News on China's scientific and technological development.

by on May 26, 2018 5:00 PM EST





Cambricon Technologies, the company in collaboration with HiSilicon / Huawei for licensing specialist AI silicon intellectual property for the Kirin 970 smartphone chipset, have gone solo and created their own series of chips for the data center.

The IP inside the Kirin 970 is known as Cambricon-1A, the company’s first licensable IP. At the time, finding information on Cambricon was difficult: its website was a series of static images with Chinese embedded into the image itself. Funnily enough, we used the AI-accelerated translate feature on the Huawei Mate 10 to translate what the website said. Fast forward 12-18 months, and the Cambricon website is now interactive and has information about upcoming products. A few of which were announced recently.

The Big Chip: Going for Data Center
Built on TSMC’s 16FF, the MLU-100 is an 80W chip with a capability of 64 TFLOPS of traditional half-precision or 128 TOPS using the 8-bit integer metric commonly used in machine learning algorithms. This is at 1.0 GHz, or the ‘standard’ mode – Cambricon’s CEO, Dr Chan Tianshi, stated that their new chip has a high-performance mode at 1.30 GHz, which allows for 83.2 TFLOPS (16-bit float) or 166.4 TOPS (8-bit int) but rises to 110W. This technically decreases performance efficiency, but allows for a faster chip. All this data relies on sparse data modes being enabled.



The technology behind the chip is Cambricon’s latest MLUv01 architecture, which is understood to be a variant of the Cambricon-1A used in the Kirin chipsets but scaled to something bigger and faster. Obviously additional rules have to be implemented for data and power management compared to the mobile IP. Cambrian also has its 1H architecture and newly announced 1M architecture, although there is no disclosure as to how these might relay to the chip.

David Schor from WikiChip (the of this article) states that this could be NVIDIA’s first major ASIC competition for machine learning, if made available to commercial partners. To that end, Cambricon is also manufacturing a PCIe card.

Obviously NVIDIA has a strong user base and multiple generations at this, along with the software in hand to take advantage of their hardware. Cambricon did not go into detail about how they plan to support any SDKs for the new chip, however it does have a , supporting TensorFlow, Caffe, and MXNet.

Getting Into the Data Center: PCIe
The best way to be plug and play in a data center is through a PCIe card. Cambricon’s MLU100 accelerator card is just that: a PCIe 3.0 x16 enabled implementation with either 16 or 32 GB of DDR4-3200 memory on a 256-bit bus, which is good for 102.4 GB/s of bandwidth. To get that much memory on NVIDIA requires the high end cards, but those cards offer multiple times the memory bandwidth. The memory on the MLU100 card has ECC enabled also.



The reports so far state that Lenovo is offering the cards as add-ons to its ThinkSystem SR650 dual Intel Xeon servers; up to two per machine. Looking on the Lenovo website it does not look like they are available quite yet. Given Huawei’s big enterprise presence, it is likely that we might see the chips in those systems as well.

Next Generation: 5 TOPS/Watt
Also reported was the new Cambricon-1M product IP, although the company was not forthcoming with details. WikiChip states that this new IP is built primarily for 7nm, so we are likely to see it when Huawei/HiSilicon starts shipping 7nm mobile processors and then into the next generation of server-focused products. The goal for this IP is to hit 5 TOPS/Watt, compared to the 3 TOPS/Watt advertised by ARM's IP. David also states that Cambricon has a training and inference chip planned for later this year, with another update in 2019.

China just invited the world to its space station
"All countries, regardless of their size and level of development, can participate."


by - May 29, 2018 9:05pm CST


/ ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti in a Chinese pressure suit during training with Chinese colleagues to practice sea survival off China’s coastal city of Yantai, on August 14, 2017.
ESA–Stephane Corvaja
At a time when NASA and its partners are trying to decide how long to maintain the International Space Station, China has taken the significant step of inviting the world to its planned orbital station. The China Space Station, or CSS, could become operational as soon as 2022.

"CSS belongs not only to China, but also to the world," Shi Zhongjun, China's ambassador to the UN and other international organizations in Vienna. "All countries, regardless of their size and level of development, can participate in the cooperation on an equal footing."

Such an announcement represents potentially the greatest soft power threat of the last six decades to US and Russian dominance of spaceflight. In the public announcement of this policy on China's state news service Xinhua, Chinese officials said the country stands ready to help other developing countries interested in space technology—and in having their own space programs.

This inclusive approach (though just how inclusive an authoritarian government can be remains to be seen) offers a rebuke of sorts to the US government and the International Space Station. By law, the US forbids direct involvement between China's space program and NASA. Some at NASA want to change this, but Congress has established such rules to prevent technology transfer.

Europe already going
Now that the ISS may go away , when the White House wants to end most of NASA's $3 to $4 billion a year support for station activities, China sees an opportunity to position itself as an alternative to nations with programs that cannot get their own people and experiments into space. This includes both developing nations as well as NASA's longtime European partners.

Already, European astronauts such as Samantha Cristoforetti, who spent 200 days in space in 2014 and 2015 aboard the International Space Station, have begun traveling to China to learn the language and train with their Chinese counterparts. "Just back from China, great week, many new friends," Cristoforetti last year. The European Space Agency has an agreement with China's Space Agency that should allow European astronauts to visit the Chinese space station in the 2020s.

One of the biggest challenges for the Trump administration's space program will be how to meld its "America first" identity together with a long history of using NASA to foster meaningful partnerships around the world, including those with longtime rival Russia. The agency has sought to position its proposed "gateway" (a smaller version of the International Space Station) in orbit near the Moon as an environment for cooperation between both international and commercial partners.

However, there is no guarantee the gateway facility will be built, and most of NASA's international partners would probably prefer to go directly to the Moon's surface instead. Ultimately, leading a human return to the Moon in the 2020s—before China reaches it with taikonauts in the 2030s—may be America's best answer to China's efforts to exert its influence in space.

now I read
China develops wireless systems for rockets
Xinhua| 2018-05-28 14:30:29

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China has developed and tested a wireless measuring system for rockets, the Science and Technology Daily reported on Monday.

Developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), the wireless system has been installed in Long March-3B carrier rocket, which took the communication satellite "APSTAR-6C" into orbit in early May.

Sensors in the rockets are usually connected by cables, which increases the weight of the rocket and causes difficulties in layout design.

Although wireless technology has been widely used in some electronic devices, rockets have to withstand extreme high and low temperatures, strong forces caused by separation, and a complicated electromagnetic environment.

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Xiaomi unveils world's first dual-frequency GPS smartphone
Xinhua| 2018-05-31 20:50:37

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Chinese tech giant Xiaomi Thursday rolled out its new flagship Mi8 smartphone, which is the world's first dual-frequency GPS smartphone with outstanding positioning capabilities.

The Mi8 has a 6.21-inch screen wrapping around a big notch that houses a camera.

A higher-end version, the Explorer Edition, has an in-display fingerprint sensor that uses pressure sensitivity, a transparent back panel and is equipped with 3D face recognition technology, which enables unlocking of the phone by scanning the user's face.

The Mi8 is priced from 2,699 yuan (421 U.S. dollars) in China, with the Explorer Edition starting from 3,699 yuan.

The company also rolled out a 75-inch Mi TV 4, its largest ever smart TV, as well as a standalone VR headset and a fitness-tracking wearable band.

Xiaomi saw its sales surge 87.8 percent in the first quarter of the year, ranking fourth among global smartphone brands, according to Lei Jun, founder and CEO of Xiaomi.

Sales in China in Q1 grew 41.8 percent year on year, while overseas sales also reported steady expansion, especially in European countries. Xiaomi officially entered the French and Italian markets last week.

Xiaomi's valuation is estimated to be about 100 billion U.S. dollars, making it one of the largest technology firms in China. The company earlier this month officially submitted its IPO application to Hong Kong Exchange with a dual-class shareholding structure.

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Cainiao in pursuit of advanced unmanned logistics networks
Alibaba tech arm introduces new, advanced driverless truck formation with FAW Jiefang, that saves fuel and manpower
By ASIA TIMES STAFF JUNE 1, 2018 6:24 AM (UTC+8)



Cainiao, the smart logistic arm of e-commerce giant Alibaba, has joined forces with a number of companies producing autos and drones as well as laser radar and chip manufacturers, to promote the mass production of unmanned equipment and to create a new intelligent logistics network, reported.

By working in conjunction with FAW Jiefang, a truck maker under the vast FAW Group, Cainiao released a driverless truck on Thursday.

Compared with other general driverless solutions, this formation-based operation only requires the head vehicle to be equipped with driverless technology, while the follow-up vehicles are simply equipped with basic radar and communication tools.

According to the set data, the entire motorcade is running at a fixed distance. When other vehicles are inserted, the motorcade can immediately adjust the distance, said Zhang Chunhui, director of Cainiao’s ET logistics laboratory.

The entire operating costs of such unmanned formations are much lower than ordinary trucks, saving fuel and manpower.

Meanwhile, Cainiao has also released the world’s first solid-state laser radar driverless car. The latter vehicles, developed by RoboSense, are touted to drastically reduce costs and ensure the mass production of unmanned logistics vehicles.

Blockchain chicken anyone?



China is breeding chickens on the blockchain to improve food safety

Deep in the mountainous area in Daozhen, rural Guizhou in southwestern China, ZhongAn recently built a new chicken farm with the assistance of local authorities. This is also part of the government campaign of “alleviating poverty,” which aims to increase income for families in China’s unprivileged rural areas.

6,000 chicks are kept indoors with heating facilities, and when they grow larger, they will be freed into two two-hectare free-range farms, each enjoying a space of 6.7 square meters. Chickens here will mature in 166 days while the regular chicken used by restaurants or supermarkets do in 40 days.

When released outdoors, wearables will be attached to the legs of each chicken, which track their daily activities. The company has also set up monitoring stations around the farm that oversee air, water, and soil quality in the area. All of the information, as well as shipping records, will be uploaded to the cloud and secured by blockchain.

Partnering with Anlink (连陌科技), ZhongAn Technology, subsidiary of Ant Financial and Tencent-backed ZhongAn Online, launched an agriculture product called gogochicken (步步鸡). Featuring blockchain’s immutability and traceability, the company provides the country’s growing middle class who are concerned with food safety a pricey solution.

The chickens that matured on the companies’ other farms, utilizing the same technology, are already available on China’s different e-commerce platforms, including . Frozen chickens are sold for RMB 238 ($37) each and chilled are RMB RMB 268, while in local supermarkets, regular chickens are usually sold for around RMB 60.

According to the company, they’ve chosen premium chicken breeds and provided the best living conditions. Since all the data is secured by blockchain, it’s impossible to counterfeit, and thus consumers can know for sure their chickens are worth the price.

The blockchain buzzword

The company wants to see how
blockchain can be applied to different industries such as finance and insurance, said Chen Wei, Chief Executive Officer of ZhongAn Technology. Although he admitted that the exploration is still at its early stages and requires investment and time to mature, he said potentially blockchain can drive the growth in the future.

“We have multiple nodes that upload different data to our blockchain,” said Wang Wei, Chief Operating Officer of Anlink. The multiple nodes include internet of things devices on the farms that collect data on air, soil, slaughter house, quarantine records and the sales ends. All of them will upload related information to the blockchain to make sure the quality of the chicken, Wang said.

Information on the chicken farms is , although it’s designed more for chicken farmers to monitor the growth of their poultry. The company did not disclose the exact number of farms currently in operation; four farms are shown on the monitor screen. Apart from the newest farm in Daozhen, the other three are located in Shandong, Anhui and Henan province. When certain factors, such as air, water or soil quality, drop or jump to unexpected levels, the system will flag it to the farmers.


Screenshot of the monitoring site

When consumers receive their chickens, they can scan a QR code to see the birth and slaughter date and how many steps the chicken walked. However, other information regarding the environment a specific chicken has grown up in, nutrition breakdown of the meat or the shipping records is not available.


Information available to consumers

Farmers are trying to catch up with the consumption upgrade

"The higher the prices are, the better our farmers can benefit,” said Zhou Ling, vice party secretary of Daozhen county.

These pricey chickens are raised in one of China’s poorest areas, with an average personal income of RMB 5,200 per year, according to Daozhen local statistics.

Mountainous topography hindered the region’s road construction and communication with the outside world, but can help the chickens exercise. “The chickens here are of better quality and can be sold at higher prices, ” said Zhou. Road construction will be finished before the chickens mature, and thus, transportation won’t be a problem by then, he said later.

“We are targeting consumers in the first tier cities, or emerging first tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen,” Wang said, “They are the newly established middle class and people concerned with food security, or who want to provide quality food for their children.”

Wang said rural areas in Henan, Shandong, and Anhui provinces are the main farming areas because they are closer to the developed cities, but building farms in other relevantly remote areas can help the expansion. He said they expected to build 3000 farms by 2020.

Jiang Song, who joined the cooperative this year, said he used to be a migrant worker, away from his parents and children who need taking care of. The project provided a good opportunity, and thus he came back. Zhou said they expect the project to benefit 366 families.

Coming to a plate near you soon? Rice grown by Chinese scientists using seawater in Dubai’s deserts
Successful harvest of salt-resistant strain raises researchers’ hopes that one day large swathes of the desert could be turned into paddy fields

Chinese scientists have successfully grown and harvested rice in the deserts of Dubai after developing a strain that allows the crop to grow in saltwater.

A team of scientists, led by China’s “father of hybrid rice” Yuan Longping, has already started growing the crop in diluted sea-water at home and is now bringing the technique to the Middle East, where fresh water is too precious to use for growing water-intensive crops.

Last week’s rice harvest, which had been planted in January on the outskirts of the city, far exceeded scientists’ expectations, according to a report by the state news agency Xinhua.






The high yield reported – 7,500kg per hectare compared with the global average of 3,000kg per hectare – has encouraged scientists to expand the project.

They now plan to set up a 100-hectare experimental farm later this year, put it into regular use next year and then start expanding after 2020.

Eventually, the report said, the goal is to cover around 10 per cent of the United Arab Emirates, which has a total area of 83,600 sq km (32,278 sq miles), with paddy fields – although details as to how this will be achieved have yet to be disclosed.

Xinhua said the Dubai venture is the result of a collaboration between China’s research centre into saltwater rice, based in the eastern port of Qingdao, with The Private Office of Sheikh Saeed Bin Ahmed Al Maktoum, a billionaire member of Dubai’s ruling family.

The two parties have also signed an agreement to promote seawater rice across the Arab world to reduce the risk of food shortages in the future.






While scientists in some countries where water shortages are a serious concern – such as Israel or Australia – have been developing desalination techniques to convert seawater for use in agriculture, China has been working to develop strains of salt-resistant rice for the past four decades.

Although it is not yet clear how the Dubai project will be able to secure enough fresh water to dilute seawater for large-scale rice cultivation, Chinese scientists have already started growing it closer to home on a commercial scale.

China has one million square kilometres of waste land – an area the size of Ethiopia – where plants struggle to grow because of high salinity or alkalinity levels in the soil.

If a tenth of this area was planted with saltwater rice, it could boost China’s rice production by nearly 20 per cent, producing 50 million tonnes of food – enough to feed 200 million people, Yuan told mainland media last year.



The project began in the 1970s when a researcher named Chen Risheng discovered a species of wild rice that grew near a mangrove forest in the southern province of Guangdong.

After four decades of cross-breeding and genetic screening, researchers had developed eight separate species but their yields remained too low to make widespread cultivation worthwhile.

But last year the team made a breakthrough by doubling the yield to more than 4.5 tonnes per hectare.

Last autumn the first salt-resistant rice, grown on a beach near Qingdao, made it into the shops.

As the South China Morning Post reported at the time one woman who had bought a bag of the rice found it was “very good”, adding that her boyfriend said it reminded him of the rice he had eaten in his home village as a boy.

Mar 11, 2018

Jura said:

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Radio telescope array to build surrounding FAST for resolution enhancement
Xinhua| 2018-03-10 13:50:11

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while now





A new lab for China's FAST, the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, has opened in Pingtang of SW China's Guizhou to focus on promoting research and technological development of low frequency radio astronomy based on FAST

China is going full steam with AI and facial recognition. It's being used to catch fugitive criminals, monitor student moods in class rooms, and even fine jay walkers!

I see a parallel between what China is doing today with digital technology and what China was doing 20 years ago with infrastructure. 15 years ago, I could no longer recognize my old neighborhood when I visit. In another 10 years, would I no longer be able to recognize Chinese society based on current digital revolutions?

If the infrastructure boom of the 90's and early 2000's are an evolution toward modernity, the current AI innovation is a true revolution. My prediction is that in 10 years, top-tier cities like Shanghai and Beijing will be one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world.

now noticed the tweet





China approves world's first long-acting anti-HIV drug: the domestically developed injectable HIV drug can block the fusion of the viral and host cell membranes, interrupting the HIV life cycle in its earliest stage