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[China, Taiwan] A Look at What's Cooking with Linux
Submitted by Willy Smith on 31 July, 2003 - 02:42.
With the aid of Babelfish and a little patience, you can surf the Chinese web and get a good look at what's going on. You probably already know about the Chinese version of Linux, called Red Flag Linux. But did you know that China now has its own microprocessor products? The second version of the Dragon chip is a full 64 bit design, and consumes less then 5 watts. As this article points out, the Chinese realize that they cannot fight against the current monopoly of Wintel and AMD unless they are able to provide a complete package, including processors, an operating system, and board designs for servers and PCs.
The Chinese also are organizing training programs; and a test center, which verifies Red Flag Linux compatibility with hardware, has recently been set up.
Not far away in Hong Kong, Culturecom, Transmeta and eForce have just formally agreed to work together developing and managing the Midori Linux system platform. Culturecom will be the first manufacturer of the Dragon chip. Its version, called the V-Dragon, has hardware acceleration support for a large number of Chinese characters. The article states the Culturecom already has commitments for 300K of the new chips.
China is also building supercomputers. This article tells of a design based on Linux and 2,000 AMD Opteron processors, which will be the world's third fastest at 10 Teraflops.
From across the straits, the Taiwan government announces the Golden Penguin Awards for the best Linux products. By doing this publicity and promotion they hope to encourage more R&D for Linux products.
Certainly these developments will take some time; but China is definitely going all out with a long-term view to make Linux a reality. Chinese culture demands that Confucian philosophy will be applied in these developments, which means that much consideration will be paid to how they will affect the social order.
Napoleon said China was a sleeping dragon, and it would make the world tremble when it awakes. Perhaps this is the dragon he was talking about, and he forgot to mention there was a penguin on the scene too.
- Willy Smith, reporting from Costa Rica
Re: [China, Taiwan] A Look at What's Cooking with Linux
Please be corrected.
The full name for Taiwan is the "Taiwan, ROC", the Republic of China; while that of so-called China is People's republic of China (?).
They are 2 different countries.
Re: [China, Taiwan] A Look at What's Cooking with Linux
They are one China. Both name have China, otherwise Taiwan will be Taiwan Republic.
Re: [China, Taiwan] A Look at What's Cooking with Linux
FYI, Taiwan and Mainland belong to one country (China) which is ripped apart by a civil war between the nationalists (ROC) and the communists (PRC), which has never been declared ended since it broke out in 1946.
Re: [China, Taiwan] A Look at What's Cooking with Linux
Thanks for your comments; I don't mean to offend you, and will endeavor to explain why I use the names China and Taiwan as I do.
I am aware of the correct titles for the two countries, just as I am aware that the correct title for [US] is the United States of America, and [Germany] is Bundesrepublik Deutschland.
However, I will continue to use the common Western differentiation of China and Taiwan in references to the countries, as I did in the title of this article; please notice I also made reference to "across the straits", which of course refers to the Taiwan Straits. The purpose of this website is not to teach people geography or political science, but rather to foster some awareness of what is going on with Linux, Free Software and related topics outside of their own respective cultures. My hope is that by giving a general overview of regions which are related by culture and language, some readers will have their curiosity sparked and they will do further research on their own. So while I appreciate your sensitivity to the issue, and agree that you have good reasons to be upset by the general lack of knowledge about the political differences between the two countries, I think it just clutters the webpage to insist on such detailed accuracy in place names. Thanks for your understanding.
- Editor
Re: [China, Taiwan] A Look at What's Cooking with Linux
yes, there's historical reasons. but that's passed. "taiwn is to china" almost the way "US is to UK".
TWO differenct countries !!!