  Off late the US department of defense is trying to lower the export limit on computers.  Currently the limit limits the export of computer above Pentium 3 with 650MHz or equivalent -  still in 1999,  come- on guys get real.  Oh I forgot,
 I am talking to " The US"  The dramatic tightening of export regulations is included in the National Defense Authorization Act,  an annual military funding bill that has already passed the U. S.  House of Representatives.
 Though the proposed rules are only a tiny portion of the 630- page bill,  they could have a devastating impact on the computer industry.  Today,  computer sellers are required to get a license to export any computer with performance equal to or greater than a system with 32 Intel Itanium processors.  The current version of the defense authorization act would lower that limit to systems deemed "
militarily critical"  by the Department of Defense.  That level is currently set to the equivalent of a computer using a Pentium 3 processor running at 650MHz,  state of the art in 1999 but considered feeble today.  -  Calculated threat Even modest systems have use in researching weapons of mass destruction;
 experts estimate that the current export limit of 190, 000 million theoretical operations per second ( MTOPS)  satisfies almost all of the Department of Defense's computing needs.  MTOPS Military application Commercial equivalent 5, 000 Joint Attack Strike Aircraft design Intel Pentium M processor,
 1. 5GHz 10, 000 Ship's infrared search- and-  track algorithm development Intel Pentium 4 processor,  3.
4GHz 15, 000 Computational fluid dynamics to model extreme aircraft turbulence AMD Dual Opteron,  Model 248 20, 000 Nuclear blast simulation ( in conjunction with nuclear test blasts)  AMD Quad Opteron Model 842 25,
000 Automatic target recognition template development AMD Quad Opteron Model 846 50, 000 3D reduced-  physics simulation of nuclear weapon applications Intel 8- way Itanium Processor 190, 000 Satisfies 98 percent of Defense Dept.  military computing needs Intel 32-
way Itanium Processor Sources:  Commercial numbers from Intel and AMD;  military application data from Center for International Security and Cooperation report on export regulations ( 1998)  -  "
There is no linkage between computing power and military capability any longer;  in part because,  if you want a bigger computer,  you just have to go out and buy a few more clusters.  - James Lewis,
 Center for Strategic and International Studies urlLink New. com. com 
