News on China's scientific and technological development.

China's Sunway BlueLight supercomputer goes into operation

JINAN, Jan. 19 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Sunway BlueLight supercomputer, which was built with domestically produced microprocessors and is capable of performing around one-thousand-trillion calculations per second, has officially gone into operation at the National Supercomputing Center (NSCC) in east China's city of Jinan, the center said Thursday.

The computer was installed in September 2011 and underwent a three-month-long trial operation period before going into official use, making China the third country in the world to be capable of producing such a supercomputer with domestically produced processors after the United States and Japan.

Developed by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology, the Sunway BlueLight marks a great technological leap for China's indigenous innovation in development and utilization of high-performance computers, according to the NSCC.

The role of the Sunway BlueLight in promoting scientific and economic development of Shandong province, of which Jinan is the provincial capital, will be tapped, namely in fields of ocean utilization, biopharmacy, industrial design, and financial risk prediction.

Meanwhile, the computer will serve as a node in China's national computing grid, contributing to scientific and economic development of the whole country, the NSCC said.

As a product of a combination of high-density packaging and low energy consumption technologies, the Sunway ranks among the world's leading supercomputers in terms of comprehensive performance, according to the NSCC.

The Sunway BlueLight will be used to help increase the accuracy of climate simulations conducted by Chinese scientists and assist them in ocean circulation monitoring, according to oceanology experts.

"It allows scientists to simulate water movement more than 5,500 meters below the ocean's surface," said Pan Jingshan, assistant director of the NSCC in Jinan.

Consisting of nine three-meter-high boxes and equipped with a total of 8,704 homegrown Shenwei 1600 microprocessors, the Sunway is among the 20 fastest supercomputers in the world.

The Sunway BlueLight is about 74 percent as fast as the Jaguar Supercomputer in the United States, which ranks the third fastest computer in the world, although it's less power-hungry, Pan said.

The Sunway's power consumption is as low as 1 megawatt, much lower than the Jaguar's 7 megawatts, thanks to its innovative use of liquid cooling system, according to Pan.

Steve Wallach, a consultant to the United States Department of Energy Advanced Scientific Computing program at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in an email interview with Xinhua that the most impressive part of Sunway BlueLight is that "most of the technology, especially the microprocessors, were homegrown," unlike some other Chinese supercomputing system which uses Intel and nVidia processors.

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China announced on Tuesday its top 10 scientific achievements in 2011, with the success of its first space docking mission that was completed two months ago topping the list.

The unmanned Shenzhou-8 spacecraft was launched on Nov. 1 last year and returned safely to earth on Nov. 17 after completing the country's first space docking with the target module Tiangong-1, which was launched on Sept. 29.

The country had never before joined two spacecraft together in space.

Tiangong-1 entered into long-term operation management in space on Nov. 18, and is preparing for two more docking missions planned for 2012.

The acquisition of the space docking technology is vital for China to implement the three-phase development strategy of its manned space program and to promote the sustained development of its manned space cause, according to Wu Ping, a spokeswoman for China's manned space program.

China plans to establish its own space lab around 2016 and a manned space station around 2020.

Out of a total of 233 scientific achievements of 2011 that were submitted to contend for the annual top 10 list, 31 made it onto the shortlist.

The final entries to the top 10 list were chosen according to voting by academics from the country's premier research organizations, including the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

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Standing next to Paul Otellini (right), president and chief executive officer of Intel Corp, Liu Jun, senior vice-president of Lenovo Group Ltd, holds a Lenovo K800, the first smartphone powered by Intel chips, during the Intel presentation at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas

The first smartphone equipped with a chip made by the technology company Intel Corp will go on sale in China in the second quarter of the year.

Lenovo Group Ltd - the largest PC maker in China and second-largest in the world by sales - made that announcement on Wednesday at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

China is the largest market for smartphones and is expected to see more than 100 million smartphone shipments this year, according to the US-based research company IHS iSuppli Corp. Lenovo's K800 smartphone is to come equipped with an Intel chip, marking the first time Intel has provided one of its devices for such a product.

For years, the Silicon Valley giant, whose chips are mainly used in personal computers, has struggled to move into the smartphone business.

Almost all smartphones and tablet PCs use chips from Qualcomm Inc, Broadcom Corp and similar companies. The designs for those chips often come from the British technology company ARM Holdings PLC, which is known for making products that have low energy consumption, helping batteries in Internet mobile devices last longer.

"The best of Intel computing is coming to smartphones," said Paul Otellini, Intel

president and CEO. "Our efforts with Lenovo and Motorola Mobility will help to establish Intel processors in smartphones and provide a solid foundation from which to build in 2012 and into the future."

According to iSuppli, the majority of smartphone shipments in China in the past few years were for the country's domestic market. But that is expected to change; experts believe about half of all smartphone shipments in 2015 will be exports.

"This new partnership means Lenovo, a Chinese company, is trying to attract customers by combining its strength in making PCs with the production of smartphones," said Wang Jiping, a senior analyst with the research company IDC China.

Liu Jun, Lenovo senior vice-president and president of the company's Mobile Internet and Digital Home Business Group, joined Otellini at the consumer electronics show to introduce the Lenovo K800 smartphone, which contains Intel technology and runs on Google Inc's Android operating system.

Liu said the smartphone will be available in China in the second quarter of the year and will run on a network operated by China Unicom Ltd, the second-largest telecommunications carrier in China.

"We sold 6.5 million phones this past quarter, half of which were smartphones," said Yang Yuanqing, CEO and president of Lenovo.

This year, Chinese makers of mobile handsets are expected to nearly double the number of products they ship, bringing it to more than 100 million.

Beyond Lenovo, Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc plans in the second half of the year to release smartphones that also feature Intel Atom processors and use the Android operating system.

Intel said its partnerships with makers of mobile Internet devices will also concern tablet PC products and that its smartphones will be sold in more countries and regions.

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View attachment 5985
Changhong Electric Co Ltd's display was an entertaining attraction at the Canton Fair last October.

China's first home-developed smart TV operating system, the Xuanyuan TVOS by Changhong Electric Co Ltd, allows multi-screen interaction with users to control their TVs with virtual buttons and gestures.

The result of government-funded R&D over the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015), its system, search engine, browser, security component and visualization device all use domestic proprietary technologies.

It is also compatible with popular smart device operating systems such as Android.

An executive at State-owned Changhong, which was founded in 1958, said only companies that master core technologies will survive in the age of intelligent electronics.

"On the Chinese mainland, we missed the birth of computers and cellphones. We lag behind many advanced countries in the flat TV industry. But in the age of intelligent electronics, Chinese proprietary technologies are players," said Zhao Yong, chairman of the Sichuan-headquartered company.

The Xuanyuan system could lead to "a great change in China's household electrical appliances industry", said smart appliance software expert Zhan Huayi, who is also a leader at Changhong's R&D center.

It is the nation's first software standard that attempts to integrate telecommunications, TV networks and the Internet, he said.

Thanks to the Xuanyuan system, watchers can control their TVs through voice, eye movements - or in the future, even their minds.

Video can now be sent from TVs to cellphones and Changhong plans to integrate "The Internet of Things" into the system that will provide access to more news, entertainment and online shopping.

The company is China's first to establish an intelligent system that covers content, services and end products including the smart TV, smartphone and smart refrigerator.

There are currently about 60 types of smart TVs on the Chinese market, more than 30 percent of them from Changhong.

Last year the company unveiled 20 smart 3D TV models offering multi-screen interaction that allows them to connect with cellphones and tablet computers using the Android operating system.

"An open operating system will boost the industry chain and eventually help build a multi-level virtual intelligence lifestyle," said Zhao.

---------- Post added 01-20-2012 at 12:00 AM ---------- Previous post was 01-19-2012 at 11:56 PM ----------

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Chinese and Japanese researchers have jointly developed a robotic system which will likely improve the success rate of surgical brain vascular intervention.

The research team has completed the process of testing the system on animals, proving its feasibility and efficiency during vascular intervention surgery (VIS) to treat cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, said Professor Wang Tianmiao with the Robotics Institute from Beihang University.

The system is composed of a master controller, a terminal and a screen with an image navigation system.

Doctors operate from the master controller, with the three-dimensional blood vessel image on the screen, and transmit movement to the robotic terminal, capable of inserting a tube into a blood vessel. Sensors are installed on the tube, transmitting contact information between the tube and the vessel wall so as to ensure the accuracy of the insertion, which significantly improves the effect of the intervention.

Initiated in 2009, the system was co-developed by Japan-based Kagawa University, the Beijing-based PLA Navy General Hospital (NGH) and Beihang University.

Prof. Tian Zengmin, director of the Neurosurgery Department of the NGH, said the system allows doctors to perform vascular intervention operations accurately and eliminates their risk of radiation exposure.

Tian said the project had cost the three parties nearly 20 million yuan (3.17 million U.S. dollars), mostly from the two countries' government scientific research funds, and that the system can be put into application within one year if research goes smoothly.

During the tests on animals, the remote control function allowed surgery to be carried out by Kagawa on subjects in Beijing.

Prof. Guo Shuxiang with the Kagawa University said the system also helped with communication between doctors from different places and training young doctors, as remote control allowed more people outside the surgery room to monitor the surgery process.

---------- Post added at 01:31 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:00 AM ----------

In the last part of our Chinese CPU story, we covered ICube and their processors with a brand new instruction set, something not seen in like two decades. Here's a bit more about the new architecture after the visit to their Shenzhen HQ.

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escobar said:

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....................Pan said the supercomputer uses "dense packaging" technology to combine 1,024 16-core CPUs, equaling the computational capacity of a total of 200,000 servers.

The Sunway is about 74 percent as fast as the Jaguar Supercomputer in the United States, which ranks third in the world, although the Sunway is less power-hungry, Pan added. The Sunway's power consumption is just 1 megawatt, much lower than the Jaguar's 7 megawatts.
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I like this very much.

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New objectives must be defined for next probe to the Red Planet

BEIJING - The loss of China's first interplanetary probe, attached to an ill-fated Russian spacecraft, has cost scientists the chance to conduct breakthrough research on Mars, a top scientist said.

New objectives must now be considered for a Mars exploration mission, probably in 2016, said Wu Ji, director-general of the National Space Science Center under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in an exclusive interview with China Daily.

Yinghuo-1, launched in November two years later than originally planned from Kazakhstan on a Russian spacecraft, crashed into the Pacific Ocean on Monday.

The Russian Phobos-Grunt spacecraft the probe hitchhiked on failed to fire two booster engines that would have set it on course for the Red Planet. No reason was given for the failure of the booster engines.

Wu said that the failure cost the center a chance to conduct research and come up with breakthrough findings before their counterparts in the United States.

"We had hoped that the micro-satellite could help us discover something about the atmosphere on Mars," Wu said.

The US will send a probe to Mars in 2013, he added.

As China's first probe to Mars, the Yinghuo-1 mission had been expected to explore the Red Planet's environment, climate history and look into why water had vanished from the surface, he said.

Those specific objectives were selected by the center in 2006 to differentiate China's mission from those of other countries. "Previous missions mainly focused on whether there is water and life on the planet, consequently humans have limited knowledge of the Martian atmosphere," he said.

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, scheduled to launch in 2013, also aims to find about the Red Planet's atmosphere and climate history, among other tasks.

The MAVEN mission was selected in 2008 from 20 proposals submitted in response to a NASA Announcement of Opportunity in 2006.

Both countries are interested in the Martian atmosphere as it continues to be a cause of intrigue for scientists.

Mars once had a denser atmosphere that supported the presence of water on the surface. But it suddenly changed and scientists are unsure as to what exactly was behind it.

Wu said that with Yinghuo-1's failure, China has to wait until 2016, at the earliest, to launch a Mars probe.

"This means that the US MAVEN mission will get there before we do, and therefore we have to change our goals for the next Mars exploration mission to avoid findings being repeated," he said.

The China National Space Administration declined to comment on Yinghuo-1's failure and future Mars exploration plans.

According to a white paper, China's Space Activities in 2011, released by the China National Space Administration last month, China is conducting studies on a preliminary plan for an independent exploration of Mars.

Though the government has not yet approved the project, scientists agreed that exploring the planet is an inevitable route for China, a growing space power.

Ye Peijian, chief scientist of deep space exploration at the China Academy of Space Technology, told China Daily last year that China has developed the ability to closely monitor the Red Planet. This is due to a deep space network under construction, progress in developing the necessary launch vehicle and two lunar satellites.

China has launched two lunar probes since 2007, believed to be the first step of space exploration.

It marked a key success in November last year when it completed its first docking in orbit above Earth, a crucial step toward fulfilling its ambition to set up a manned space station by 2020.

In 2003, it became the third country to send humans into space, after Russia and the US.

Wu said the failure of Yinghuo-1 will not prevent China from conducting more interplanetary explorations.

Some 40 Mars probes have been launched in the past five decades but two-thirds have ended in failure.

escobar said:

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View attachment 5984
Standing next to Paul Otellini (right), president and chief executive officer of Intel Corp, Liu Jun, senior vice-president of Lenovo Group Ltd, holds a Lenovo K800, the first smartphone powered by Intel chips, during the Intel presentation at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas

The first smartphone equipped with a chip made by the technology company Intel Corp will go on sale in China in the second quarter of the year.

Lenovo Group Ltd - the largest PC maker in China and second-largest in the world by sales - made that announcement on Wednesday at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

China is the largest market for smartphones and is expected to see more than 100 million smartphone shipments this year, according to the US-based research company IHS iSuppli Corp. Lenovo's K800 smartphone is to come equipped with an Intel chip, marking the first time Intel has provided one of its devices for such a product.

For years, the Silicon Valley giant, whose chips are mainly used in personal computers, has struggled to move into the smartphone business.

Almost all smartphones and tablet PCs use chips from Qualcomm Inc, Broadcom Corp and similar companies. The designs for those chips often come from the British technology company ARM Holdings PLC, which is known for making products that have low energy consumption, helping batteries in Internet mobile devices last longer.

"The best of Intel computing is coming to smartphones," said Paul Otellini, Intel

president and CEO. "Our efforts with Lenovo and Motorola Mobility will help to establish Intel processors in smartphones and provide a solid foundation from which to build in 2012 and into the future."

According to iSuppli, the majority of smartphone shipments in China in the past few years were for the country's domestic market. But that is expected to change; experts believe about half of all smartphone shipments in 2015 will be exports.

"This new partnership means Lenovo, a Chinese company, is trying to attract customers by combining its strength in making PCs with the production of smartphones," said Wang Jiping, a senior analyst with the research company IDC China.

Liu Jun, Lenovo senior vice-president and president of the company's Mobile Internet and Digital Home Business Group, joined Otellini at the consumer electronics show to introduce the Lenovo K800 smartphone, which contains Intel technology and runs on Google Inc's Android operating system.

Liu said the smartphone will be available in China in the second quarter of the year and will run on a network operated by China Unicom Ltd, the second-largest telecommunications carrier in China.

"We sold 6.5 million phones this past quarter, half of which were smartphones," said Yang Yuanqing, CEO and president of Lenovo.

This year, Chinese makers of mobile handsets are expected to nearly double the number of products they ship, bringing it to more than 100 million.

Beyond Lenovo, Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc plans in the second half of the year to release smartphones that also feature Intel Atom processors and use the Android operating system.

Intel said its partnerships with makers of mobile Internet devices will also concern tablet PC products and that its smartphones will be sold in more countries and regions.

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That's great to hear. I'm not a big fan of AMD computer chips. They tend to heat up quicker than the Intel ones.

wow, didnt realize lenovo has mobile phones. Makes sense to enter the smartphone market though, it is going to luvrative especially in china where sales are going increase quite alot i think. Btw, are the chips in PCs the same as those in smartphones?

getready said:

wow, didnt realize lenovo has mobile phones. Makes sense to enter the smartphone market though, it is going to luvrative especially in china where sales are going increase quite alot i think. Btw, are the chips in PCs the same as those in smartphones?

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It's a major group similar to Samsung, it even has real estate development and banking. But the core, the main cash cow is the thinkpad series.

Equation said:

That's great to hear. I'm not a big fan of AMD computer chips. They tend to heat up quicker than the Intel ones.

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I think Intel is coming from the wrong side, from PC and server chips, which need to be relatively powerful and in the case of Intel and AMD use the x86 instruction set, to produce chips for smart phones. It is easier to make simpler risc chips for smart phones and then increase their complexity to make them fit for tablets and then PCs and servers. I'm more interested in the ICube development.
Btw Intel's chip for smart phones is the Atom chip.