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I worked with a company that upgraded a mainframe cluster not located in the USA. The upgrade topped out a collective rating of that user's installed computing
by jimmySixDOF 4y ago
I worked with a company that upgraded a mainframe cluster not located in the USA. The upgrade topped out a collective rating of that user's installed computing power allowance given for civilian purposes. So, to do the upgrade, US Export controls required the client to decommission some older nodes and that had to be witnessed by US Consular representatives walked through the whole process taking video and photographic evidence. And the agreed method of decommissioning was to haul these old nodes out in to a deserted area and run bulldozers over them in a pit. Not joking. Wish I kept some of the photos though.
- SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago> user's installed computing power allowance given for civilian purposes I don't know what this means. Would you explain?
- sangnoir 4y agoITAR has limits on processing power that can be exported: supercomputers have "dual use" and can be used for military applications, such as simulating nuclear explosions or designing hypersonic weaponry, e.t.c. Parent poster likely worked for a US company that was doing a customer upgrade abroad (i.e. exporting US technology) that would have tipped the cluster compute capacity above the permissible limits, unless some older nodes were decommissioned and destroyed.
- jimmySixDOF 4y agoCorrect.