News on China's scientific and technological development.

Tam

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Registered Member
Xinhua's Japanese language edition tweeted this. Robot tractors, yes robot tractors. Click on the tweet to watch the video.

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Machine translation:

China's self-driving tractor "Super Tractor No. 1" has started an autonomous driving test on farmland in Henan. During the test, the tractor planned the route automatically and avoided obstacles. “Super Tractor No. 1” was completed in October 2018 in Shenyang, Henan. It is considered the first electric tractor without a driver's seat in China.
 
now I read
5G base stations in Beijing to reach 10,000 at year-end
Xinhua| 2019-08-07 21:02:01
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There will be 10,000 5G base stations in Beijing by the end of 2019. China granted 5G licenses for commercial use in June, and many Chinese cities are adopting the 5G network to meet public demand.

Beijing will have more than 10,000 5G base stations by the end of the year, the municipal telecom authorities said Wednesday.

As of July, the capital city had already constructed over 7,800 5G base stations, mainly located in its urban core zones, venues for the horticultural expo and the 2022 Winter Olympics, as well as its sub-center of Tongzhou District, according to the Beijing Communications Administration.

The 5G network in the newly-built Beijing Daxing International Airport will be put into use when the airport starts operation at the end of September, the administration said.

More Chinese cities are adopting the 5G network to meet public demand. For example, the southern Chinese metropolis Guangzhou has built and opened more than 5,000 5G base stations.

In June, China granted 5G licenses for commercial use, marking the beginning of a new era in the country's telecom industry.

According to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, 5G technology is expected to create more than 8 million jobs by 2030.
 

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
via xyz
Huawei officially reveals Harmony OS, its first party operating system
Mishaal Rahman
4-6 minutes
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In the city of Dongguan, China, Huawei finally took the wraps off its long-rumored, first-party operating system. The OS, called Harmony OS, has been in development for several years, but it’s recently taken on a role as a key player in Huawei’s contingency plan since the U.S. enacted a trade ban on the Chinese technology company. At the Huawei Developer Conference, Huawei finally shared the first details about its in-house OS, but the company wasn’t ready to show off Harmony on smartphones just yet. Tomorrow, the company will show off Harmony OS on the Honor Vision TV. For now, Android remains the go-to mobile OS for Huawei and Honor smartphones and tablets.

Harmony OS is microkernel-based, like Google’s in-development Fuchsia OS. Huawei says that Fuchsia uses a “non-distributed design,” unlike Harmony OS. Huawei says this allows for flexible deployment on various devices, easing app development in all scenarios. To justify both of these claims, Huawei brings up that it is “hard to deliver a smooth experience across different devices with [a] huge amount of in Android and Linux core.” That’s because “multi-device interconnection [raises] requirements for security” and the “close-coupling between [the] app ecosystem and [the] hardware compromises [the] user experience and development efficiency.”

The use of a microkernel also improves security, according to Huawei. Huawei says it is using “formal verification methods” to secure the TEE kernel. Huawei says this technique is mainly applied to security-critical fields like aerospace and chipsets, “significantly contributing to system reliability and robustness.” The microkernel can be “scaled on demand for wider system security.” In closing, Huawei boasts an EAL 5+ certification level for the new OS.

Performance is theoretically better than Android and other Linux-based operating systems, according to slides shared by Huawei. Huawei says that Harmony OS uses a distributed virtual bus with a simplified protocol: Rather than 4 layers, there is only 1 layer in the protocol stack to “boost the payload efficiency.” The effects of this change to simplify interactions are “faster discovery and connections” of hardware like the display, cameras, speakers, etc. Unlike Android which uses the Linux kernel’s scheduling mechanism, Harmony OS uses a “deterministic latency engine” that provides “precise resource scheduling with real-time load analysis and forecasting and app characteristics matching.” The result is a 25.7% and 55.6% improvement in response latency and latency fluctuation respectively.

Harmony “decouples” the OS from the hardware, so developers can develop once and deploy across hardware. Developers will be able to use Huawei’s ARK Compiler to compile code from multiple languages like C/C++, Java, and Kotlin for Harmony OS. Huawei will be providing an IDE to support app development across multiple device types, including televisions, car kits, smart speakers, smartphones, smartwatches, and more. This IDE “automatically adapts to varied screen layouts, controls, and interactions” and “supports drag-and-drop operations and preview-oriented visual programming”. Harmony OS will not allow for root access, which Huawei says is a security risk on Android and other Linux-based operating systems. Finally, Huawei will be open-sourcing Harmony OS in the future.

Work on the new OS began 2 years ago with version 1.0 of the microkernel. In 2019, they accelerated work so the OS can work on more device types. Huawei says version 2.0 of its microkernel will be released next year while version 3.0 arrives in 2021. Huawei says they can switch to Harmony OS right now because the migration is not very difficult due to the nature of the microkernel; they boast they can switch from Android to Harmony in 1-2 days. However, the company is choosing to stick with Android on smartphones right now over consideration of its existing partners. Huawei says that its new OS represents an entirely new generation of operating systems as it enables AI capability in different scenarios from PCs, tablets, and other domains.

We’ll learn more about Huawei’s new operating system this week at Huawei’s Developer Conference.
 

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
Two things worth of noting from the reveal of Hongmeng OS (aka Harmony OS).
  • It is meant to be mobile OS, unlike the previous romure (or twisted quotation).
  • Android app (*.apk) can NOT be run sideloaded, it must be recompiled using the Ark compiler although the work is minimum, according to the following report.
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Harmony OS is not compatible with Android apps out-of-the-box, confirms Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group. That means you won’t be able to merely side-load any Android app of your choosing. In a press conference, Mr. Yu says that app developers will have to make “small changes” to their apps in order to compile them to run on Harmony OS. He states that it is “very easy” to transfer Android apps to Harmony OS.
 
via xyz
Huawei officially reveals Harmony OS, its first party operating system
Mishaal Rahman
4-6 minutes
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...
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Comme ce qu’il avait été annoncé, le plan B préparé depuis quelques années pour « le cas où » devient aujourd’hui le plan A, Huawei présente son propre OS appelé HarmonyOS, un OS développé non pas comme un OS mobile mais un OS Internet of Things.
Translated from French by
As announced, plan B, which has been prepared for a few years for the "where" now becomes plan A, Huawei presents its own OS called HarmonyOS, an OS developed not as a mobile OS but as an OS Internet of Things.
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Yesterday at 9:32 PM
... related is the tweet
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Comme ce qu’il avait été annoncé, le plan B préparé depuis quelques années pour « le cas où » devient aujourd’hui le plan A, Huawei présente son propre OS appelé HarmonyOS, un OS développé non pas comme un OS mobile mais un OS Internet of Things.
Translated from French by
As announced, plan B, which has been prepared for a few years for the "where" now becomes plan A, Huawei presents its own OS called HarmonyOS, an OS developed not as a mobile OS but as an OS Internet of Things.
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now
20:57, 10-Aug-2019
Huawei's first device using its own HarmonyOS makes debut
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Huawei's first device running on its homegrown Harmony operating system (OS) came to the spotlight just one day after the company released the much-anticipated OS at an annual developer conference on Friday.

The Honor Vision, along with the Honor Vision Pro, which have been widely rumored as Huawei's smart TV, are brought to the public by Huawei's CEO Richard Yu during the product launch.

Speculations around Huawei's market strategy in the TV sector have been heard many times. The company had earlier this year confirmed with CGTN Digital they are not planning on producing a TV, but a big-screen terminal.

It looks like today's smart screen is their answer. "The Honor Smart Screen is not a traditional TV, it's the future of television," said Honor's president George Zhao in a press release.

The company says the screen features a 6.9-millimeter ultra-thin body, a full metal bezel, as well as a 55-inch 4K UHD screen with a 94 percent screen-to-body ratio. The Pro model also has a 1080 pixel built-in pop-up AI camera that can angle down up to 10 degrees.

With the smart camera, users can switch video calls between the screen and the smartphone with low latency. The new device also has an Apple Airplay-like feature, which they called HONOR Magic-link. Users can stream videos, photos and music from their smartphone on the big screen.

As Huawei's first product with the new OS, the Honor Vision is embedded within three self-developed display chipsets. One of them is the HiSilicon "Honghu 818," which the company released at the Global Mobile Internet Conference on July 26. The three chipsets are designed to support the display, AI camera, and Wi-Fi function.

The two new products, including the standard model and the Pro version, can be pre-ordered for 3,799 yuan (about 538 U.S. dollars) and 4,799 yuan (about 680 U.S. dollars) respectively on some of the Chinese online e-commerce platforms.
 

Tam

Brigadier
Registered Member
Harmony OS will likely be on IOT and smart objects that don't require an extensive app library, such as smart TVs and smartwatches. The question of transition to smartphones is another matter. Samsung's own first party OS, Tizen, can only be seen now in smart TVs and watches.

There seems to be significant differences between Harmony OS and Android, like for instance, using a microkernel. Having its own OS project was smart to begin with, even without Trump or the trade war, as Google itself seems preparing to replace Android with its Fuschia OS. Ironically, among the first Fuschia OS devices that were tested on was Huawei devices.
 
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