Applied Technology

Supercomputer Put into Operation

On Jun. 15, the “Magic Cube”, a supercomputer with a computing speed over 100 trillion times per second, of which the computing speed ranks the first in Asia and the 10th in the world, was formally put into operation in the Shanghai Supercomputer Center and started to fulfill the first batch of computing tasks. Han Zheng, Mayor of Shanghai and Shi Erwei, Vice President of CAS attended the ceremony. The Magic Cube was co-developed by the National Research Center for Intelligent Computer Systems of the Institute of Computing Technology, CAS, Dawning Information Industry (Beijing) Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Supercomputer Center. It came off the production line in September 2008 in Tianjin. In the global fastest supercomputer list published in November 2008, the Magic Cube was the only one outside U.S.A. among the top ten supercomputers. The Magic Cube has 6,000 quad-core CPU chips which are distributed in 67 cabinets. Its peak computing speed reaches 200 trillion times per second.

New Step in Radar Technology

The Key Laboratory for Space Laser Communication and Inspection Technology, the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, CAS recently made phased breakthrough in their research on synthetic aperture laser imaging radar technology since 2008. They have realized concurrent range and azimuth imaging of two-dimensional targets with reduced-scale synthetic aperture laser imaging radar device in laboratory and the whole course operation of optical, optoelectronic and computer processing with synthetic aperture laser imaging radar. This is the third successful experiment of this technology that has ever reported in the world. The space optical structure used by the experimental system of the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics has a bright prospect in application. Meanwhile, as the concept and principle of micro-wave radar can not be directly transplanted, the research of synthetic aperture laser imaging radar technology is very challenging. In their research, the Key Laboratory for Space Laser Communication and Inspection Technology of the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics creatively proposed and solved a series of spatial domain optical issues, time domain optical and statistical optical issues and systemically developed general design, optical antenna, transmission/receiving optoelectronic system, graphic processing and other key technologies, which laid solid foundations for developing reduced-scale synthetic aperture laser imaging radar device in laboratory and future prototype unit.