Is The Chinese Supercomputer Our Sputnik?

The article is wrong on " The fastest supercomputer has, since 1994, resided in the United States at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where it is used for scientific computing, among other purposes."<p>I present to the thee, the Japanese Earth Simulator:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Simulator" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Simulator</a>

Asks an American tax payer: Why does America need to have the fastest super-computer? <i>(the premis of this and other coverage of this topic)</i>

There was an article posted here on HN not too long ago about Japan's 5th generation computer project. It was more about what killed logic programming but this China+supercomputing thing reminds me of this a little.<p>Here's the article: <a href="http://vanemden.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/who-killed-prolog/" rel="nofollow">http://vanemden.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/who-killed-prolog/</a><p>EDIT: Wikipedia page about the project: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer</a>

The Chinese CPU is junk, and the chinese supercomputer is built out of US parts - I wouldn't be too apocalyptic about technological superiority for some years yet.

this reads like what the Japanese did in WWII: racing to build the largest battleship when naval warfare had shifted to carriers and airplanes (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Yamato" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Yamato</a>).

"Supercomputing is at the basis of many important scientific and commercial enterprises in the United States, and it is very important that we not relinquish our lead in this area."<p>Details, please. Otherwise it is just blubbering.

Such a sad US vs THEM post.<p>Americans are just going to have to accept that the playing field is becoming more level and eventually a country with 1 Billion people is going to be more productive than a country with 300 Million people. It's just arithmetic.<p>And it's not the end of the world. It's ok to just live in a country and have a cool life.

No. That'll happen when the Chinese reach the Moon.