News on China's scientific and technological development.
- Thread starter Quickie
- Start date
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
Via emperor. As I said befor developing high tech involve push and pull factor Unless there is market there is no way to develop high tech, In thepast China fail to developed ht because there no market for it but now it is different
Why China Will Rival the U.S. in High Tech
Critics who say bureaucracy and rote education stifle innovation are missing the biggest factor in the mainland’s favor: its huge market.
By Dan Wang
April 26, 2019, 5:00 AM GMT+8
Those who think China can’t catch up in innovation tend to base their arguments on abstractions: A rigid education system stifles creativity, they say, while heavy-handed industrial policies such as the “Made in China 2025” program encourage waste and inefficiency.
Those skeptics are ignoring a far more concrete and relevant factor, however: the growing size and sophistication of China’s domestic market. The Chinese economy has expanded threefold since 2008, and tenfold since 2000. That makes it highly likely that China will develop leading technology companies. And it is nearly enough on its own to guarantee that China will join the ranks of technologically advanced countries.
To understand why, consider the example of wind turbines. China created the world’s largest wind-turbine market at the stroke of a pen with the government’s push to promote renewables. Many Chinese provinces are about as populous as large European countries; their procurement plans created enough internal competition to spur the buildup of globally competitive firms. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, several Chinese companies are now leading wind-turbine makers.
The market’s scale can even compensate for ineffective policy. China has a poor record of chip design and manufacturing, for instance, in spite of decades of government support and funding. In a generous interpretation, Chinese semiconductor capabilities are two generations (roughly five years) behind the leading edge.
Now, however, Chinese electronics companies — major customers for semiconductors — have grown dramatically in size and skill. Two decades ago, most such firms were doing assembly for Taiwanese PC makers. Today, Chinese brands such as Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and Lenovo Group Ltd. make up around 40 percent of the global market in smartphones and 25 percent in PCs. And cutting-edge products such as the consumer drone are increasingly conceived and manufactured in Shenzhen.
These companies are stronger partners for Chinese semiconductor firms. Chip-design companies such as Huawei’s HiSilicon Technologies Co. Ltd. currently have to use Taiwanese firms to manufacture leading-edge chips. But Chinese fabs now know that they have a good chance of winning Huawei’s business if they upgrade their technology. A large pool of local customers for Chinese fabs simply didn’t exist 20 years ago.
Something similar is happening in autos. Policymakers in Beijing recognize that their efforts to build strong car companies have mostly failed. Unlike Japan or Korea, China has produced no well-regarded automakers that can sell extensively abroad.
Instead of waiting for domestic manufacturers to catch up to leading global automakers, Beijing is thinking about the next step. The government has willed into existence the world’s largest market for electric vehicles through an array of policies that include subsidies for consumers, production quotas for automakers, and allowing drivers to purchase an EV immediately instead of waiting years for a license plate for an internal-combustion car. As a result, more than half of EV sales took place in China in 2018.
Plugged In
Even if most EVs sold on the mainland are still of low quality, the rates of entry by automakers and the levels of activity make it more likely that China will ultimately establish a strong position in the sector. For example, Nanjing-based Byton Ltd. was co-founded by a former BMW engineer from Germany, who cited the size of the market and policy support as reasons to be based in China. A huge market not only attracts entrepreneurs who are excited about the technology, but advances capital investments and encourages the creation of supply-chain clusters.
Of course, having a large pool of domestic customers can make firms lazy. South Korea’s industrial giants became globally competitive precisely because they couldn’t rely on their relatively small domestic market; they had to export quickly and compete against more advanced peers. For the most part, Chinese brands haven’t yet had to establish a similar presence abroad.
As Chinese consumers become richer and more discriminating, however, they’ll also demand higher quality. Remember that the U.S., too, became a major industrial and technological power by the early 20th century in part because of its enormous domestic market.
The potential for China’s industrial plans and innovative capacity has to be considered in the context of these changing conditions. A government-directed policy that failed in the past may well have a better chance of succeeding today. And the size of China’s market will be a better guide to judging its prospects than the softer measures we currently use.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
To contact the author of this story:
Dan Wang at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Nisid Hajari at [email protected]
Why China Will Rival the U.S. in High Tech
Critics who say bureaucracy and rote education stifle innovation are missing the biggest factor in the mainland’s favor: its huge market.
By Dan Wang
April 26, 2019, 5:00 AM GMT+8
Those who think China can’t catch up in innovation tend to base their arguments on abstractions: A rigid education system stifles creativity, they say, while heavy-handed industrial policies such as the “Made in China 2025” program encourage waste and inefficiency.
Those skeptics are ignoring a far more concrete and relevant factor, however: the growing size and sophistication of China’s domestic market. The Chinese economy has expanded threefold since 2008, and tenfold since 2000. That makes it highly likely that China will develop leading technology companies. And it is nearly enough on its own to guarantee that China will join the ranks of technologically advanced countries.
To understand why, consider the example of wind turbines. China created the world’s largest wind-turbine market at the stroke of a pen with the government’s push to promote renewables. Many Chinese provinces are about as populous as large European countries; their procurement plans created enough internal competition to spur the buildup of globally competitive firms. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, several Chinese companies are now leading wind-turbine makers.
The market’s scale can even compensate for ineffective policy. China has a poor record of chip design and manufacturing, for instance, in spite of decades of government support and funding. In a generous interpretation, Chinese semiconductor capabilities are two generations (roughly five years) behind the leading edge.
Now, however, Chinese electronics companies — major customers for semiconductors — have grown dramatically in size and skill. Two decades ago, most such firms were doing assembly for Taiwanese PC makers. Today, Chinese brands such as Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and Lenovo Group Ltd. make up around 40 percent of the global market in smartphones and 25 percent in PCs. And cutting-edge products such as the consumer drone are increasingly conceived and manufactured in Shenzhen.
These companies are stronger partners for Chinese semiconductor firms. Chip-design companies such as Huawei’s HiSilicon Technologies Co. Ltd. currently have to use Taiwanese firms to manufacture leading-edge chips. But Chinese fabs now know that they have a good chance of winning Huawei’s business if they upgrade their technology. A large pool of local customers for Chinese fabs simply didn’t exist 20 years ago.
Something similar is happening in autos. Policymakers in Beijing recognize that their efforts to build strong car companies have mostly failed. Unlike Japan or Korea, China has produced no well-regarded automakers that can sell extensively abroad.
Instead of waiting for domestic manufacturers to catch up to leading global automakers, Beijing is thinking about the next step. The government has willed into existence the world’s largest market for electric vehicles through an array of policies that include subsidies for consumers, production quotas for automakers, and allowing drivers to purchase an EV immediately instead of waiting years for a license plate for an internal-combustion car. As a result, more than half of EV sales took place in China in 2018.
Plugged In
Even if most EVs sold on the mainland are still of low quality, the rates of entry by automakers and the levels of activity make it more likely that China will ultimately establish a strong position in the sector. For example, Nanjing-based Byton Ltd. was co-founded by a former BMW engineer from Germany, who cited the size of the market and policy support as reasons to be based in China. A huge market not only attracts entrepreneurs who are excited about the technology, but advances capital investments and encourages the creation of supply-chain clusters.
Of course, having a large pool of domestic customers can make firms lazy. South Korea’s industrial giants became globally competitive precisely because they couldn’t rely on their relatively small domestic market; they had to export quickly and compete against more advanced peers. For the most part, Chinese brands haven’t yet had to establish a similar presence abroad.
As Chinese consumers become richer and more discriminating, however, they’ll also demand higher quality. Remember that the U.S., too, became a major industrial and technological power by the early 20th century in part because of its enormous domestic market.
The potential for China’s industrial plans and innovative capacity has to be considered in the context of these changing conditions. A government-directed policy that failed in the past may well have a better chance of succeeding today. And the size of China’s market will be a better guide to judging its prospects than the softer measures we currently use.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
To contact the author of this story:
Dan Wang at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Nisid Hajari at [email protected]
Another attempt similar to the "Hydrogen Economy". I highly doubt (to the point of reject) it would be of any practical use as fuel.
In "Hydrogen Economy", water is broken into H2 and O2 by input energy, then packed in bottles, release energy by fuel-cell or burning, back to water.
In this CO2 scheme, CO2 + H is made to methanol by input energy, then burnt, back to CO2 and HO2.
Both are making energy depleted "waste" into energy storage medium by inputting energy. They are just another type of battery. The only way they can succeed is if they can beat the current chemical battery in the full energy transferring circle. And this is the reason that I have not fully rejected them.
CHINA FLESHES OUT EXASCALE DESIGN FOR TIANHE-3 SUPERCOMPUTER
One reason China has a good chance of hitting its ambitious goal to reach exascale computing in 2020 is that the government is funding three separate architectural paths to attain that milestone. This internal competition will pit the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), the National Research Center of Parallel Computer and Sugon (formerly Dawning) against one another to come up with the country’s (and perhaps the world’s) first exascale supercomputer.
As it stands today, each vendor has developed and deployed a 512-node prototype system based on what appears to be primarily pre-exascale componentry. Transforming these very modest prototypes into 100,000-node-plus exascale supercomputers is going to be quite a challenge, not only because it represents a huge leap in scale, but also because China is committed to powering these systems using relatively immature domestic processors. At , he recapped the three prototypes that were deployed in 2018 and filled in some of the specifics on his organization’s plans for its exascale machine: Tianhe-3.
Let’s start with the NRCPC prototype, which, as a CPU-only machine, is probably the most conventional of the bunch. In fact, it’s the only non-accelerated architecture currently vying for exascale honors in China. Each of its nodes is equipped with two ShenWei 26010 (SW26010) processors, the same chip that is powering . The 26010 has 260 cores and delivers about 3 teraflops of 64-bit floating point performance. Presumably, Sunway has a more powerful ShenWei chip in the works for NRCPC’s future exascale system, although it hasn’t offered any indication of what that might look like. We would expect it to deliver something on the order of 10 teraflops.
The Sugon prototype is a heterogenous machine comprised of nodes, each outfitted with two Hygon x86 CPU and two DCUs, and hooked together by a 6D torus network. The CPU is a licensed clone of AMD’s first-generation EPYC processor, while the DCU is an accelerator built by Hygon. In a by Depei Qian, he said the DCU in the full exascale system will deliver 15 teraflops, which certainly is not the case for the prototype system. One interesting facet of the Sugon machine is that it’s being cooled by a liquid immersion system, which might indicate that the DCU chip dissipates an enormous amount of heat.
The NUDT prototype is another heterogenous architecture, in this case using CPUs of unknown parentage, plus the Matrix-2000+, a 128-core general-purpose DSP chip. The Matrix-2000+ is presumably the successor to the Matrix-2000, , which is currently the number four system on the TOP500 list. At peak, the Matrix-2000+ delivers two teraflops of performance and burns about 130 watts. If they were to be used to power an exaflop machine on their own, the DSP chips alone would draw about 65 megawatts.
However, for NUDT’s Tianhe-3 exascale system, the plan is to use the upcoming Matrix-3000 DSP and some future CPU. The DSP is expected to sport at least 96 cores and deliver more than 10 teraflops of performance, while the 64-core CPU will provide 2 teraflops. Each blade will be equipped with eight of these DSPs paired with eight CPUs, providing 96 teraflops per blade.
The entire system will be comprised of 100 cabinets, each containing 128 blades, which works out to 1.29 exaflops (peak). Everything will be hooked together with a homegrown 400Gbps network, using a 3D butterfly topology. That will provide a maximum of five hops between any two nodes. Cooling will be provided by a hybrid air/water system, which is expected to deliver a PUE of less than 1.1.
The only big mystery remaining is the nature of Tianhe-3’s CPU. As , we’re guessing that it’s going to be some sort of Arm processor. That still makes a lot of sense, especially because China has hinted for some time that one of its exascale systems will be using this architecture. Given the processor’s two teraflop performance goal, it may even end up being an Armv8-A implementation with the Scalable Vector Extension (SVE).
If they decide to go down that route, one possible avenue for NUDT is that they could license Fujitsu’s A64FX design, the Arm SVE technology behind Japan’s Post-K exascale supercomputer. Not only do these processors deliver 2.7 teraflops of performance today, but Fujitsu has already developed a set of HPC libraries for them. As , Fujitsu is looking to sell some of the technology it developed for Post-K, and the intellectual property behind its HPC Arm chip might be its most bankable product.
In any case, if the Tianhe-3 developers are on schedule, we’ll find out soon enough on what they chose for their CPU design.
The author has apparently messed up. Tianhe-3 uses MT-2000+ CPU. That has been clear in the presentation above (the 3rd slide).
China will NEVER use a foreign originated key component after the Intel Pi and ZTE incidents. The Xinhua report of Tianhe-3 prototype in 2018 has clearly stated
Buying license of Arm is not independent (自主) and will be chocked (卡脖子) in any upgrade like Tianhe-2's intel co-processor->PI. Able to fabricate a licensed chip makes no difference from buying directly from the vendor in terms of upgrade.
Another fault of the author is about the cooling, liquid cooling is popularly used by other vendors including Japan's post-K, does that also mean tremendous heat? Liquid cooling is simply more efficient, it can remove the same amount of heat in a much smaller footprint.
And lastly, China is not going to finance Japan's super-computer program through buying their license.
Last edited:
Jura The idiot
General
... and let me put here the link to a competitor:
New $600M supercomputer with mind-blowing speed coming to ORNL
plus to repost my favorite:
Jura The idiot
General
Jura The idiot
General
now noticed the tweet
·
China to set up its 7th national center in Zhengzhou, C China's Henan. Construction will finish by 2020 and it will have a peak capability of 100 PFLOPS and 100 petabytes (100M gigabytes) of storage. (file pic)
·
China to set up its 7th national center in Zhengzhou, C China's Henan. Construction will finish by 2020 and it will have a peak capability of 100 PFLOPS and 100 petabytes (100M gigabytes) of storage. (file pic)