US IBM launches Chinese smart city R and D base

US IBM and its Chinese Huaxun Zhongxing Technologies will launch a base in southwest China's Sichuan Province to research and develop "smart cities," futuristic urban centers where computing technology will improve infrastructure and public services, they announced.
The joint project with Chinese firm Sichuan Huaxun Zhongxing Technologies Co. Ltd follows their announcement on May 18 that they will build a service center dedicated to the big data and cloud computing that is necessary for smart cities, according to China's (Xinhua) News Agency.
Their Global Smart Cities R and D Center, a supporting industrial park and other accompanying projects will involve a total investment of 30 billion yuan about (4.88 billion US dollars).
Sunday also saw Huaxun Zhongxing Technologies join the OpenPOWER Foundation, at the invitation of IBM. The foundation was formed last August by IBM, Google, NVIDIA, Mellanox and TYAN and is dedicated to building customized servers.
The Sichuan company will build China's first OpenPOWER high-end server production line. The first server is expected to roll off the line by the end of this year.