A report in the organ of the people for mainland China said that a major programme launched by the country will aim at making breakthroughs in CPU design.
The report, in the People's Daily, claimed that within eight years, China will be the world's second biggest IC designer and producer of semiconductors.
China is believed to have developed its own version of Alpha microprocessors, and uses them in several of its top-secret military and other supercomputers.
Quite how it managed to do this, we don't really know.
The programme, spearheaded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, will also develop chips for use in home appliances, network comms, and information security.
This forms part of a parallel push in software, with other organisations designing OSes, databases, and Internet applications.
By 2010 China will be the second biggest semiconductor producer in the world, with its IT industry growing between 20 to 50 per cent, the paper claims.
News source: The Inquirer
