Bulletin Spring‧Summer 1993

News in Br ief A Supercomputer Installed Hong Kong's first massively parallel supercomputer was installed on the CUHK campus in March 1993. The HK$12 million machine is composed of more than 8,000 processing elements and can process 13 billion instructions in one second. A problem can be broken down into many parallel tasks to be executed on the machine simultaneously, so that a job that normally takes 8,000 steps to complete can now be done in a single step. Officiating at the installation ceremony on 23rd March were Prof. Charles K. Kao, the vice-chancellor, Mr. Bruce Dahl, general manager of Digital Equipment Hong Kong Ltd., which supplied the machine at a generous discount price of HK$4.5 million, and Prof. David Todd, chairman of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council, which provided a subsidy of $2.5 million for the equipment. The University itself invested $1.2 million in the project, and the shortfall was made up by contributions from other tertiary institutions in Hong Kong, who will share the use of the powerful computer. With the new supercomputer, the University's research capability will be greatly enhanced. An intelligent Chinese information processing project, which aims at producing computing software as powerful as current English language versions, will be the first to make use of the machine. Other projects include massively parallel computation, computational electromagnetics, simulation and design of very-large- scale integrated circuits, and three-dimensional image processing. Hong Kong-America Center Opens on CUHK Campus An independent organization to promote educational and cultural exchanges between the United States and Hong Kong was declared open on 27th April. Backed by educational organizations on both sides, the Hong Kong-America Center will embark on an ambitious programme to promote mutual understanding through its library resources, scholar- in-residence programme, teacher and student exchange programme, student advising service, seminars and symposiums. In Hong Kong, it aims not only to serve scholars and researchers interested in American studies, but also students and members of the public who are interested in knowing more about America. The general office of the centre is located on the sixth floor of the Tin Ka Ping Building on CUHK campus and affiliated to it are the Institute of International Education that manages a student advising unit, and the American Studies Resources Library, both of which find accommodation in the basement of the University Library Building. The centre's current and founding director is Prof. Lee C. Lee, a Fulbright Scholar from the Cornell University. Officiating at the opening ceremony were the chairman of the centre's Board of Governors, Mr. C. C. Tung of Orient Overseas (International) Ltd., and four NEWS IN BRIEF 21