Editor’s Note: As the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) will open soon, CCTV.com had produced a 20-episode special series, ‘Amazing China - A 5-year Miracle,’ that cover the hottest topics in the country during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first 5-year term in office. Our CCTV Panview team brings you a closer look...
Can you read this number?
It's "one hundred quadrillion". That's how many calculations China's new supercomputer – the Sunway TaihuLight – can perform in just one second!
This accomplishment was rewarded in 2016 with the Gordon Bell Prize, dubbed "the Nobel Prize in Global Computer Science.”
In second place，another Chinese computer，the Tianhe-2, which placed first in the previous year.
Until now, Chinese-manufactured supercomputers have placed first for three years in a row. And, in the list of the top 500 most powerful computers in the world, more than one third come from China!
But the Sunway's dazzling speed is not just a party trick. It has benefits for humanity, even life-saving ones! For example, it can detect and warn of an oncoming Tsunami, 10 to 20 minutes ahead of time, or produce a hundred years of Earth-climate simulation in 30 days.
In the words of Motoaki Saito, founder of Japanese semiconductor company PEZY Computing, China is producing the equivalent of F1 racing cars in the computing field, compared to the mere high-end cars produced by the U.S. and Japan.
But is China's computing industry resting on its laurels? Far from it! Now in the pipeline is the next generation Sunway E-class, which is expected to be 8 times faster than even TaihuLight! We're talking something in the order of one quintillion calculations per second! Sounds like it's burning! No worries! It will be equipped with a highly efficient water-cooling system!
But it's not just in computing that China is flirting with the Infinite! More high-tech gadgets are still on the way!
Also in 2016, China completed the world's largest single-dish radio telescope – known as "FAST," which stands for "Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope". It is like a huge and sensitive "ear", catching the "sound" from distant stars.
The "five-hundred meters" refers to the telescope's diameter, which is as large as 30 soccer fields – a hundred and fifty meters longer than that of the Arecibo Observatory in the U.S., which was the largest one before.
In 2016, this big "ear" has received high-quality electromagnetic waves from a pulsar located about 1,351 light-years away. But this is not considered as far enough, as it is able to receive signals from 13.7 billion light-years away.
Scientists are going to use this big "ear" to discover secrets hiding deeply in the space such as observing dark matter and dark energy, looking for the first generation celestial body, discovering neutron star--- black hole binary. It might even help us probe the birth of the universe, which could assist human beings in finding traces of aliens.
Standing among the world’s technological achievements of the past five years, China is the leader.
According to the U.S.based National Science Foundation – in its report "Science and Engineering Indicators" published in 2016 – China has risen to second place worldwide in science research and study, compared to tenth place just a decade ago.
These developments are mainly attributed to government support. Chinese President Xi Jinping has described this trajectory as progressing from "Made in China" to "Intellectually Manufactured in China" "China Resolution", and “China Standard”! Science and technology are regarded as the cornerstone of a powerful nation, a foundation on which creative talents can build.
In 2016, China spent more than 1.5 trillion yuan on scientific study and research, as much as the entire EU put together! While scientific research funding has stagnated in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, China's input has been on the increase by 10% a year.
In science and space fields, what other miracles is China expected to create in the future?
(The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Panview or CCTV.com. )
Panview offers a new window of understanding the world as well as China through the views, opinions, and analysis of experts. We also welcome outside submissions, so feel free to send in your own editorials to "globalopinion@vip.cntv.cn" for consideration.
