U.S. in Preliminary $400M Deal with GlobalWafers to Build 300mm Silicon Wafer Fabs

The U.S. Department of Commerce yesterday announced a proposed $400 million CHIPS + Science Act investment to build what the agency said would be the first domestic fab for 300mm silicon wafers and expand ….

HPC-AI Chips in the News: NVIDIA, AMD Ensnared in US-China Trade War; Arm Sues Qualcomm

NVIDIA and AMD, makers of advanced GPUs used in HPC-AI workloads, became embroiled this week in the deteriorating relations and ongoing trade war between the US and the People’s Republic of China. Yesterday, Nvidia said it has been prohibited by the US government from selling to the PRC its A100 Tensor Core GPU, on the […]

Seeking a Piece of $50B CHIPS Act Funds? Commerce Department Launches ‘CHIPS.gov’

The U.S. Commerce Department announced yesterday the CHIPS.gov website that includes implementation information for the recently passed CHIPS and Science Act. The site is intended for organizations seeking funds from the $50 billion for manufacturing, research and development funds allocated by the bill. In addition, the White House announced an interagency CHIPS Implementation Steering Council. […]

Laurie Locascio Sworn in as NIST Director

April 19, 2022 — WASHINGTON — Laurie E. Locascio was sworn in today as the fourth Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and the 17th director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo. Locascio was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 7, […]

The US-China Supercomputing Race, Post-Exascale HPC Government Policy and the ‘Partitioning of the Internet’

All over the world, HPC has burst into geopolitics. HPC – broadly defined here as advanced supercomputing combined with big AI – is at the fault lines of national and regional rivalries, particularly between the U.S. and China, expanding in power, cost, intensity and in potential impact. Which is to say that global players put […]

7 Chinese HPC Organizations Added to Entity List for Supporting China’s Military

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has added seven Chinese supercomputing organizations to the Entity List “for conducting activities that are contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.” The Entity List “restrict(s) the export, re-export, and in-country transfer of items” by The following are […]

NOAA Upgrades Global Weather Model Following 2020 HPC Additions

The U.S. National Oceanic and and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said today it is upgrading its Global Forecast System (GFS) weather model to improve hurricane genesis forecasting, modeling for snowfall location, heavy rainfall forecasts and overall model performance. In February 2020, NOAA announced it will triple if its weather and climate supercomputing capacity with the addition […]