Computer Network Information Center,Chinese Academy of Sciences (CNIC,CAS)
The Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CNIC, CAS) is a subsidiary research institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), engaged mainly in the construction, operation and supportingservice of informatization of CAS, R&D of computer network technology, database technology as well as scientific engineering computation.Founded in April, 1995, CNIC is a research-supporting service institution evolved in the course of building up China Science and Technology Network (CSTNet) and Scientific Database. CSTNet, the earliest-Internet-connected network in China, is a nationwide network for the scientific and technical community, relevant government departments and hi-tech enterprises with a wide coverage of most provinces, cities and autonomous regions across the country and 1 million end-users. CSTNet has a bandwidth of 310M international channel linking the global Internet. The Scientific Database is the major scientific and technological information resources on the CSTNet with a total data volume of several TB. The website "China Popular Science Exhibition", based on the Scientific Database, has become the most welcomed website on popular science in China with the largest average page view count. And its mirror sites have been set up in Taiwan, US and North Europe respectively. Supercomputing environment is composed of four supercomputers, a number of servers and their peripherals. Supercomputers include a US SGI Power Challenge XL with the capacity of 6.4G FLOPS, a Japanese Hitachi SR2201 with the capacity of 9.6 G FLOPS, a domestic-made supercomputers Dawning 2000-II with the capacity of 117G FLOPS and a domestic-made supercomputers Legend (recently renamed Lenovo) Shengteng 6800 with the capacity of 4000G FLOPS. CNIC is also in charge of the operation and management of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). CNIC has undertaken several major research and engineering projects and won the 2nd and 3rd prizes of National Scientific and Technological Progress Award, and the special, 1st and 2nd prizes of the Scientific and Technological Progress Award of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Currently, the major tasks for CNIC include:
operation and management of CSTNet, R&D of the next generation Internet technologies and applications, operation and technical development of Scientific Database system, operation, management and application of the supercomputer system, operation and services of management information system, operation and management of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), and furthermore, CNIC is also the lead unit to implement the CAS informatization construction projects for the “10th Five-year Plan” period. In recent years, CNIC has conducted extensive and friendly international co-operations and academic exchanges with a lot of countries and regions such as US, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and HK.CNIC now has 170 formal employees, of whom one third are M.S. above holders. CNIC is also an educationalinstitution, approved by the Academic Degree Committee of the State Council to cultivate master- and doctor-degree graduate students.
In January, 2002, CNIC entered the Knowledge Innovation Program of CAS. In the next three to five years, CNIC will strive to build itself into the pivot of the informatization guarantee system of CAS, to become a prominent base for the research and application of advanced Internet technology as well as an influential base for training talents in the area of network information technology.
