China and Architecture Independence

China and Architecture Independence

Abstract:
For a period of time, there was competition in the area of super computers with varied architectures, with standards based processors like SPARC leading other vendors. Most of the worlds modern super computers have been based upon American Intel based MPP platforms. Intel compatible CPU maker AMD started producing CPU's for supercomputers during recent years. There has also been an aggressive trend to move towards using graphical co-processor units. Most recently, nations have been trying to develop their own intellectual property.

China and CPU Architectures:
China has been moving towards computing independence by investing in SPARC, MIPS, and ALPHA based processors.
[2008-02-26] - China Ministry of Education joins SPARC designers
[2010-01-10] - China designs MIPS based supercomputer
[2010-11-05] - China builds supercomputer with SPARC service node processor
[2011-10-31] - China designs ALPHA based supercomputer (video)

Conclusion:
It is not a good plan for an aspiring superpower to base their entire nations security on a single computing architecture, never mind a computer architecture which is foreign... or even worse, computing components manufactured exclusively by foreign nations.