US and China race to faster supercomputers amid simmering trade war.

Scientists all over the world are pushing toward exascale
supercomputing, which promises to calculate faster than
if every man, woman and child on Earth could make 150 million
simultaneous calculations per second. © Getty Images

Intel-backed project moves ahead while Trump widens tech export ban.

CHICAGO -- While Xi Jinping and Donald Trump grab headlines for sparring over broad trade and technology issues, another Sino-American battle is brewing over who has the fastest supercomputer.

Just days before Trump was due to meet China's president at the G20 meeting in Osaka, Washington imposed restrictions on five Chinese supercomputer companies which bar them from buying U.S. technology. The move was widely seen as a U.S. attempt to hinder China's development of supercomputing capability, which promises big benefits to the military, artificial intelligence and other fields. 

The move came as scientists in the two countries push supercomputer calculation speeds to new highs. In March, the U.S. Department of Energy said Aurora, the first exascale supercomputer in the U.S., will go online in 2021 at the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago.

By Yoko Noge Dean.

Full story at Nikkei Asia.