An American ban hits China’s supercomputer industry

IN 2000 CHINA had two supercomputers ranked among the world’s fastest 500. Ten years later a machine named Tianhe-1A topped the global league table. It was, though, based on Intel chips. So when in 2015 America barred its giant chipmaker from selling to four Chinese supercomputer labs—fearing that the machines were being used to simulate nuclear blasts—it might have expected China’s progress in the field to slow. Instead, China unveiled another supercomputer, Sunway TaihuLight, that led that ranking in 2016 and 2017—this time powered entirely by home-grown microprocessors. The latest American sanctions will nevertheless bite.