range of fields. Heightened commercial and civilian research capabilities are certainly among the payoffs of building such a powerful computer, but China's military will certainly benefit greatly as well.
Supercomputers can be put to work on one complex problem or multiple decentralized ones, but it stands to reason that they are usually employed for issues that require the quadrillions of calculations per second that they are capable of. The complex mathematical analysis involved in cryptanalysis and sensor signal processing today are problems that can only be tackled practically by computers with these "super" capabilities.
China's efforts to develop a secure satellite communications network as well as data fusion systems for missile tracking are critically dependent on a capability to process encrypted data at a very high rate of calculations per second.
While China's newest and fastest supercomputer is ostensibly for civilian research, it is highly significant that it was built by the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), China's premier military technology university and one of its top research centers.
The bulk of the world's supercomputer processing power and most likely China's as well is devoted to commercial and academic research, but any modernizing military like China's also has an increasing need for supercomputing capabilities.
In the 1990s China was accused of diverting supposedly civilian supercomputers purchased from the United States for military ends, so it would not be the first time China used the fig leaf of "civilian usage" to mask military supercomputing programs.
At NUDT, supercomputer development labs like the National Key Lab for Parallel and Distributed Processing operate on the same campus as the respective National Key Labs for C4ISR and Automatic Target Recognition. These are the very same kinds of research facilities that would be expected to have need for supercomputers to support their work.
Additionally, supercomputers provide indispensable services for a nation in the process of modernizing its nuclear and conventional armament. Since all nuclear test explosions are precluded under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), nuclear blast modeling can be performed only by large computers.
Missile, jet engine, and conventional explosive design and modeling are also increasingly done using supercomputers. With a much improved supercomputer arsenal, China also has an increased capability for the R&D necessary to bring its armed forces into the 21st century.
China's possession of supercomputer technology may also constitute a proliferation risk. As a result of their military applications and in particular their cryptanalytic functions, much of the technology in a supercomputer is defined as "dual-use" according to the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls.
Supercomputers can be compared to any dual-use technology like a rocket engine or a nuclear reactor: they can be used for commercial civilian projects or they can be used to produce weapons.
Since the People's Republic of China is the only major supercomputing power that is not a signatory of the Wassenaar Arrangement, there is an elevated risk that supercomputers could be sold to rogue states to assist their nuclear programs.
Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.
As of November 15, the world's fastest supercomputer officially belongs to China, according to the most recent listing of the world's Top 500 computers. China has pushed the United States out of the top spot as well as putting a third machine into the top ten, providing another indicator of China's rise as a world technological power. Yet this year's results should come as a surprise to no one.
China has been pouring investments into high performance computing for the last decade and gradually edging the United States out of the top ten. Increased funding and an official policy commitment have propelled China from a technological backwaterthat in 2001 did not have a single machine in the Top 500 into a supercomputing superpower.
Supercomputers, or high-performance computers, are an enabling technology that opens up a wide range of research frontiers previously closed to Chinese institutions, not least in defense applications. They are an increasingly important tool in intelligence as well as weapons design, and a crucial link in any national innovation chain.
China emphasizes the civilian applications of its supercomputers, but a quick glance at China's history and research and development (R&D) architecture would indicate that they will see significant military use. At the same time, while China's triumph in supercomputing is a milestone, it should not be seen as a signal that China has exceeded the innovative power of the West, but rather as a launch pad for further technological development.
A dual-use technology
By devoting national R&D resources to developing domestic supercomputing capabilities, the Chinese government is betting on a return on its investment in the form of heightened R&D capabilities in a wide range of fields. Heightened commercial and civilian research capabilities are certainly among the payoffs of building such a powerful computer, but China's military will certainly benefit greatly as well.
Supercomputers can be put to work on one complex problem or multiple decentralized ones, but it stands to reason that they are usually employed for issues that require the quadrillions of calculations per second that they are capable of. The complex mathematical analysis involved in cryptanalysis and sensor signal processing today are problems that can only be tackled practically by computers with these "super" capabilities.
China's efforts to develop a secure satellite communications network as well as data fusion systems for missile tracking are critically dependent on a capability to process encrypted data at a very high rate of calculations per second.
While China's newest and fastest supercomputer is ostensibly for civilian research, it is highly significant that it was built by the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), China's premier military technology university and one of its top research centers.
The bulk of the world's supercomputer processing power and most likely China's as well is devoted to commercial and academic research, but any modernizing military like China's also has an increasing need for supercomputing capabilities.
In the 1990s China was accused of diverting supposedly civilian supercomputers purchased from the United States for military ends, so it would not be the first time China used the fig leaf of "civilian usage" to mask military supercomputing programs.
At NUDT, supercomputer development labs like the National Key Lab for Parallel and Distributed Processing operate on the same campus as the respective National Key Labs for C4ISR and Automatic Target Recognition. These are the very same kinds of research facilities that would be expected to have need for supercomputers to support their work.
Additionally, supercomputers provide indispensable services for a nation in the process of modernizing its nuclear and conventional armament. Since all nuclear test explosions are precluded under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), nuclear blast modeling can be performed only by large computers.
Missile, jet engine, and conventional explosive design and modeling are also increasingly done using supercomputers. With a much improved supercomputer arsenal, China also has an increased capability for the R&D necessary to bring its armed forces into the 21st century.
China's possession of supercomputer technology may also constitute a proliferation risk. As a result of their military applications and in particular their cryptanalytic functions, much of the technology in a supercomputer is defined as "dual-use" according to the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls.
Supercomputers can be compared to any dual-use technology like a rocket engine or a nuclear reactor: they can be used for commercial civilian projects or they can be used to produce weapons.
Since the People's Republic of China is the only major supercomputing power that is not a signatory of the Wassenaar Arrangement, there is an elevated risk that supercomputers could be sold to rogue states to assist their nuclear programs.
Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.
