Thanx in advance.
Pakistan to benefit from new US supercomputer export rules
Karachi 05 Jul 99 The United States has relaxed export controls on supercomputers for many countries, including Pakistan. However, restrictions on computer exports for military use will stay. Pakistan is placed on the Tier-3 list, which includes countries with the highest risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons. For the countries on the list, the threshold would rise to 12,300 million theoretical operations per second (MTOPS) from 7,000 civilian end-users and to 6,000 MTOPS from 2,000 for military end-users.
Under the previous rules, manufacturers had to report every sale of machines capable of 2,000 MTOPS to Tier-3 countries.
The notification rule requires a 10-day delay to sales of such computers, which is a serious disadvantage to the manufacturers.
Sales of more powerful computers will still require a full-blown licence from the government, meaning longer delays. Nevertheless, the administration also raised the thresholds in that part of the rules.
Sales to civilian customers in Tier-3 countries will require a licence if computers are capable of 12.3 million operations per second, up from seven billion.
Sales to military customers will require a licence for over 6.5 billion operations, up from two billion.
The new limits will become applicable if Congress does not block the changes and most will take effect within about six months.
http://www.hoise.com/primeur/99/articles/m...R-08-99-14.html