原子彈恐懼症 美國叫停英特爾對華出售芯片

The US government has refused to let Intel help China update the world's biggest supercomputer.
美國政府拒絕讓英特爾公司幫助中國升級世界最大的超級計算機。

Intel applied for a licence to export tens of thousands of chips to update the Tianhe-2 computer.
英特爾公司向美國政府申請了出口許可證，以出口數萬芯片幫助天河2號計算機的升級。

The Department of Commerce refused, saying it was concerned about nuclear research being done with the machine.
但是美國商務部拒絕了這一申請。理由是擔心這一計算機與中國從事核研究有關。

Separately, Intel has signed a $200m (£136m) deal with the US government to build a massive supercomputer at one of its national laboratories.
另外，英特爾公司已經與美國政府簽了高達2億美元（約1.36億英鎊）的合約，在美國一國家實驗室中建立大規模的超級計算機。

The Tianhe-2 uses 80,000 Intel Xeon chips to generate a computational capacity of more than 33 petaflops. A petaflop is equal to about one quadrillion calculations per second.
天河2號使用了8萬個英特爾至強芯片，每秒能夠計算超過33x1015次。

According to the Top 500, an organisation that monitors supercomputers, the Tianhe-2 has been the world's most powerful machine for the past 18 months.
Top 500是一家蒐集超級計算機情報的機構。據該機構消息，過去的一年半里，天河2號是世界上最強大的計算機。

This year the Chinese machine was due to undergo a series of upgrades to boost its number-crunching abilities past 110 petaflops. The upgrades would depend largely on new Intel Xeon chips. The chipmaker informed US authorities of its involvement with the upgrade programme and was told to apply for an export licence.
今年，天河2號將要進行一系列的升級，希望將這臺機器超強的數字處理功能提升至每秒110x1015次以上。這一升級很大程度上要依賴英特爾公司提供的Xeon芯片。因此英特爾公司向美國政府彙報了此事，並向政府申請出口許可。