News on China's scientific and technological development.

AssassinsMace

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
China forseeing the future or blame it for causing the Iceland's volcanic eruption.

China's high-speed-rail wizards have the answer
By Tyler Brule

Published: April 20 2010 03:00 | Last updated: April 20 2010 03:00

When China's rail authorities recently announced plans to build a high-speed rail link connecting Beijing with London I had to pause and wonder who would be booking passage on this Eurasian super express?

Would it be a shuttle for Chinese seamstresses heading off to work in Italian sweatshops? Perhaps it might position itself as a pimped up version of the Orient Express catering to Japan's ever-greying tourism market? Or maybe it would turn a profit by selling seats exclusively to train-spotters.

Having spent the better part of the past weekend in Hong Kong trying to figure out how I am going to get 12 colleagues back to London, I reckon the rail wizards in the People's Republic are on to a winner if they can persuade other nations along the proposed line to play ball and they make the journey comfortable enough.

Rather than dreaming up elaborate routings (Hong-Kong-Auckland-Santiago-São Paulo-London was one option on the table), checking the price of chartering a jet fit for 12 or trying to predict the direction the winds might blow in, it would have been easier to get everyone to a rail platform in Beijing, pack some lunchboxes and send them on their way. Goodness knows, they all would have been back at their desks by now.

Aside from revealing the glaringly obvious - that the world cannot function on fibre-optic cables, huge servers and social network sites alone, and is rather helpless when there is not a fully fuelled Airbus or Boeing close at hand - it also demonstrated that for myriad reasons there is an urgent need to invest in alternative global transport links for days/weeks/ months when volcanic ash, cyber-terrorism and other calamities can bring commerce and continents to a standstill.

On a more practical front, all those companies that decided to close their company travel office a few years ago and are now worried that their foot soldiers might be basking under the blue skies of Bali might want to think about either bringing back a group travel desk or retaining a top-notch travel agency to deal with a logistical headache as big as this one.

I might have the odd issue with some of Beijing's behaviour, but if China wants to build a high-speed rail link that could whisk thousands of people back and forth across the frontier-lands of Europe and Asia every day then I will be the first to buy a rail-pass.

Indeed, there is something quite romantic about a 21st-century whistle-stop business trip calling at Vienna, Kiev, Almaty, Urumqi and Beijing rather than making countless, stressful point-to-point journeys over the course of the year.

Other countries with a vested interest in the rail sector (Canada, Germany, France and Japan) might want to think about filling in other gaps around the globe. Cape Town to Copenhagen and Buenos Aires to Montreal are also up for grabs.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.
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Quickie

Colonel
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April 23, 2010 Adjust font size: Scientists unveiled China's first supercomputer using the third generation home-made processor, a machine capable of 1 trillion operations every second.

The computer named KD-60 was the latest product to use the Central Processor Unit Loongson-3A, or dragon chip, that was independently designed and made by China, People's Daily online reported yesterday.

Almost every computer in China has run on chips made by a United States-based company, most notably Intel and AMD.

The Loongson-3 was invented in September. The Loongson project was a government-funded project started in 2001, involving more than 200 researchers in the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The Loongson project was designed to rid China of foreign dependence in the computer business. US law now prevents its companies from selling the most current microprocessors to China. Chinese users generally receive products a few generations old.

KD-60 was much smaller than its previous model, KD-50I, based on Loongson-2, which was the size of a household refrigerator. An unnamed expert with the Chinese Academy of Sciences told the newspaper that researchers expect to make the future model supercomputer even smaller and more accessible to personal users.

Loongson-3 was expected to compete with the big central processing unit makers. The chip has four CPU cores. An eight-core version is under development.

A major development in the third generation chip is that it can simulate Intel's x86 code, meaning users can run Windows operation systems and other popular software on it. Former Loongson computers could only use Linux or other open-source software.

Business insiders said the chip's developer was talking to Intel about paying for a license for x86 code.

The first generation Loongson, launched in 2002, was used in ready-made embedded systems such as set-top boxes.

The Loongson-2, released in 2005, was used in low-end personal computers. The product was largely ignored because of a low price-performance rate.
 
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Mcsweeney

Junior Member
This would have implications in military technology as well, as supercomputers are often required to make extremely complex calculations, such as in wind tunnel testing.
 
R

RedMercury

Junior Member
Hrm, anyone know more about the laws forbidding export of commercial microprocessors to China? I.e. are the latest Intel desktop lines illegal to export?

It seems like Intel could deny the license or make the fee exorbitant. I wonder what arm twisting is going on behind the scenes.
 
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Colonel
RedMercury said:
Hrm, anyone know more about the laws forbidding export of commercial microprocessors to China? I.e. are the latest Intel desktop lines illegal to export?
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I doubt the law applies to commercial microprocessors since they can easily change hands once they are in the market. Probably it's referring to special microprocessors with military application.

It seems like Intel could deny the license or make the fee exorbitant. I wonder what arm twisting is going on behind the scenes.
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China will just have to support Linux all the way then. Come to think of it, the decision that Intel would make will affect Microsoft too.
 
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Mcsweeney

Junior Member
I didn't quite get that part about the export ban either. I've never heard of such a thing. It's not like China doesn't have supercomputers; they recently built one that is in the top 5 fastest in the world called Tianhe-I. It uses Intel microprocessors and it isn't even a secret what they're using it for ... it resides in the National University of Defense Technology. Either the law is new, the Xeon chips they use are considered "old" enough to not be covered under the ban, or the article got something wrong.
 
AssassinsMace

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
I know nothing of the chip business but isn't the ban about "x" inch wafer size production in China? I don't think there's a ban on commercial microprocessors because don't many PC compaines make their PCs in China? There's going to be access to high-end commercial microprocessors.
 
bladerunner

bladerunner

Banned Idiot
China would loose if starts to play that game. nd they may loose their holdings in the West Also
Roughly 46% of the Worlds Rare Earths are outside of China egLynas Corporation In Western Australia is the worlds largest rare earth deposits- more than enough to meet the wests need. Avalon in Canada: Great Western Minerals In USA and Africa Kvanefjeld in Greenland is another one of the worlds largest deposits.

A
 
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