News on China's scientific and technological development.

sunnymaxi

Captain
Registered Member
NPU made a breakthrough and beat the best approach known for half a century in the world by 52% in air drag reduction efficiency.

Inspired by the natural shape of sand dunes in a windy desert Xinjiang, NPU invented a "nano structure of multi-layer fractal for air drag reduction (多层分形减阻微纳结构)".

To create this nano structure, they developed this "triple exposure lithography technique with multiple masks (基于多重掩模的三重光刻方法)".

If I understand it correctly, this nano structure can be "printed" on the surface of stickers that can be clued onto surfaces of wings and perhaps fuslage of aircrafts, as shown in the first photo below.

During the research they also built a wind tunnel (shown in the fourth photo) with the finest measurement precision of wind sheer stress in the world.


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我国减阻研究取得突破进展:减阻性能已突破半个世纪以来小肋气动减阻技术性能极限​

近日,西北工业大学空天微纳系统创新团队在飞行器减阻方面取得突破性进展。该团队通过模仿我国库姆塔格沙漠特有的舌状分形沙垄结构,设计出仿沙垄舌形多层分形减阻微纳结构。该结构减阻率较之前国际报道的最好水平提高了52%,减阻风向摄动角度从35°增加到了60°,减阻性能已突破半个世纪以来小肋气动减阻技术性能极限。

研究团队基于无量纲粘性长度的缩放,经建模及模拟验证设计出了仿沙垄分形微纳结构。针对现有的微纳结构加工方式灵活度低、难以实现复杂构型加工的问题,团队在前期掌握了MEMS(微机电系统)芯片制造技术优势的基础上,创造性地提出基于多重掩模的三重光刻方法,有效提升加工精度与效率,实现了多层高深异构复合微结构的精确制造。

团队自主研发、设计搭建了国际首座高分辨力微纳减阻测量风洞,为微纳结构流动测量提供有效手段,该系统总剪切力分辨力精确至2.5×10-6N,与人的呼吸气流作用在一张名片表面的气动摩擦力大小相当,为公开报道国际风洞剪切力测量的最好结果。

经多轮试验与结构优化,最终翼型叶栅空气动力学国家级重点实验室出具检测报告表明:“仿沙垄减阻微纳结构蒙皮具有显著的减阻效果,超过已知公开报道的最高水平。”评议专家高度评价该项目为“研究工作取得突出结果,建议拓展工程应用”。
massive breakthrough. post this in semiconductor thread too. thank you
 

SanWenYu

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Prof. Pan Jianwei of USTC and his team realized "a new scheme that achieves a scalable, unconditional, and robust quantum metrological advantage".

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Unconditional and Robust Quantum Metrological Advantage beyond N00N States​

Abstract​

Quantum metrology employs quantum resources to enhance the measurement sensitivity beyond that can be achieved classically. While multiphoton entangled N00N states can in principle beat the shot-noise limit and reach the Heisenberg limit, high N00N states are difficult to prepare and fragile to photon loss which hinders them from reaching unconditional quantum metrological advantages. Here, we combine the idea of unconventional nonlinear interferometers and stimulated emission of squeezed light, previously developed for the photonic quantum computer Jiuzhang, to propose and realize a new scheme that achieves a scalable, unconditional, and robust quantum metrological advantage. We observe a 5.8(1)-fold enhancement above the shot-noise limit in the Fisher information extracted per photon, without discounting for photon loss and imperfections, which outperforms ideal 5-N00N states. The Heisenberg-limited scaling, the robustness to external photon loss, and the ease-of-use of our method make it applicable in practical quantum metrology at a low photon flux regime.
 

sunnymaxi

Captain
Registered Member
Chinese researchers have made a breakthrough by developing a platform that has realized, for world's 1st time, high-pressure in-situ quantum magnetic detection based on silicon vacancy defects in silicon carbide, shedding light on mechanism behind occurrence of superconducting...

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tacoburger

Junior Member
Registered Member
NGL the progress of the A.I industry and China's response to it has left me jaded and realize that there's definitely an issue with Chinese innovation. Like China is still behind America in many areas, space, semiconductors, engines etc etc. But that's fine, China is catching up, there's no way such a poor nation could complete with America, it's already been amazing the progress China has made in this mature fields when 30 years ago the country was struggling to feed itself, those are the usual excuses.

But A.I? China was supposed to be neck and neck with America in that area. Even western institutions and mainstream media admits that, china is equal or even surpassing America in A.I. There's so many important A.I research papers with chinese authors, so many money poured into computing/data centers, tech companies and A.I labs. So why is it that every important A.I model released in the last 5 years has been American? Aplhafold, GTP series and it's LLM clones by google/microsoft, video generation models, deepfakes, stable diffusion and other A.I art models etc etc. Sure china catches up within a matter of months, and sometimes releases better versions, but why can't they be first and capture the market? It's not helping their image when they're always on the backfoot, it very much looks like copying. They clearly have the talent, expertise and manpower, LLM were greatly improved with some chinese developed transformer architecture and ChatGTP's development involved some chinese scientists.

Just look at the response to ChatGTP. The entire chinese A.I industry was clearly caught off guard by the success and power of it. Dozens of companies and research labs have announced that they are starting programs to create their own ChatGTP version in the last 5 months. Companies that have already worked on LLMs like Baidu with ERNIE are rushing to improve it and integrate it with their digital ecosystem. But why? LLMs aren't new and GTP-3 was already making big waves back in 2020.

Even an average joe like me could see that GTP-3 was a game-changer that had big potential. You would think that the chinese tech and A.I companies on the forefront of A.I research and development would have seen the potential of GTP-3 and started R&D of similar LLM years ago. But nope, it's clear that most of the companies trying to develop a LLM only just started development only after the success of ChatGTP. The room was already on fire since GTP-3, but they had to wait until they themselves caught fire with ChatGTP and now GTP-4 before running for the fire extinguisher . Even companies that were working LLMs before ChatGTP came out like Baidu admitted that their LLMs are nowhere close to ChatGTP or GTP-4, but even then, why did Baidu not even think of integrating even an average LLM into their digital ecosystem? Why wait until the open AI and microsoft deal to integrate chatGTP into Bing and other microsoft services before Baidu suddenly had the same idea?

It's honestly pathetic to see. What are all those chinese tech companies and A.I labs doing? Were they in some alternate universe when GTP-3 was released back in 2020? Did they not think that GTP-3 wasn't going to be a big deal, or that GTP-4 wasn't going to be a major improvement? Judging by their development speed, it wouldn't take long to catch up, but it's clear that if some aspects of the A.I industry and development were different, China wouldn't have to play catch up at all and would be the ones driving the industry forwards instead of the other way around. It's so frustrating, they clearly have the money, talent, computing power and technical knowledge but something is clearly holding them back. I don't know if it's leadership issues, culture, management issues or censorship.

And like I said, it's not just LLMs. Does China have an answer to AlphaFold? Dalle-2 kickstarted the wave of A.I we're all seeing.

It this always going to be the trend? America releases some brand new novel A.I development, like a self driving A.I that can drive better than any human, or a new A.I architecture that needs a hundred times less data and computing power to train while China always scrambles to play catch up and always be a few months to a year behind?

I hope that the success of ChatGTP and GTP-4 makes the chinese A.I sector take a good hard look at itself and what changes it can make to innovate better. Or actually release their products instead of letting it rot inside of a sever farm.
 
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