In a move that could open huge new technology markets, especially in South America and Asia, the U.S. government is relaxing restrictions on overseas sales of high-speed computers. The changes allow U.S. technology companies to sell computers of any speed to customers in Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Mexico, South and Central America, and most of Africa, among others. The government had limited sales of machines considered powerful enough to design weapons because of national security concerns.
For computer companies and chipmakers, the biggest benefits may come from increased sales of high-performance desktop computers to consumers, banks, retailers, and manufacturers, particularly in Central and South America, China, and other Asian countries. "Any type of business that uses high-end desktop computing would benefit -- in most places in the world," says Harris Miller of the Information Technology Association of America, a trade group that supported the change.
The chief executives of IBM and Unisys praised the move. IBM CEO Lou Gerstner, also cochairman of the industry's Computer Coalition for Responsible Exports, said in a statement to the press that he was pleased the administration had kept "government regulations in line with the rapid pace of technological change in our dynamic industry."
Companies are in charge of policing suspicious circumstances and inquiring about end uses and end users. The Commerce Department said it would expand its efforts to inform companies of problem end users and proliferation concerns. Then President Clinton proposed easing export controls in January. Clinton's plan requires a 120-day congressional notification before becoming effective some time in March. The changes will become effective when the Department of Commerce formally implements them.
In late January, a group of U.S. senators proposed easing restrictions on computers and software that have civilian and military applications if the makers can show similar products are available from non-U.S. manufacturers. The bill, which includes relaxing controls on food and other products, is making its way through the Senate Banking Committee.
Loosening the restrictions acknowledges the increasing availability of such equipment worldwide, as well as the technological innovations of the past few years that have improved the speed and capacity of even the most basic computers. "As opposed to 10 or 12 years ago when we were reluctant to sell various kinds of computers or other items of technology, we have now discovered that they are fungible items. They're all over the world. And if we don't sell them, somebody else will," said Colin Powell during his senate confirmation hearing.
The new rules also allow companies to sell, without export licenses, to Australia, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Hungary, New Zealand, Poland, Slovenia, and South Korea. The rules allow computers with triple the speed to be sold to China, Central Europe, India, the former Soviet Union, and some countries in the Middle East. The speed of those computers can't exceed 85,000 million theoretical operations per second, or Mtops . That is the same as about 32 Pentium III desktop computers linked together. The previous limit for most of those countries was 28,000 Mtops.
The move doesn't affect restrictions on sales of computers to Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria, where a virtual embargo on computer hardware and technology is in effect. The ability to link together many midrange computers to create parallel processing clusters as powerful as a supercomputer has made such export controls obsolete, White House officials said.
The U.S. congressional auditor, the General Accounting Office, said in a January report on export controls that the Mtops method is unreliable because it doesn't account for "memory access times, interconnection methods, and internal bus speeds." As a result, two microprocessors with the same megahertz could have dramatically different Mtops ratings. Instead, the GAO says that the government should concentrate on limiting the sale of specialised weapons-related software programs, which are already classified. Miller of the Information Technology Association agreed. "The Mtops model just doesn't work any more. Even if you limit PC sales, so what? You just link several together and you've got a more powerful computer anyhow."
Abolishing computer-speed restrictions, however, requires an act of Congress to update the 1998 National Defense Authorisation Act and the Export Administration Act, which expired in 1990.
But by more than tripling the speed limits for China, Russia, and the Middle East, the Mtops limit is effectively moot until Congress and President Bush can decide whether the laws should be updated.
