Source: NYT > Business (paywall)
China's Fugaku successor, built entirely from commercial off-the-shelf processors rather than custom chips, achieves computational scale through software optimization and volume rather than specialized silicon. The U.S. semiconductor export restrictions blocked advanced chips to China and forced a pragmatic workaround: Chinese engineers are demonstrating that architectural cleverness can match specialized hardware. This changes how both nations approach the supercomputing race and lowers barriers to massive computational power.