title: Standard RAID levels

text: RAID 2, which is rarely used in practice, stripes data at the bit (rather than block) level, and uses a Hamming code for error correction. The disks are synchronized by the controller to spin at the same angular orientation (they reach index at the same time), so it generally cannot service multiple requests simultaneously. However, depending with a high rate Hamming code, many spindles would operate in parallel to simultaneously transfer data so that "very high data transfer rates" are possible as for example in the DataVault where 32 data bits were transmitted simultaneously.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: With all hard disk drives implementing internal error correction, the complexity of an external Hamming code offered little advantage over parity so RAID 2 has been rarely implemented; it is the only original level of RAID that is not currently used.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: RAID 3, which is rarely used in practice, consists of byte-level striping with a dedicated parity disk. One of the characteristics of RAID 3 is that it generally cannot service multiple requests simultaneously, which happens because any single block of data will, by definition, be spread across all members of the set and will reside in the same physical location on each disk. Therefore, any I/O operation requires activity on every disk and usually requires synchronized spindles.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: This makes it suitable for applications that demand the highest transfer rates in long sequential reads and writes, for example uncompressed video editing. Applications that make small reads and writes from random disk locations will get the worst performance out of this level.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: The requirement that all disks spin synchronously (in a lockstep) added design considerations that provided no significant advantages over other RAID levels. Both RAID 3 and RAID 4 were quickly replaced by RAID 5. RAID 3 was usually implemented in hardware, and the performance issues were addressed by using large disk caches.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: RAID 4 consists of block-level striping with a dedicated parity disk. As a result of its layout, RAID 4 provides good performance of random reads, while the performance of random writes is low due to the need to write all parity data to a single disk, unless the filesystem is RAID-4-aware and compensates for that.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: An advantage of RAID 4 is that it can be quickly extended online, without parity recomputation, as long as the newly added disks are completely filled with 0-bytes.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: In diagram 1, a read request for block A1 would be serviced by disk 0. A simultaneous read request for block B1 would have to wait, but a read request for B2 could be serviced concurrently by disk 1.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: RAID 5 consists of block-level striping with distributed parity. Unlike in RAID 4, parity information is distributed among the drives. It requires that all drives but one be present to operate. Upon failure of a single drive, subsequent reads can be calculated from the distributed parity such that no data is lost. RAID 5 requires at least three disks.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: There are many layouts of data and parity in a RAID 5 disk drive array depending upon the sequence of writing across the disks, that is:


title: Standard RAID levels

text: The figure to the right shows 1) data blocks written left to right, 2) the parity block at the end of the stripe and 3) the first block of the next stripe not on the same disk as the parity block of the previous stripe. It can be designated as a "Left Asynchronous" RAID 5 layout and this is the only layout identified in the last edition of "The Raid Book" published by the defunct "Raid Advisory Board." In a "Synchronous" layout the data first block of the next stripe is written on the same drive as the parity block of the previous stripe.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: In comparison to RAID 4, RAID 5's distributed parity evens out the stress of a dedicated parity disk among all RAID members. Additionally, write performance is increased since all RAID members participate in the serving of write requests. Although it will not be as efficient as a striping (RAID 0) setup, because parity must still be written, this is no longer a bottleneck.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: Since parity calculation is performed on the full stripe, small changes to the array experience "write amplification": in the worst case when a single, logical sector is to be written, the original sector and the according parity sector need to be read, the original data is removed from the parity, the new data calculated into the parity and both the new data sector and the new parity sector are written.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: RAID 6 extends RAID 5 by adding another parity block; thus, it uses block-level striping with two parity blocks distributed across all member disks.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: As in RAID 5, there are many layouts of RAID 6 disk arrays depending upon the direction the data blocks are written, the location of the parity blocks with respect to the data blocks and whether or not the first data block of a subsequent stripe is written to the same drive as the last parity block of the prior stripe. The figure to the right is just one of many such layouts.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: According to the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), the definition of RAID 6 is: "Any form of RAID that can continue to execute read and write requests to all of a RAID array's virtual disks in the presence of any two concurrent disk failures. Several methods, including dual check data computations (parity and Reed–Solomon), orthogonal dual parity check data and diagonal parity, have been used to implement RAID Level 6."


title: Standard RAID levels

text: RAID 6 does not have a performance penalty for read operations, but it does have a performance penalty on write operations because of the overhead associated with parity calculations. Performance varies greatly depending on how RAID 6 is implemented in the manufacturer's storage architecture—in software, firmware, or by using firmware and specialized ASICs for intensive parity calculations. RAID 6 can read up to the same speed as RAID 5 with the same number of physical drives.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: When either diagonal or orthogonal dual parity is used, a second parity calculation is necessary for write operations. This doubles CPU overhead for RAID-6 writes, versus single-parity RAID levels. When a Reed Solomon code is used, the second parity calculation is unnecessary. Reed Solomon has the advantage of allowing all redundancy information to be contained within a given stripe.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: It is possible to support a far greater number of drives by choosing the parity function more carefully. The issue we face is to ensure that a system of equations over the finite field formula_1 has a unique solution, so we will turn to the theory of polynomial equations. Consider the Galois field formula_2 with formula_3. This field is isomorphic to a polynomial field formula_4 for a suitable irreducible polynomial formula_5 of degree formula_6 over formula_1. We will represent the data elements formula_8 as polynomials formula_9 in the Galois field. Let formula_10 correspond to the stripes of data across hard drives encoded as field elements in this manner. We will use formula_11 to denote addition in the field, and concatenation to denote multiplication. The reuse of formula_11 is intentional: this is because addition in the finite field formula_1 represents to the XOR operator, so computing the sum of two elements is equivalent to computing XOR on the polynomial coefficients.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: A generator of a field is an element of the field such that formula_14 is different for each non-negative formula_15. This means each element of the field, except the value formula_16, can be written as a power of formula_17 A finite field is guaranteed to have at least one generator. Pick one such generator formula_18, and define formula_19 and formula_20 as follows:


title: Standard RAID levels

text: As before, the first checksum formula_19 is just the XOR of each stripe, though interpreted now as a polynomial. The effect of formula_14 can be thought of as the action of a carefully chosen linear feedback shift register on the data chunk. Unlike the bit shift in the simplified example, which could only be applied formula_6 times before the encoding began to repeat, applying the operator formula_18 multiple times is guaranteed to produce formula_25 unique invertible functions, which will allow a chunk length of formula_6 to support up to formula_27 data pieces.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: If one data chunk is lost, the situation is similar to the one before. In the case of two lost data chunks, we can compute the recovery formulas algebraically. Suppose that formula_28 and formula_29 are the lost values with formula_30, then, using the other values of formula_8, we find constants formula_32 and formula_33:


title: Standard RAID levels

text: We can solve for formula_34 in the second equation and plug it into the first to find formula_35, and then formula_36.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: Unlike P, The computation of Q is relatively CPU intensive, as it involves polynomial multiplication in formula_4. This can be mitigated with a hardware implementation or by using an FPGA.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: The following table provides an overview of some considerations for standard RAID levels. In each case, array space efficiency is given as an expression in terms of the number of drives, ; this expression designates a fractional value between zero and one, representing the fraction of the sum of the drives' capacities that is available for use. For example, if three drives are arranged in RAID 3, this gives an array space efficiency of ; thus, if each drive in this example has a capacity of 250 GB, then the array has a total capacity of 750 GB but the capacity that is usable for data storage is only 500 GB. Different RAID configurations can also detect failure during so called data scrubbing.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: Historically disks were subject to lower reliability and RAID levels were also used to detect which disk in the array had failed in addition to that a disk had failed. Though as noted by Patterson et. al. even at the inception of RAID many (though not all) disks were already capable of finding internal errors using error correcting codes. In particular it is/was sufficient to have a mirrored set of disks to detect a failure, but two disks were not sufficient to detect "which" had failed in a disk array without error correcting features. Modern RAID arrays depend for the most part on a disk's ability to identify itself as faulty which can be detected as part of a scrub. The redundant information is used to reconstruct the missing data, rather than to identify the faulted drive. Drives are considered to have faulted if they experience an unrecoverable read error, which occurs after a drive has retried many times to read data and failed. Enterprise drives may also report failure in far fewer tries than consumer drives as part of TLER to ensure a read request is fulfilled in a timely manner.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: In measurement of the I/O performance of five filesystems with five storage configurations—single SSD, RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, and RAID 5 it was shown that F2FS on RAID 0 and RAID 5 with eight SSDs outperforms EXT4 by 5 times and 50 times, respectively. The measurements also suggest that the RAID controller can be a significant bottleneck in building a RAID system with high speed SSDs.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: Combinations of two or more standard RAID levels. They are also known as RAID 0+1 or RAID 01, RAID 0+3 or RAID 03, RAID 1+0 or RAID 10, RAID 5+0 or RAID 50, RAID 6+0 or RAID 60, and RAID 10+0 or RAID 100.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: In addition to standard and nested RAID levels, alternatives include non-standard RAID levels, and non-RAID drive architectures. Non-RAID drive architectures are referred to by similar terms and acronyms, notably JBOD ("just a bunch of disks"), SPAN/BIG, and MAID ("massive array of idle disks").


title: AK-12

text: The AK-12 is a Russian assault rifle chambered in 5.45×39mm designed and manufactured by the Kalashnikov Concern (formerly Izhmash), making it the fifth generation of Kalashnikov rifles.


title: AK-12

text: The Kalashnikov Concern also offers a variant of the AK-12 chambered in 7.62×39mm, known as the AK-15 due to the request of the Russian military. A variant chambered in 5.56×45mm NATO was later unveiled, known as the AK-19 upon the request of international clients. Compact variants of the AK-12 and AK-15 are also under development, respectively the AK-12K and AK-15K, which feature a shorter barrel.


title: AK-12

text: The AK-12 project began in 2011 by the IZHMASH factory, which became part of the Kalashnikov Concern as a private venture, in an attempt to participate in the "Ratnik" trials which were held by the Russian army. It was further developed by the Kalashnikov Concern, throughout its development and evaluation stage it has received multiple modifications to meet the Russian military's standard and to address the Russian army's concerns regarding the cost and issues in fully automatic fire of the earlier prototype models. It went through several revisions in order to improve upon the "range of defects" that were discovered on the earlier prototype models that were derived from the AK-200. These were later abandoned in favour of the proven and improved AK-400, which became the finalised model of the AK-12.


title: AK-12

text: On the 25th of May 2010, the Russian media published a Russian Ministry of Defence statement that the AK-12 rifle was to be tested in 2011. An early prototype model, the AK-200), was presented to the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin during his official visit to inspect the products of the Izhmash arms manufacturing plant in Izhevsk. It was apparently a basic AK-74, thus chambered in 5.45×39mm cartridge. The prototype was fitted with a large-capacity 60-round casket magazine. On the early prototype model, the traditional locations of the cocking handle, safety lever, and fire selector remained unchanged, but the AK-12's production model featured revisions to all of these features.


title: AK-12

text: In January 2012, the Russian Deputy Defence Minister announced that the Russian Army would not be buying the AK-12, as they had millions of surplus AK-74 assault rifles, and over concerns of the financial state of Izhmash. Despite this, the Russian Ministry of Defence began trials of the rifle on 2 November 2012. It was tested for its effectiveness when exposed to freezing cold, desert heat, humidity, dust and impacts. By 23 November 2012, trials were about 80 percent complete. During these initial tests, the AK-12 was found to have a "range of defects". The specific problems were not revealed, as they were considered "the developer's confidential information". Izhmash reported that the faults were fixable and that the trials precisely highlighted weaknesses in the design for changes to be incorporated. The preliminary tests of the AK-12 were completed on 30 November 2012. Izhmash then worked on fixing the problems with the rifle that occurred during the trials. Even though the Russian Army stated they would not introduce a new rifle in the near future, state acceptance trials were started in June 2013, and concluded in the middle of 2013. Series production was due to begin by the end of 2013. Izhmash prepared 30 prototypes for state trials. The company announced that they had the capacity to produce 1 million rifles per year for buyers.


title: AK-12

text: On 16 September 2013, the Deputy Chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission of Russia said the Russian Army would start receiving AK-12 assault rifles chambered in 5.45 mm and 7.62 mm in 2014. The new rifle would be put into service along with the new handguns, machine guns and sniper rifles. The AK-12 basic platform allows for nearly 20 different modifications to change into other configurations. State trials were to begin in fall 2013. However, on 23 September 2013, the "Izvestiya" tabloid wrote that, according to an anonymous source, the AK-12 will not be adopted or even undergo state tests due to shortcomings in preliminary tests. The AK-12 was to replace three previous of AK models and standardise assault rifles in the Russian military. The government's rejection of the AK-12 was because senior commanders said they had millions of stockpiled AK-74 models and did not need a new rifle. Though, trials will continue for law enforcement agencies.


title: AK-12

text: However, on 23 December 2014, the Russian Army announced that the AK-12, as well as the KORD 6P67, had passed state trials and would be accepted into service with operational units for evaluation. It was expected that both weapons would begin being trialled operationally by Russian forces by March 2015.


title: AK-12

text: On 6 September 2016, it was reported that Kalashnikov Concern introduced the final production model of the AK-12, which is derived from the well proven AK-400 (Base Prototype) and has replaced the earlier prototype models. There were two base models that were introduced, the AK-12 which is chambered in 5.45×39mm cartridge and the AK-15 which is chambered in 7.62×39mm cartridge. Kalashnikov Concern also introduced a new squad automatic weapon that is chambered in 5.45×39mm cartridge, the RPK-16 which is based on the traditional Kalashnikov layout and design and has several novel technical and ergonomic features derived from the AK-12 program. It was also reported that the final production model of the AK-12 and AK-15 began participating in troop trials with the Russian Army, where it competed against the Degtyarov KORD 6P67 and KORD 6P68 balanced action assault rifles. The AK-12 completed its operational testing and passed military field tests in June 2017. Both AK-12 and AK-15 completed testing in December 2017. In January 2018 it was announced that the AK-12 and AK-15 have been adopted by the Russian military.


title: AK-12

text: Prior to the United States sectoral sanctions against the Russian arms industry in July 2014, the United States civilian weapons market accounted for 90% of the Kalashnikov Concern civilian weapons sales. In 2014, Kalashnikov Concern planned to sell 200,000 Russian manufactured weapons in the United States market through its sole US distributor, the RWC Group. The sales of Russian manufactured Kalashnikovs to the United States significantly reduced both the production costs of current Kalashnikov weapons and the development costs of future Kalashnikov models that the Russian government purchases.


title: AK-12

text: Testing of the AK-12 concluded in December 2017, with the weapon being adopted by the Russian Army in January 2018.


title: AK-12

text: In August 2018, the Armenian Ministry of Defence announced that they had secured the rights to manufacture the AK-12 and AK-15 in Armenia.


title: AK-12

text: The rifle's first confirmed use in a conflict was during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine by some units of Russian forces. Ukrainian forces have captured a few AK-12s which have become popular war trophies, in addition to limited usage by members of the Territorial Defense Forces.


title: AK-12

text: The cancelled prototype model, based on the AK-200, uses the same gas-operated long-stroke piston system of the previous Kalashnikov rifles, but many features are radically different from the other rifles in its family. The light version has the ability to change calibres by swapping the barrels. It is chambered in 5.45×39mm cartridge as for the standard configuration and can be either changed to the 7.62×39mm or 5.56×45mm NATO cartridge. Other intermediate calibres are also expected. The heavy version will chamber the larger 7.62×51mm NATO cartridge. It is fed through the standard AK-74M 30-round magazines and can also accept the 45-round magazines from the RPK-74. The 7.62×39mm Soviet-chambered version is compatible with the AKM's 30-round magazine and RPK's 40-round box magazine and 75-round drum magazines. The magazines specifically for the cancelled prototype model of the AK-12 includes a 30-round magazine with a bolt-catch actuator, a 60-round quad-stack magazine and a 95-round drum.


title: AK-12

text: The cancelled prototype model of the AK-12 is very different from its predecessors ergonomically. It features a telescoping buttstock that is in-line with the barrel for better recoil control and a stock latch, allowing for it to be folded to either side of the rifle. It has a rubber height-adjustable cheek piece and butt plate. The cocking handle is moved forward and can be attached to both sides for ambidextrous use. The receiver is hinged and more rigid with a Picatinny rail for mounting optics. There are several other accessory rails on the weapon, including on both sides, on the bottom and on the top of the handguard (in-line with the receiver for a longer monolithic rail), and on top of the gas block. There is also a lug under the gas chamber that can mount a GP-34 grenade launcher and another one under the front sight holder mounts a bayonet. The rear iron sight is further back on the receiver and can be set for aiming when the stock is extended or folded. The magazine release is in the same position but can be used by the trigger finger to detach magazines. In a departure from previous AK-type rifles, the dust cover safety selector has been replaced with an ambidextrous fire selector; it has four positions safe, semi-automatic, three-round burst fire and fully automatic fire. Other improvements include a smaller ejection port, more ergonomic pistol grip, improved rifling and a muzzle brake with a 22 mm threading that can fire NATO-standard rifle grenades.


title: AK-12

text: The fully automatic rate of fire of the cancelled prototype model of the AK-12 is around 600–650 rounds per minute. A unique feature of the prototype is its capability to fire at 1,000 rounds per minute on its three-round hyper burst setting.


title: AK-12

text: The final production model of the AK-12 is based on the well-proven AK-400 prototype. A major technical alteration in the AK-400 prototype versus legacy AKs was the free-floating of the barrel from the handguards. On all previous AK rifles, the lower handguard of the rifle was mounted directly on the barrel with a stamped steel handguard retainer. As a result, a force exerted on the handguard affects the zero of the rifle. In the AK-400 prototype, the handguard is attached to the receiver and to a revised more rigid and non-removable gas tube, allowing the barrel to remain relatively isolated and flex and vibrate unrestricted for increased accuracy. The AK-12 is chambered in 5.45×39mm and due to the Russian military requirements, Kalashnikov Concern also offers the rifle in 7.62×39mm cartridge, designated as the AK-15. Short-barrelled versions of the AK-12 and AK-15 are also being worked on, designated as the AK-12K and AK-15K.


title: AK-12

text: With the final production model, it addresses the Russian Army's concerns regarding the issues in fully automatic fire and the cost of the earlier prototype models and is also expected to be much cheaper to build. It also incorporates many of the same improvements developed for the earlier prototype models of the AK-12 but also improves the strength and resilience of some of the components of the rifle.


title: AK-12

text: The distinctive quick detachable muzzle brake features a large expansion chamber, two symmetrical vertical cuts at the forward end of the brake and three non symmetrical positioned vent holes to counteract muzzle rise and climb as well as lateral shift to the right and features a crown-shaped glass breaker at the end. A flat plate near the end of the brake produces a forward thrust when emerging exhaust gases strike its surface, greatly reducing recoil.


title: AK-12

text: The rifle features an ergonomic pistol grip with an internal maintenance kit storage room, a retractable side-folding telescoping 4 position shoulder stock which is adjustable for length of pull and height adjustable buttpad and has storage room for a 3-piece cleaning rod and a free floating handguard with ventilation holes. The dust cover firing modes and safety selector lever is similar to previous AK-type rifles, but has extensions added for making it possible to manipulate the lever with the right hand index finger or left hand thumb. This style of selector lever was and is sold as an aftermarket part outside Russia and is known in the United States as the Krebs-style safety. The AK-12 uses a range and windage adjustable aperture-type rear tangent iron sight calibrated in increments from . The front sight is a shrouded post adjustable for elevation in the field. The Warsaw Pact side dovetail rail for mounting optical sights on legacy AKs and other small arms was replaced by a Picatinny rail for mounting sights. The rifle can also be fitted with a quick detachable sound suppressor and a bayonet. To further increase the combat effectiveness of the rifle, it can be equipped with a 40 mm GP-25/GP-34 single-shot underbarrel grenade launcher.


title: AK-12

text: The design of the final production model of the AK-12 shares more in common with the existing AK-74M than its earlier prototype models, but will not be a retrofit to existing assault rifles. Several improvements were made to the AK-12's receiver, such as an improved and far more rigid top cover interface and a new free-floating barrel. The final production model of the AK-12 reportedly outperforms the existing AK-74 by at least the margin requested by the Russian government.


title: AK-12

text: The final production model of the AK-12 has a cyclic rate of fire of around 600–650 rounds per minute. The three-round hyper burst feature from the earlier prototype models was replaced by a traditional two-round burst feature in the final production model.


title: AK-12

text: The final production model of the AK-12 is based on the AK-400 prototype model, which is said to be more reliable, more accurate and better suited to the latest Russian military requirements. The AK-12 is chambered in 5.45×39mm, features a barrel length of , a maximum firing range of , and a standard magazine capacity of 30 rounds. It features a Picatinny rail on the top of the receiver for mounting various optical sights and on the top, bottom and sides of the handguard to mount various accessories. The new box magazines are backwards compatible with 5.45×39mm magazines and feature a slant angle on the bottom rear portion to provide a more rigid and stable contact with the ground when the gun is rested on the magazine. It also features witness windows at the 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 rounds positions to indicate the current loaded amount of rounds. The witness windows numbering indicate the position of the follower inside the magazine. The follower has glow in the dark paint applied to both sides that can be viewed through the witness windows during low light conditions. When the new box magazine is fully loaded, a pin protrudes on the baseplate providing a possibility of a visual and tactile identification of a fully loaded magazine in the pouch. The AK-12 is also compatible with preceding 5.45×39mm box magazines from the AK-74, RPK-74, and the 95-round drum magazine from the RPK-16.


title: AK-12

text: An updated AK-12 was revealed during the ARMY-2020 exhibition. The updates are no major redesign, but centred around ergonomic improvements such as a lightweight polymer L-shaped side-folding telescoping 6 position shoulder stock which is adjustable for length of pull, ergonomic polymer pistol grip and trigger guard unit, and updated rotary diopter rear sight.


title: AK-12

text: During the ARMY-2021 exhibition, an optional cheek riser (a to ergonomic preferences and sight axis height adjustable comb piece) was shown on the shoulder stock. Also shown were standard length barrelled AK-12SP and short-barrelled AK-12SPK variants developed for Russian special forces use. The AK-12SP features lower and upper aluminium upper handguard/gas tube covers with M-LOK slots for direct accessory attachment onto the "negative space" (hollow slot) mounting points. The short-barrelled AK-12SPK features an AK-12 pattern lower handguard with an aluminium upper handguard/gas tube cover that has M-LOK slots.


title: AK-12

text: During the ARMY-2017 exhibition, Kalashnikov Concern displayed prototypes of the AK-12K, which is a short-barrelled variant of the AK-12.


title: AK-12

text: The AK-15 is a variant of the AK-12 chambered in 7.62×39mm. Both the AK-12 and AK-15 have been developed by the Kalashnikov Group under the "Ratnik" program and have been accepted into Russian military service. The only difference between the AK-12 and the AK-15 is their calibre. The AK-15 weighs when empty, a full-length of , a barrel length of , barrel twist rate of , and a standard magazine capacity of 30 rounds.


title: AK-12

text: During the ARMY-2017 exhibition, Kalashnikov Concern displayed prototypes of the AK-15K, which is a short-barrelled variant of the AK-15.


title: AK-12

text: Revealed during the International Military-Technical Forum ARMY-2020 exhibition, the AK-19 is a variant of the AK-12 chambered in 5.56×45mm NATO upon the request of potential international clients. It was later unveiled to the public during the IDEX 2021. Like the updated AK-12, that was also revealed during the ARMY-2020 exhibition, the AK-19 features a redesigned polymer L-shaped stock, a redesigned pistol grip and trigger guard, and a new rotary dioptre rear sight. The AK-19 also features a birdcage-type flash suppressor that features slots for a quick detachable sound suppressor. The rifle weighs when empty, has a barrel length of , a full-length of 935mm (36.8 in), and a standard box magazine capacity of 30 rounds.


title: AK-12

text: The AK-308 is a battle rifle under development in 2018 upon request of potential international clients outside Russia. It is based on the AK-12's design and is chambered in 7.62×51mm NATO (.308 Winchester). The basic Kalashnikov assault rifle design which is intended for intermediate calibres has been stretched and strengthened to handle the extra bolt thrust produced by a full-power ammunition. The rifle has a cyclic rate of around 700 rounds per minute, features a long barrel, weighs when empty and has a 20-round magazine capacity. In addition, the AK-308 uses a dioptre sight line. It has the ability to attach accessories also used by the AK-12. The full length of the rifle is .


title: AK-12

text: The development of the AK-200 rifle family was stopped around 2011 but resumed around 2016. The AK-200 series are somewhat heavier and less advanced compared to the AK-12 series, but also cheaper. As of 2018, 200-series Kalashnikov assault rifles, which include a complete family, are offered for export sales and for domestic law enforcement users. The AK-200 series of rifles are based on the AK-100 rifle series and the AK-12. They can be chambered in 5.45×39mm, 5.56×45mm NATO and 7.62×39mm, and use a barrel and gas system assembly similar to that of the AK-74M. AK-12 alike improvements added include Picatinny rails, a new pistol grip, a new adjustable buttstock and a new flash hider. They feed from 30-round magazines, and can be compatible with drum magazines from the RPK and RPK-74.


title: AK-12

text: AK-200 series assault rifles are supplied to government customers in Russia and are also ready to be exported. Russia and India on March 3, 2019, inaugurated a plant that will produce AK-203 assault rifles.


title: AK-12

text: The RPK-16 squad automatic weapon (the number 16 indicates the year 2016, when the development first started) is Kalashnikov's response to the "Tokar-2" program, where it competed against Degtyaryov's submission. In 2018, the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation have signed a contract concerning the procurement of the RPK-16, and is expected to take over the role of the RPK-74 in the Russian Armed Forces.


title: AK-12

text: The RPK-16 is chambered in 5.45×39mm which features the traditional Kalashnikov gas-operated long-stroke piston system, and shares several novel technical and ergonomic features derived from the AK-12 program. Such as a Picatinny rail on the top of the receiver for mounting various optical sights and on the bottom of the handguard to mount the Picatinny rail mounted detachable bipod instead of the fixed bipod of the RPK-74, an ergonomic pistol grip and a folding buttstock, and two main barrel lengths; a long barrel (when it is applied or configured for the light machine gun role) and a short barrel (when it is applied or configured for the assault rifle role). Its design enables it to have an interchangeable barrels that can easily be removed, and the ability to quickly attach a detachable suppressor. It has a combat weight of , a full-length of , a cyclic rate of fire of 700 rounds per minute, an accuracy range of . It primarily uses a 95-round drum magazine and is backwards compatible with box magazines from the AK-74 and RPK-74.


title: AK-12

text: After receiving feedback on the performance of the weapon, the Kalashnikov Concern has begun development on the RPL-20 (20 indicating 2020) belt-fed light machine gun also chambered in 5.45×39mm and with a very similar rate of fire. Kalashnikov Concern has so far created at least one functional prototype. If adopted, the gun will become the first light machine gun to be used by Russian forces since the RPD that isn't magazine-fed or of the standard Kalashnikov pattern.


title: Sudoku

text: Sudoku (; ; originally called Number Place) is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. In classic Sudoku, the objective is to fill a 9 × 9 grid with digits so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3 × 3 subgrids that compose the grid (also called "boxes", "blocks", or "regions") contain all of the digits from 1 to 9. The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid, which for a well-posed puzzle has a single solution.


title: Sudoku

text: French newspapers featured variations of the Sudoku puzzles in the 19th century, and the puzzle has appeared since 1979 in puzzle books under the name Number Place. However, the modern Sudoku only began to gain widespread popularity in 1986 when it was published by the Japanese puzzle company Nikoli under the name Sudoku, meaning "single number". It first appeared in a U.S. newspaper, and then "The Times" (London), in 2004, thanks to the efforts of Wayne Gould, who devised a computer program to rapidly produce unique puzzles.


title: Sudoku

text: Number puzzles appeared in newspapers in the late 19th century, when French puzzle setters began experimenting with removing numbers from magic squares. "Le Siècle", a Paris daily, published a partially completed 9×9 magic square with 3×3 subsquares on November 19, 1892. It was not a Sudoku because it contained double-digit numbers and required arithmetic rather than logic to solve, but it shared key characteristics: each row, column and subsquare added up to the same number.


title: Sudoku

text: On July 6, 1895, "Le Siècle" rival, "La France", refined the puzzle so that it was almost a modern Sudoku and named it ('diabolical magic square'). It simplified the 9×9 magic square puzzle so that each row, column, and broken diagonals contained only the numbers 1–9, but did not mark the subsquares. Although they were unmarked, each 3×3 subsquare did indeed comprise the numbers 1–9, and the additional constraint on the broken diagonals led to only one solution.


title: Sudoku

text: These weekly puzzles were a feature of French newspapers such as "L'Écho de Paris" for about a decade, but disappeared about the time of World War I.


title: Sudoku

text: The modern Sudoku was most likely designed anonymously by Howard Garns, a 74-year-old retired architect and freelance puzzle constructor from Connersville, Indiana, and first published in 1979 by Dell Magazines as Number Place (the earliest known examples of modern Sudoku). Garns's name was always present on the list of contributors in issues of "Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games" that included Number Place, and was always absent from issues that did not. He died in 1989 before getting a chance to see his creation as a worldwide phenomenon. Whether or not Garns was familiar with any of the French newspapers listed above is unclear.


title: Sudoku

text: The puzzle was introduced in Japan by , president of the Nikoli puzzle company, in the paper "Monthly Nikolist" in April 1984 as , which can be translated as "the digits must be single", or as "the digits are limited to one occurrence" (In Japanese, "dokushin" means an "unmarried person"). The name was later abbreviated to "Sudoku" (数独), taking only the first kanji of compound words to form a shorter version. "Sudoku" is a registered trademark in Japan and the puzzle is generally referred to as or, more informally, a shortening of the two words, . In 1986, Nikoli introduced two innovations: the number of givens was restricted to no more than 32, and puzzles became "symmetrical" (meaning the givens were distributed in rotationally symmetric cells). It is now published in mainstream Japanese periodicals, such as the "Asahi Shimbun".


title: Sudoku

text: In 1997, Hong Kong judge Wayne Gould saw a partly completed puzzle in a Japanese bookshop. Over six years, he developed a computer program to produce unique puzzles rapidly. Knowing that British newspapers have a long history of publishing crosswords and other puzzles, he promoted Sudoku to "The Times" in Britain, which launched it on November 12, 2004 (calling it Su Doku). The first letter to "The Times" regarding Su Doku was published the following day on November 13 from Ian Payn of Brentford, complaining that the puzzle had caused him to miss his stop on the tube. Sudoku puzzles rapidly spread to other newspapers as a regular feature.


title: Sudoku

text: The rapid rise of Sudoku in Britain from relative obscurity to a front-page feature in national newspapers attracted commentary in the media and parody (such as when "The Guardian" "G2" section advertised itself as the first newspaper supplement with a Sudoku grid on every page). Recognizing the different psychological appeals of easy and difficult puzzles, "The Times" introduced both, side by side, on June 20, 2005. From July 2005, Channel 4 included a daily Sudoku game in their teletext service. On August 2, the BBC's program guide "Radio Times" featured a weekly Super Sudoku with a 16×16 grid.


title: Sudoku

text: In the United States, the first newspaper to publish a Sudoku puzzle by Wayne Gould was "The Conway Daily Sun" (New Hampshire), in 2004.


title: Sudoku

text: The world's first live TV Sudoku show, "Sudoku Live", was a puzzle contest first broadcast on July 1, 2005, on Sky One. It was presented by Carol Vorderman. Nine teams of nine players (with one celebrity in each team) representing geographical regions competed to solve a puzzle. Each player had a hand-held device for entering numbers corresponding to answers for four cells. Phil Kollin of Winchelsea, England, was the series grand prize winner, taking home over £23,000 over a series of games. The audience at home was in a separate interactive competition, which was won by Hannah Withey of Cheshire.


title: Sudoku

text: Later in 2005, the BBC launched "SUDO-Q", a game show that combined Sudoku with general knowledge. However, it used only 4×4 and 6×6 puzzles. Four seasons were produced before the show ended in 2007.


title: Sudoku

text: In 2006, a Sudoku website published songwriter Peter Levy's Sudoku tribute song, but quickly had to take down the MP3 file due to heavy traffic. British and Australian radio picked up the song, which is to feature in a British-made Sudoku documentary. The Japanese Embassy also nominated the song for an award, with Levy doing talks with Sony in Japan to release the song as a single.


title: Sudoku

text: Sudoku software is very popular on PCs, websites, and mobile phones. It comes with many distributions of Linux. Software has also been released on video game consoles, such as the Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, the Game Boy Advance, Xbox Live Arcade, the Nook e-book reader, Kindle Fire tablet, several iPod models, and the iPhone. Many Nokia phones also had Sudoku. In fact, just two weeks after Apple Inc. debuted the online App Store within its iTunes Store on July 11, 2008, nearly 30 different Sudoku games were already in it, created by various software developers, specifically for the iPhone and iPod Touch. One of the most popular video games featuring Sudoku is "". Critically and commercially well-received, it generated particular praise for its Sudoku implementation and sold more than 8 million copies worldwide. Due to its popularity, Nintendo made a second "Brain Age" game titled "Brain Age", which has over 100 new Sudoku puzzles and other activities.


title: Sudoku

text: In June 2008, an Australian drugs-related jury trial costing over A$ 1 million was aborted when it was discovered that five of the twelve jurors had been playing Sudoku instead of listening to evidence.


title: Sudoku

text: Although the 9×9 grid with 3×3 regions is by far the most common, many other variations exist. Sample puzzles can be 4×4 grids with 2×2 regions; 5×5 grids with "pentomino" regions have been published under the name Logi-5; the World Puzzle Championship has featured a 6×6 grid with 2×3 regions and a 7×7 grid with six "heptomino" regions and a disjoint region. Larger grids are also possible, or different irregular shapes (under various names such as "Suguru", "Tectonic", "Jigsaw Sudoku" etc.). "The Times" offers a 12×12-grid "Dodeka Sudoku" with 12 regions of 4×3 squares. Dell Magazines regularly publishes 16×16 "Number Place Challenger" puzzles (using the numbers 1–16 or the letters A-P). Nikoli offers 25×25 "Sudoku the Giant" behemoths. A 100×100-grid puzzle dubbed Sudoku-zilla was published in 2010.


title: Sudoku

text: Under the name "Mini Sudoku", a 6×6 variant with 3×2 regions appears in the American newspaper "USA Today" and elsewhere. The object is the same as that of standard Sudoku, but the puzzle only uses the numbers 1 through 6. A similar form, for younger solvers of puzzles, called "The Junior Sudoku", has appeared in some newspapers, such as some editions of "The Daily Mail".


title: Sudoku

text: Another common variant is to add limits on the placement of numbers beyond the usual row, column, and box requirements. Often, the limit takes the form of an extra "dimension"; the most common is to require the numbers in the main diagonals of the grid to also be unique. The aforementioned "Number Place Challenger" puzzles are all of this variant, as are the Sudoku X puzzles in "The Daily Mail", which use 6×6 grids.


title: Sudoku

text: Since standard Sudoku does not involve arithmetic, the digits 1 to 9 can be replaced with nine arbitrary symbols, such as geometric shapes, Roman numerals (e.g. "Quadratum latinum", published in the Latin puzzle magazine "Hebdomada aenigmatum") or letters, and there is no functional difference.


title: Sudoku

text: When letters are used, the puzzle is sometimes known as Wordoku. Some variants, such as in the "TV Guide Magazine", include a word reading along a main diagonal, row, or column once solved; determining the word in advance can be viewed as a solving aid. A Wordoku might contain words other than the main word.


title: Sudoku

text: Hyper Sudoku or Windoku uses the classic 9×9 grid with 3×3 regions, but defines four additional interior 3×3 regions in which the numbers 1–9 must appear exactly once. It was invented by "Peter Ritmeester" and first published by him in Dutch Newspaper "NRC Handelsblad" in October 2005, and since April 2007 on a daily basis in "The International New York Times" (International Herald Tribune). The first time it was called Hyper Sudoku was in "Will Shortz's Favorite Sudoku Variations" (February 2006). It is also known as Windoku because with the grid's four interior regions shaded, it resembles a window with glazing bars.


title: Sudoku

text: In Twin Sudoku two regular grids share a 3×3 box. This is one of many possible types of overlapping grids. The rules for each individual grid are the same as in normal Sudoku, but the digits in the overlapping section are shared by each half. In some compositions neither individual grid can be solved alone – the complete solution is only possible after each individual grid has at least been partially solved.


title: Sudoku

text: Puzzles constructed from more than two grids are also common. Five 9×9 grids that overlap at the corner regions in the shape of a "quincunx" is known in Japan as "Gattai" 5 (five merged) Sudoku. In "The Times", "The Age", and "The Sydney Morning Herald", this form of puzzle is known as Samurai Sudoku. "The Baltimore Sun" and the "Toronto Star" publish a puzzle of this variant (titled High Five) in their Sunday edition. Often, no givens are placed in the overlapping regions. Sequential grids, as opposed to overlapping, are also published, with values in specific locations in grids needing to be transferred to others.


title: Sudoku

text: A tabletop version of Sudoku can be played with a standard 81-card Set deck (see Set game). A three-dimensional Sudoku puzzle was published in "The Daily Telegraph" in May 2005. "The Times" also publishes a three-dimensional version under the name Tredoku. Also, a Sudoku version of the Rubik's Cube is named Sudoku Cube.


title: Sudoku

text: Many other variants have been developed. Some are different shapes in the arrangement of overlapping 9×9 grids, such as butterfly, windmill, or flower. Others vary the logic for solving the grid. One of these is "Greater Than Sudoku". In this, a 3×3 grid of the Sudoku is given with 12 symbols of Greater Than (>) or Less Than (<) on the common line of the two adjacent numbers. Another variant on the logic of solution is "Clueless Sudoku", in which nine 9×9 Sudoku grids are each placed in a 3×3 array. The center cell in each 3×3 grid of all nine puzzles is left blank and form a tenth Sudoku puzzle without any cell completed; hence, "clueless". A new variant mixes Sudoku with the sliding tile puzzle in Sudoku Slide Extreme. In this variant all of the positions are filled in. Tiles are moved to the proper position to solve the puzzle. This variant contains power-ups and a campaign mode. Examples and other variants can be found in the Glossary of Sudoku.


title: Sudoku

text: A completed Sudoku grid is a special type of Latin square with the additional property of no repeated values in any of the nine blocks (or "boxes" of 3×3 cells). The relationship between the two theories is known, after it was proven that a first-order formula that does not mention blocks is valid for Sudoku if and only if it is valid for Latin squares.


title: Sudoku

text: The general problem of solving Sudoku puzzles on "n"×"n" grids of "n"×"n" blocks is known to be NP-complete. Many computer algorithms, such as backtracking and dancing links can solve most 9×9 puzzles efficiently, but combinatorial explosion occurs as "n" increases, creating limits to the properties of Sudokus that can be constructed, analyzed, and solved as "n" increases. A Sudoku puzzle can be expressed as a graph coloring problem. The aim is to construct a 9-coloring of a particular graph, given a partial 9-coloring.


title: Sudoku

text: The fewest clues possible for a proper Sudoku is 17 (proven January 2012, and confirmed September 2013). Over 49,000 Sudokus with 17 clues have been found, many by Japanese enthusiasts. Sudokus with 18 clues and rotational symmetry have been found, and there is at least one Sudoku that has 18 clues, exhibits two-way diagonal symmetry and is automorphic. The maximum number of clues that can be provided while still not rendering a unique solution is four short of a full grid (77); if two instances of two numbers each are missing from cells that occupy the corners of an orthogonal rectangle, and exactly two of these cells are within one region, the numbers can be assigned two ways. Since this applies to Latin squares in general, most variants of Sudoku have the same maximum.


title: Sudoku

text: The number of classic 9×9 Sudoku solution grids is 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 , or around . This is roughly times the number of 9×9 Latin squares. Various other grid sizes have also been enumerated—see the main article for details. The number of essentially different solutions, when symmetries such as rotation, reflection, permutation, and relabelling are taken into account, was shown to be just 5,472,730,538 .


title: Sudoku

text: Unlike the number of complete Sudoku grids, the number of minimal 9×9 Sudoku puzzles is not precisely known. (A minimal puzzle is one in which no clue can be deleted without losing uniqueness of the solution.) However, statistical techniques combined with a puzzle generator show that about (with 0.065% relative error) 3.10 × 10 minimal puzzles and 2.55 × 10 nonessentially equivalent minimal puzzles exist.


title: Guangdong

text: Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) across a total area of about , Guangdong is the most populous province of China and the 15th-largest by area as well as the second-most populous country subdivision in the world (after Uttar Pradesh in India). Its economy is larger than that of any other province in the nation and the third largest sub-national economy in the world with a GDP (nominal) of 1.95 trillion USD (12.4 trillion CNY) in 2021. The Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, a Chinese megalopolis, is a core for high technology, manufacturing and foreign trade. Located in this zone are two of the four top Chinese cities and the top two Chinese prefecture-level cities by GDP; Guangzhou, the capital of the province, and Shenzhen, the first special economic zone in the country. These two are among the most populous and important cities in China, and have now become two of the world's most populous megacities and leading financial centres in the Asia-Pacific region.


title: Guangdong

text: The province of Guangdong surpassed Henan and Shandong to become the most populous province in China in January 2005, registering 79.1 million permanent residents and 31 million migrants who lived in the province for at least six months of the year; the total population was 104,303,132 in the 2010 census, accounting for 7.79 percent of Mainland China's population. This makes it the most populous first-level administrative subdivision of any country outside of South Asia. Its population increase since the census has been modest, the province registering 108,500,000 people in 2015. The vast majority of the historical Guangdong Province is administered by the People's Republic of China (PRC). Pratas Island in the South China Sea is part of Cijin District, Kaohsiung, Taiwan (ROC); the island was previously part of Guangdong Province before the Chinese Civil War.


title: Guangdong

text: Guangdong has a diversified economy. It was known as the starting point of the Maritime Silk Road of ancient China. Since 1989, Guangdong has topped the total GDP rankings among all provincial-level divisions, with Jiangsu and Shandong second and third in rank. In 2020, Guangdong's GDP nominal was 11 trillion RMB (1.7 trillion USD), exceeding that of Canada (US$1.64 trillion) and South Korea (US$1.63 trillion), the world's 9th and 10th largest economy, respectively. Compared to a country, it would be the 9th-largest economy as of 2020 and the 11th most populous. The province contributes approximately 9% of the total economic output of mainland China and is home to the production facilities and offices of a wide-ranging set of Chinese and foreign corporations. Guangdong has benefited from its proximity to the financial hub of Hong Kong, which it borders to the south. Guangdong also hosts the largest import and export fair in China, the Canton Fair, hosted in the provincial capital of Guangzhou.


title: Guangdong

text: After the unification of Lingnan region in the Qin dynasty, the immigrants from the Central Plains moved in and formed the local culture with a unique style. With the outward movement of the Guangdong people, the Hakka and Cantonese languages, music, cuisine, opera and tea ceremony have been spread throughout the nation, Southeast Asia and other countries. Guangdong was also the birthplace of the father of modern China and the founder of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen where he later declared a military government in the Warlord Era. The two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau fall within the scope of Guangdong cultural influence, and Guangdong culture still has profound influences on the Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia.


title: Guangdong

text: Guangdong is also one of the leading provinces in research and education in China. Guangdong hosts 160 institutions of higher education, ranking first in South Central China region and 2nd among all Chinese provinces/municipalities after Jiangsu. As of 2022, two major cities ranked in the top 30 cities in the world (Guangzhou 10th and Shenzhen 28th) by scientific research output, as tracked by the Nature Index.


title: Guangdong

text: ""Guǎng"" () means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name ""Guang"" ultimately came from Guangxin (), an outpost established in Han dynasty near modern Wuzhou, whose name is a reference to an order by Emperor Wu of Han to "widely bestow favors and sow trust". Together, Guangdong and Guangxi are called "Loeng gwong" () During the Song dynasty, the Two Guangs were formally separated as "Guǎngnán Dōnglù" () and "Guǎngnán Xīlù" (), which became abbreviated as "Guǎngdōng Lù" () and "Guǎngxī Lù" ().


title: Guangdong

text: "Canton", though etymologically derived from "" (the Portuguese transliteration of "Guangdong"), usually by itself refers to the provincial capital Guangzhou. Historically, Canton was also used for the province itself, but often either specified as a province (e.g. Canton Province), or written as "Kwangtung" in the Wade–Giles system and now most commonly as "Guangdong" in Pinyin. The local people of the city of Guangzhou (Canton) and their language are called Cantonese in English. Because of the prestige of Canton and its accent, Cantonese can also be used, in a wider sense, for the phylogenetically related residents and Chinese dialects outside the provincial capital.


title: Guangdong

text: The Neolithic era began in the Pearl River Delta () 7,000 years before present (BP), with the early period from around 7000 to 5000 BP (c. 5050–3050 BC), and the late period from about 5000 to 3500 BP (c. 3050–1550 BC). In coastal Guangdong, the Neolithic was likely introduced from the middle Yangtze River area (Jiao 2013). In inland Guangdong, the neolithic appeared in Guangdong 4,600 years before present (BP). The Neolithic in northern inland Guangdong is represented by the Shixia culture (), which occurred from 4600 to 4200 BP (c. 2650–2250 BC).


title: Guangdong

text: Originally inhabited by a mixture of tribal groups known to the Chinese as the Baiyue ("Hundred Yue"), the region first became part of China during the Qin dynasty. Under the Qin Dynasty, Chinese administration began and along with it reliable historical records in the region. After establishing the first unified Chinese empire, the Qin expanded southwards and set up Nanhai Commandery at Panyu, near what is now part of Guangzhou. The region was an independent kingdom as Nanyue between the fall of Qin and the reign of Emperor Wu of Han. The Han dynasty administered Guangdong, Guangxi, and northern Vietnam as Jiaozhi Province; southernmost Jiaozhi Province was used as a gateway for traders from the west—as far away as the Roman Empire. Under the Wu Kingdom of the Three Kingdoms period, Guangdong was made its own province, the Guang Province, in 226 CE.


title: Guangdong

text: Canton was a prosperous port city along a tropical frontier region beset by disease and wild animals, but rich in oranges, banyan, bananas, and lychee fruits. They traded slaves, silk and chinaware with Persians, Brahmans and Malays in exchange for their renowned medicines and fragrant tropical woods. Shi'a Muslims who had fled persecution in Khorasan and Buddhists from India lived side by side in the thriving town each erecting their own houses of worship. A foreign quarter sprang up along the river where many traders of diverse backgrounds including Arabs and Singhalese took up residence.


title: Guangdong

text: The port's importance declined after it was raided by Arabs and Persians in 758 and the foreign residents were at times troubled by the corrupt local officials, sometimes responding violently. During one incident in 684, for example, a merchant vessel's captain murdered a corrupt governor who had used his position to steal from the merchant.


title: Guangdong

text: Together with Guangxi, Guangdong was made part of Lingnan Circuit (political division Circuit), or Mountain-South Circuit, in 627 during the Tang dynasty. The Guangdong part of Lingnan Circuit was renamed Guangnan East Circuit () in 971 during the Song dynasty (960–1279). "Guangnan East" () is the source of the name "Guangdong" ().


title: Guangdong

text: As time passed, the demographics of what is now Guangdong gradually shifted to (Han) Chinese dominance as the populations intermingled due to commerce along the great canals. From the fall of the Han dynasty onwards, it shifted more abruptly through massive migration from the north during periods of political turmoil and nomadic incursions. For example, internal strife in northern China following the rebellion of An Lushan resulted in a 75% increase in the population of Guangzhou prefecture between the 740s–750s and 800s–810s. As more migrants arrived, the local population was gradually assimilated to Han Chinese culture or displaced.


title: Guangdong

text: As Mongols from the north engaged in their conquest of China in the 13th century, the Southern Song court fled southwards from its capital in Hangzhou. The defeat of the Southern Song court by Mongol naval forces in The Battle of Yamen 1279 in Guangdong marked the end of the Southern Song dynasty (960–1279).


title: Guangdong

text: During the Mongol Yuan dynasty, large parts of current Guangdong belonged to Jiangxi. Its present name, "Guangdong Province" was given in early Ming dynasty.


title: Guangdong

text: Since the 16th century, Guangdong has had extensive trade links with the rest of the world. European merchants coming northwards via the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea, particularly the Portuguese and British, traded extensively through Guangzhou. Macau, on the southern coast of Guangdong, was the first European settlement in 1557.


title: Guangdong

text: In the 19th century, the opium traded through Guangzhou triggered the First Opium War, opening an era of Western imperialists' incursion and intervention in China. In addition to Macau, which was then a Portuguese colony, Hong Kong was ceded to the British, and Kouang-Tchéou-Wan (modern day area of Zhanjiang) to the French.


title: Guangdong

text: Due to the large number of people that emigrated out of the Guangdong province, and in particular the ease of immigration from Hong Kong to other parts of the British Empire (later British Commonwealth), many overseas Chinese communities have their origins in Guangdong and/or Cantonese culture. In particular, the Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew dialects have proportionately more speakers among overseas Chinese people than Mandarin-speaking Chinese. Additionally, many Taishanese-speaking Chinese emigrated to Western countries, with the results that many Western versions of Chinese words were derived from the Cantonese dialects rather than through the mainstream Mandarin language, such as "dim sum". Some Mandarin Chinese words originally of foreign origin also came from the original foreign language by way of Cantonese. For example, the Mandarin word ' (), meaning "Lemon", came from Cantonese, in which the characters are pronounced as '. In the United States, there is a large number of Chinese who are descendants of immigrants from the county-level city of Taishan (Toisan in Cantonese), who speak a distinctive dialect related to Cantonese called Taishanese (or Toishanese).


title: Guangdong

text: During the 1850s, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, whose leader Hong Xiuquan was born in Guangdong and received a pamphlet from a Protestant Christian missionary in Guangdong, was allied with a local Guangdong Red Turban Rebellion (1854–1856). Because of direct contact with the West, Guangdong was the centre of anti-Manchu and anti-imperialist activity. The generally acknowledged founder of modern China, Sun Yat-sen, was also from Guangdong.


title: Guangdong

text: During the early 1920s of the Republic of China, Guangdong was the staging area for the Kuomintang (KMT) to prepare for the Northern Expedition, an effort to bring the various warlords of China back under a unified central government. Whampoa Military Academy was built near Guangzhou to train military commanders.


title: Guangdong

text: At the end of the Chinese Civil War Guangdong became one of the Nationalist government's final footholds in Mainland China, with Guangzhou temporarily serving as the Kuomintang's provisional capitol. The People's Liberation Army seized control of the province after the retreat of the government of the Republic of China to Taiwan.


title: Guangdong

text: The new Chinese Communist Party administration issued harsh taxes, requisitioning between 22 and 60 percent of grain annually. However, the local party boss Fang Fang tried to moderate Chinese land reform policy in order to protect successful businesses in the Pearl River Delta, landholdings by overseas Chinese seeking to eventually return to the country, and commercial relations with British Hong Kong. In response Mao Zedong purged Fang and thousands of cadres from the province in 1952, sending Tao Zhu to implement a much harsher program under the slogan "Every Village Bleeds, Every Household Fights."


title: Guangdong

text: After the Chinese economic reform, the province has seen extremely rapid economic growth, aided in part by its close trading links with Hong Kong, which borders it. It is now the province with the highest gross domestic product in China.


title: Guangdong

text: In 1952, a small section of Guangdong's coastline (Qinzhou, Lianzhou (now Hepu County), Fangchenggang and Beihai) was given to Guangxi, giving it access to the sea. This was reversed in 1955, and then restored in 1965. Hainan Island was originally part of Guangdong, but it was separated into its own province in 1988.


title: Guangdong

text: Guangdong faces the South China Sea to the south and has a total of of coastline. The Leizhou Peninsula is on the southwestern end of the province. There are a few inactive volcanoes on Leizhou Peninsula. The Pearl River Delta is the convergent point of three upstream rivers: the East River, North River, and West River. The river delta is filled with hundreds of small islands. The province is geographically separated from the north by a few mountain ranges collectively called the Nan Mountains (Nan Ling). The highest peak in the province is Shikengkong with an elevation of 6,240 feet (1,902 meters) above sea level.


title: Guangdong

text: Guangdong borders Fujian to the northeast, Jiangxi and Hunan to the north, Guangxi autonomous region to the west, and Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions to the south. Hainan is offshore across from the Leizhou Peninsula. Pratas Island, which were traditionally governed as part of Guangdong, are part of Cijin District, Kaoshiung, Taiwan (ROC).


title: Guangdong

text: Cities around the Pearl River Delta include Dongguan, Foshan, Guangzhou, Huizhou, Jiangmen, Shenzhen, Shunde, Taishan, Zhongshan, and Zhuhai. Other cities in the province include Chaozhou, Chenghai, Nanhai, Shantou, Shaoguan, Zhanjiang, Zhaoqing, Yangjiang, and Yunfu.


title: Guangdong

text: Guangdong has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen "Cfa" inland, "Cwa" along the coast). Winters are short, mild, and relatively dry, while summers are long, hot, and very wet. Average daily highs in Guangzhou in January and July are and , although the humidity makes it feel hotter in summer. Frost is rare on the coast but may happen a few days each winter.


title: Guangdong

text: In 2021, the gross regional product (GRP) of Guangdong was about 12.4 trillion CNY ($1.95 trillion), with a per capita GDP of 98,700 RMB ($15,570 in nominal and $ 23,598 in PPP). It is the richest province in South Central China region and the fourth richest among all provinces after Jiangsu, Fujian and Zhejiang by GDP per capita. Guangdong has been the largest province by GDP since 1989 in Mainland China. In 2020, Guangdong's GDP nominal was 11 trillion RMB (1.7 trillion USD), exceeding that of Canada (US$1.64 trillion) and South Korea (US$1.63 trillion), the world's 9 and 10th largest economy, respectively. Guangdong's GDP by nominal is greater than the GDPs of all other BRICS states, except India.


title: Guangdong

text: Compared to country subdivisions in dollar terms, Guangdong's GDP in nominal is larger than all but three country subdivisions: California, Kanto region, and Texas. Compared to country subdivisions in PPP terms, Guangdong's GDP is larger than all, except California.


title: Guangdong

text: By Purchasing power parity (PPP) term, as of 2021, Guangdong's economy has a gross regional product (GRP) of $2.98 trillion, ranking between the United Kingdom and Italy with a GDP of $3.34 trillion and US$ $2.71 trillion respectively, the 10th and 11th largest in the world respectively.


title: Guangdong

text: After the communist revolution and until the start of the Deng Xiaoping reforms in 1978, Guangdong was an economic backwater, although a large underground, service-based economy has always existed. Economic development policies encouraged industrial development in the interior provinces which were weakly joined to Guangdong via transportation links. The government policy of economic autarky made Guangdong's access to the ocean irrelevant.


title: Guangdong

text: Deng Xiaoping's open door policy radically changed the economy of the province as it was able to take advantage of its access to the ocean, proximity to Hong Kong, and historical links to overseas Chinese. In addition, until the 1990s when the Chinese taxation system was reformed, the province benefited from the relatively low rate of taxation placed on it by the central government due to its post-Liberation status of being economically backward.


title: Guangdong

text: Guangdong's economic boom began with the early 1990s and has since spread to neighboring provinces, and also pulled their populations inward. The economic growth of Guangdong province owes much to the low-value-added manufacturing which characterized (and in many ways still defines) the province's economy following Deng Xiaoping's reforms. Guangdong is not only China's largest exporter of goods, it is the country's largest importer as well.


title: Guangdong

text: The province is now one of the richest in the nation, with the most billionaires in mainland China, the highest GDP among all the provinces, although wage growth has only recently begun to rise due to a large influx of migrant workers from neighboring provinces. By 2015, the local government of Guangdong hopes that the service industry will account for more than 50 percent of the provinces GDP and high-tech manufacturing another 20 percent.


title: Guangdong

text: In 2021, Guangdong's primary, secondary, and tertiary industries were worth RMB 500 billion (US$77.5 billion), RMB 5 trillion (US$0.78 trillion), and RMB 6.91 trillion (US$1.07 trillion), respectively. Guangdong contributes approximately 9% of the total national economic output. Now, it has three of the six Special Economic Zones: Shenzhen, Shantou and Zhuhai. The affluence of Guangdong, however, remains very concentrated near the Pearl River Delta.


title: Guangdong

text: Guangdong officially became the most populous province in 2005. Official statistics had traditionally placed Guangdong as the fourth-most populous province of China with about 80 million people, though an influx of migrants, temporary workers, and newly settled individuals numbered around 30 million. The massive influx of migrants from other provinces, dubbed the "floating population", is due to Guangdong's booming economy and high demand for labor. If Guangdong were an independent nation, it would rank among the twenty largest countries of the world by population.


title: Guangdong

text: Guangdong's 2021 year end population has reached 126.84 million, adding 600 thousand people, or less than 1/2 a percent. It marks a huge change from rampant population growth of yesteryears, it had been among the fastest growing province due to migration, however in 2021, Zhejiang grew more, adding 720 thousand people.


title: Guangdong

text: Guangdong is the ancestral home of large numbers of overseas Chinese. Most of the railroad laborers in Canada, the Western United States and Panama in the 19th century came from Guangdong, especially the Siyi area. Many people from the region also traveled to California and other parts of the United States during the gold rush of 1849, and also to Australia during its gold rush a decade or so later.


title: Guangdong

text: The majority of the province's population is Han Chinese. Within the Han Chinese, the largest subgroup in Guangdong are the Cantonese people. Two other major groups are the Teochew people in Chaoshan and the Hakka people in Huizhou, Meizhou, Heyuan, Shaoguan and Zhanjiang. Shaozhou Tuhua is spoken in Shaoguan and Leizhou Min is spoken in the Leizhou Peninsula. There is a small Yao population in the north. Other smaller minority groups include She, Miao, Li, and Zhuang.


title: Guangdong

text: Guangdong has a highly unbalanced gender ratio that is among the highest of all provinces in China. According to a 2009 study published in "The British Medical Journal", in the 1–4 age group, there are over 130 boys for every 100 girls.


title: Guangdong

text: According to a 2012 survey only around 7% of the population of Guangdong belongs to organised religions, the largest groups being Buddhists with 6.2%, followed by Protestants with 1.8% and Catholics with 1.2%. Around 90% of the population is either irreligious or may be involved in Chinese folk religion worshipping nature gods, ancestral deities, popular sects, Taoist traditions, Buddhist religious traditions & Confucian religious traditions.


title: Guangdong

text: According to a survey conducted in 2007, 43.71% of the population believes and is involved in ancestor veneration, the traditional Chinese religion of the lineages organised into lineage churches and ancestral shrines.


title: Guangdong

text: Guangdong is governed by a dual-party system like the rest of China. The Governor is in charge of provincial affairs; however, the Communist Party Secretary, often from outside of Guangdong, keeps the Governor in check.


title: Guangdong

text: Hong Kong and Macau, while historically parts of Guangdong before becoming colonies of the United Kingdom and Portugal, respectively, are special administrative regions (SARs). Furthermore, the Basic Laws of both SARs explicitly forbid provincial governments from intervening in local politics. As a result, many issues with Hong Kong and Macau, such as border policy and water rights, have been settled by negotiations between the SARs' governments and the Guangdong provincial government.


title: Guangdong

text: Guangdong and the greater Guangzhou area are served by several Radio Guangdong stations, Guangdong Television, Southern Television Guangdong, Shenzhen Television, and Guangzhou Television. There is an English programme produced by Radio Guangdong which broadcasts information about this region to the entire world through the WRN Broadcast.


title: Guangdong

text: The central region, which is also the political and economic center, is populated predominantly by Yue Chinese speakers, though the influx in the last three decades of millions of Mandarin-speaking immigrants has slightly diminished Cantonese linguistic dominance. This region is associated with Cantonese cuisine. Cantonese opera is a form of Chinese opera popular in Cantonese speaking areas. Related Yue dialects are spoken in most of the western half of the province.


title: Guangdong

text: The area comprising the cities of Chaozhou, Shantou and Jieyang in coastal east Guangdong, known as Chaoshan, forms its own cultural sphere. The Teochew people here, along with Hailufeng Min people in Shanwei, speak Hokkien, which is a Min dialect closely related to mainstream Southern Min (Hokkien) and their cuisine is Teochew cuisine. Teochew opera is also well-known and has a unique form.


title: Guangdong

text: The Hakka people live in large areas of Guangdong, including Huizhou, Meizhou, Shenzhen, Heyuan, Shaoguan and other areas. Much of the Eastern part of Guangdong is populated by the Hakka people except for the Chaozhou and Hailufeng area. Hakka culture include Hakka cuisine, Han opera (), Hakka "Hanyue" and "sixian" (traditional instrumental music) and Hakka folk songs ().


title: Guangdong

text: The outcast Tanka people traditionally live on boats throughout the coasts and rivers of Guangdong and much of Southern China.


title: Guangdong

text: Zhanjiang in southern Guangdong is dominated by the Leizhou dialect, a variety of Minnan; Cantonese and Hakka are also spoken there.


title: Guangdong

text: Mandarin is the language used in education and government and in areas where there are migrants from other provinces, above all in Shenzhen. Cantonese maintains a strong and dominant position in common usage and media, even in eastern areas of the province where the local languages and dialects are non-Yue ones.


title: Guangdong

text: Guangdong Province is notable for being the birthplace of many famous Xiangqi (Chinese chess) grandmasters such as Lü Qin, Yang Guanli, Cai Furu and Xu Yinchuan.


title: Guangdong

text: As of 2022, Guangdong hosts 160 institutions of higher education, ranking first in South Central China region and 2nd among all Chinese provinces/municipalities after Jiangsu (168). Guangdong is also the seat of 14 adult higher education institutions. Many universities and colleges are located in major cities like Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, hosts 83 institutions of higher education (excluding adult colleges), ranking 1st in South China region and 2nd (tie) nationwide after Beijing. Guangdong Province Department of Education is the department of the provincial government that oversees education. As of 2022, two major cities in the province ranked in the top 30 cities in the world (Guangzhou 10th and Shenzhen 28th) by scientific research output, as tracked by the Nature Index.


title: Guangdong

text: Notable attractions include Danxia Mountain in Shaoguan, Yuexiu Hill, Baiyun Mountain in Guangzhou, Star Lake and the Seven Star Crags, Dinghu Mountain in Zhaoqing, the Huangmanzhai waterfalls in Jieyang, and the Zhongshan Sun Wen Memorial Park for Sun Yat-sen in Zhongshan.


title: Guangdong

text: Guangdong is divided into twenty-one prefecture-level divisions: all prefecture-level cities (including two sub-provincial cities):


title: Guangdong

text: The twenty-one Prefecture of Guangdong are subdivided into 119 county-level divisions (64 districts, 20 county-level cities, 34 counties, and 3 autonomous counties). For county-level divisions, see the list of administrative divisions of Guangdong.


title: Max von Sydow

text: Max von Sydow ( , ; born Carl Adolf von Sydow; 10 April 1929 – 8 March 2020) was a Swedish-French actor. He had a 70-year career in European and American cinema, television, and theatre, appearing in more than 150 films and several television series in multiple languages. He became a French citizen in 2002 and lived in France for the last two decades of his life.


title: Max von Sydow

text: Capable in roles ranging from stolid, contemplative protagonists to sardonic artists and menacing, often gleeful villains, von Sydow was first noticed internationally for playing the 14th-century knight Antonius Block in Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" (1957), which features iconic scenes of his character challenging Death to a game of chess. He appeared in a total of eleven films directed by Bergman, among which were "The Virgin Spring" (1960) and "Through a Glass Darkly" (1961), both winners of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He starred in a third winner, Bille August's "Pelle the Conqueror" (1987), a quarter-century later.


title: Max von Sydow

text: Von Sydow made his American film debut as Jesus Christ in George Stevens' Biblical epic film "The Greatest Story Ever Told" (1965) and went on to star in films such as William Friedkin's "The Exorcist" (1973), Sydney Pollack's "Three Days of the Condor" (1975), the science fiction film "Flash Gordon" (1980), the James Bond adaptation "Never Say Never Again" (1983), David Lynch's "Dune" (1984), Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986), Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report" (2002), Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island" (2010), Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood" (2010), and J. J. Abrams' "" (2015). He also had a supporting role in HBO's "Game of Thrones" as the Three-eyed Raven, for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.


title: Max von Sydow

text: During his career, von Sydow received two Academy Award nominations for his performances in "Pelle the Conqueror" (1987) and "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" (2011). He received the Royal Foundation of Sweden's Cultural Award in 1954, was made a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 2005, and was named a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur on 17 October 2012.


title: Max von Sydow

text: Carl Adolf von Sydow was born on 10 April 1929 in Lund, Sweden. His father, Carl Wilhelm von Sydow, was an ethnologist and professor of folkloristics at Lund University. His mother, Baroness Maria Margareta Rappe, was a schoolteacher. Von Sydow was of part-German ancestry. A paternal ancestor, David Sydow ("von" or "Von" was added later to the family surname), emigrated from Pomerania to the Kalmar region in 1724. His mother was also of part-Pomeranian descent. Von Sydow was raised as a Lutheran, but became an agnostic in the 1970s.


title: Max von Sydow

text: Von Sydow attended Lund Cathedral School, where he learned English at an early age. Originally expected to pursue a career in law, he became interested in acting after seeing a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" during a class trip to Malmö, which prompted him to establish an amateur theatrical group along with his friends back at school.


title: Max von Sydow

text: Von Sydow served for two years in the Swedish Army with the Army Quartermaster Corps, where he adopted the name "Max" from the star performer of a flea circus he saw. After completing his service, von Sydow studied at the Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten) in Stockholm where he trained between 1948 and 1951. During his time at the Dramaten, he helped start a theatre group, of which actress Ingrid Thulin was a member. He made his stage debut in a small part in the Goethe play "Egmont", which he considered "almost a disaster," but received good reviews for his performance.


title: Max von Sydow

text: While at the , von Sydow made his screen debuts in Alf Sjöberg's films "Only a Mother" (', 1949) and "Miss Julie" (', 1951). In 1951, von Sydow joined the Norrköping-Linköping Municipal Theatre, appearing in nine plays including "Peer Gynt". In 1953, he moved on to the City Theatre in Hälsingborg, playing eleven parts in a two-year stint, including Prospero in "The Tempest" and the titular role of the Pirandello play "Henry IV". Von Sydow's theatrical work won him critical recognition, and in 1954 he received the Royal Foundation of Sweden's Cultural Award, a grant to young, promising actors.


title: Max von Sydow

text: In 1955, von Sydow moved to Malmö and joined the Malmö City Theatre, whose chief director at the time was Ingmar Bergman. Von Sydow had previously sought to play a small part in Bergman's "Prison" (', 1949), but the director rejected the proposition. Bergman and von Sydow's first film was "The Seventh Seal" (', 1957), in which von Sydow portrayed Antonius Block, a disillusioned 14th-century knight returning from the Crusades to a plague-stricken Sweden. The scene of his character playing a game of chess with Death has come to be regarded as an iconic moment in cinema. Von Sydow went on to appear in a total of 11 Bergman films. In "The Magician" (', 1958), von Sydow starred as Vogler, a 19th-century traveling illusionist who remains silent for most of the film. In "The Virgin Spring" (', 1960), he played a medieval landowner who plots vengeance on the men who raped and murdered his daughter. In "Through a Glass Darkly" (', 1961), he portrayed the husband of a schizophrenic woman, played by Harriet Andersson. During this period, he also had roles in films including "Wild Strawberries" (', 1957), "Brink of Life" (', 1958) and "Winter Light" (', 1963). Films starring von Sydow were submitted by Sweden for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in five out of six years between 1957 and 1962. Under Bergman, von Sydow also continued his stage career, playing Brick in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", Peer in "Peer Gynt", Alceste in "The Misanthrope" and Faust in "Urfaust". In his company were Gunnar Björnstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Andersson and Gunnel Lindblom, all frequent collaborators of Bergman on screen.


title: Max von Sydow

text: Despite his rising profile, von Sydow limited his work exclusively to Sweden early in his career, constantly refusing offers to work outside the country. He was first approached at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival to act in U.S. films, but refused the proposition, saying that he was "content in Sweden" and "had no intention of starting an international career". He also refused the opportunity to play the titular role for "Dr. No" (1962) and Captain von Trapp in "The Sound of Music" (1965). In 1965, von Sydow finally accepted George Stevens's offer and made his international debut, playing Christ in the epic "The Greatest Story Ever Told". He accepted the part against the advice of Bergman, spent six months at the University of California, Los Angeles, preparing for the role, and adopted a Mid-Atlantic accent. The film introduced von Sydow to a wider audience, but ultimately performed below expectations at the box office. He went on to play a crop-dusting pilot in "The Reward" (1965) and a fanatic missionary in "Hawaii" (1966). For his performance in "Hawaii", von Sydow received his first Golden Globe nomination. To his own frustration, however, von Sydow would become frequently cast in villainous roles, such as a neo-Nazi aristocrat in "The Quiller Memorandum" (1966), a Russian colonel in "The Kremlin Letter" (1970), a meticulous and elegant international assassin in "Three Days of the Condor" (1975), Emperor Ming the Merciless in "Flash Gordon" (1980) and James Bond's nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld in "Never Say Never Again" (1983).


title: Max von Sydow

text: In the late 1960s and early 1970s, von Sydow was often paired with Liv Ullmann in Bergman films. In 1968's "Hour of the Wolf" ('), von Sydow played an artist living on an isolated island with his pregnant wife, played by Ullmann. In the same year, the two appeared in the drama "Shame" ('), about a couple (both former musicians) living on a farm on an island during a war. Von Sydow and Ullmann returned for the 1969 Bergman film "The Passion of Anna" ('). In 1971 and 1972, von Sydow again starred alongside Ullmann in the Jan Troell epic duology, "The Emigrants" (') "The New Land" (""), the story of a Swedish peasant family that emigrates to America in the mid-19th century.


title: Max von Sydow

text: In 1971, von Sydow starred in "The Touch", Bergman's first English-language film, playing a doctor whose wife is having an affair. In 1973, von Sydow appeared in one of his most commercially successful films, William Friedkin's "The Exorcist" (1973). He played Father Lankester Merrin, the film's titular Jesuit priest, which earned him his second Golden Globe nomination. He reprised the role in the film's sequel, "" (1977). In 1977, von Sydow made his Broadway debut alongside Eileen Atkins and Bibi Andersson in Per Olov Enquist's "The Night of the Tribades", a play about the writer August Strindberg. In 1981, he starred with Anne Bancroft in the Tom Kempinski play "Duet for One" about the cellist Jacqueline du Pré. Von Sydow made his British stage debut at The Old Vic in 1988 as Prospero in "The Tempest", a role he first played in Sweden three decades ago.


title: Max von Sydow

text: In the 1980s, in addition to "Flash Gordon" and "Never Say Never Again", von Sydow appeared in John Milius's "Conan the Barbarian" (1982), Jan Troell's "Flight of the Eagle" (1982), Rick Moranis's & Dave Thomas's "Strange Brew" (1983), David Lynch's "Dune" (1984) and Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986). In 1985, von Sydow was a member of the jury at the 35th Berlin International Film Festival. In the 1987 Bille August film "Pelle the Conqueror", von Sydow portrayed an impoverished Swedish labourer who brought his son to Denmark to try to build a better life for themselves. The role won him international acclaim and is often considered one of the best roles in his career. For his performance, von Sydow received a Best Actor nomination at the 61st Academy Awards; the film won Best Foreign Language Film as Denmark's official Oscar entry. In 1988, von Sydow made his only directorial foray with "Katinka", a film based on the Herman Bang novel, "Ved Vejen". The film won the Guldbagge Awards for Best Film and Best Director, but was not widely seen outside Sweden. In 1989, von Sydow appeared in the television film "Red King, White Knight", for which he received his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination. He also supplied the voice for Vigo the Carpathian in the 1989 film, Ghostbusters II.


title: Max von Sydow

text: Von Sydow and Bergman did not work together for an extended period. A part in Bergman's "Fanny and Alexander" (1982) was specifically written for von Sydow, but his agent demanded too large a salary. Von Sydow came to regret missing out on the role. The two did eventually reunite in 1991 with "The Best Intentions", directed by Bille August with a script from Bergman. In 1996, von Sydow made his final appearance in a Bergman film, "Private Confessions", directed by Liv Ullmann and written by Bergman. In 1997, von Sydow played Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian novelist and Nazi sympathizer Knut Hamsun in the biopic "Hamsun". Throughout the rest of the 1990s, von Sydow also appeared in films such as "Father" (1990), "Awakenings" (1990), "Until the End of the World" (1991), "Needful Things" (1993), "Judge Dredd" (1995) and "Snow Falling on Cedars" (1999). For his performance in "Father", von Sydow won the Australian Film Institute Best Actor Award.


title: Max von Sydow

text: In 2002, von Sydow acted in one of his biggest commercial successes, playing the PreCrime director opposite Tom Cruise in Steven Spielberg's science fiction thriller "Minority Report". In 2004, von Sydow appeared in a television adaptation of the "Ring of the Nibelung" saga. The show set ratings records and was later released in the United States as "". In 2007, he starred in the box-office hit "Rush Hour 3" as one of the antagonists opposite Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, and played the father of the protagonist in "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", Julian Schnabel's adaptation of the memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby. In 2009, von Sydow appeared in the drama series "The Tudors".


title: Max von Sydow

text: In 2010, von Sydow played a sinister German doctor in Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island", and Robin Hood's blind stepfather Sir Walter Loxley in Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood". He received his second Academy Award nomination for his performance as a mute elderly renter in Stephen Daldry's "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" (2011), based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer.


title: Max von Sydow

text: In April 2013, von Sydow was honored at the Turner Classic Movie (TCM) Festival in Hollywood, with screenings of two of his classic films, "Three Days of the Condor" and "The Seventh Seal".


title: Max von Sydow

text: In March 2014, Von Sydow provided the voice of an art forger named in "The War of Art" episode of "The Simpsons".


title: Max von Sydow

text: In 2015, he played the explorer Lor San Tekka in "". In 2016, he joined the HBO series "Game of Thrones" as the Three-eyed Raven. For his performance, von Sydow received his second Primetime Emmy Award nomination.


title: Max von Sydow

text: In addition to his film and television work, von Sydow also made forays into video games. He voiced Esbern, a mentor of the protagonist in "" (2011), and narrated the game's debut trailer. He also lent his voice to the 2009 game "" and reprised his role as Lor San Tekka in "" (2016).


title: Max von Sydow

text: In 2018, von Sydow appeared in Thomas Vinterberg's film "Kursk", also known as "The Command", based on the true story of the Kursk submarine disaster.


title: Max von Sydow

text: His final role was in Nicholas Dimitropoulos' war drama "Echoes of the Past" (2021). He portrayed Nicolas Andreou, one of the last living survivors of the Kalavryta massacre of 1943 committed by Nazi troops during the Axis occupation of Greece.


title: Max von Sydow

text: Von Sydow married actress Christina Inga Britta Olin in 1951. They had two sons, Clas and Henrik, who appeared with him in the film "Hawaii". The couple divorced in 1979. Von Sydow married French documentarian Catherine Brelet in 1997 and adopted Brelet's two adult sons, Cédric and Yvan, from her previous marriage.


title: Max von Sydow

text: Von Sydow relocated to Paris following his marriage to Brelet. In 2002, he became a citizen of France, at which time he had to relinquish his Swedish citizenship.


title: Max von Sydow

text: Von Sydow was reported to be either an agnostic or an atheist. In 2012, he told Charlie Rose in an interview that Ingmar Bergman had told him he would contact him after death to show him that there was a life after death. When Rose asked von Sydow if he had heard from Bergman, he replied that he had but chose not to elaborate further on the exact meaning of this statement. In the same interview, he described himself as a doubter in his youth but stated this doubt was gone and indicated he came to agree with Bergman's belief in the afterlife.


title: Max von Sydow

text: Von Sydow died on 8 March 2020 at his home in Provence, France at age 90. He was survived by his wife and his four sons.


title: Max von Sydow

text: He has been nominated for two Academy Awards for his performances in Bille August's "Pelle the Conqueror" (1987) and Stephen Daldry's "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" (2011). At the age of 82, von Sydow was one of the oldest nominees for an Academy Award. Sydow also received two Golden Globe Awards nominations as well as two Primetime Emmy Awards nominations. In 1982 he received the Best Actor prize at the Venice International Film Festival for his performance in "Flight of the Eagle". He is also the winner of 3 Guldbagge Awards and received a festival trophy from the Cannes Film Festival in 2004.


title: Demographics of the world

text: Earth has a human population of over 8 billion, with an overall population density of 50 people per km (130 per sq. mile), excluding Antarctica. Nearly 60% of the world's population lives in Asia, with almost 2.8 billion in the countries of China and India combined. The percentage shares of India, China and rest of South Asia of the world population have remained at similar levels for the last few thousand years of recorded history. The world's literacy rate has increased dramatically in the last 40 years, from 66.7% in 1979 to 86.3% today. Lower literacy levels are mostly attributable to poverty. Lower literacy rates are found mostly in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The world's largest ethnic group is Han Chinese, with Mandarin being the world's most spoken language in terms of native speakers.


title: Demographics of the world

text: The world's population is predominantly urban and suburban, and there has been significant migration toward cities and urban centres. The urban population jumped from 29% in 1950 to 55.3% in 2018. Interpolating from the United Nations prediction that the world will be 51.3 percent urban by 2010, Ron Wimberley, Libby Morris and Gregory Fulkerson estimated 23 May 2007 would have been the first time the urban population outnumbered the rural population in history. China and India are the most populous countries, as the birth rate has consistently dropped in wealthy countries and until recently remained high in poorer countries. Tokyo is the largest urban agglomeration in the world.


title: Demographics of the world

text: As of 2021, the total fertility rate of the world is estimated at 2.32 children per woman, which is slightly below the global average for the replacement fertility rate of approximately 2.33 (as of 2003), which would mean the world's population is declining. However, world population growth is unevenly distributed, with the total fertility rate ranging from one of the world's lowest 0.83 in Singapore, to the highest, 6.49 in Niger. The United Nations estimated an annual population increase of 1.14% for the year of 2000.


title: Demographics of the world

text: The current world population growth is approximately 1.09%. People under 15 years of age made up over a quarter of the world population (25.18%), and people age 65 and over made up nearly ten percent (9.69%) in 2021.


title: Demographics of the world

text: The world population more than tripled during the 20th century from about 1.65 billion in 1900 to 5.97 billion in 1999. It reached the 2 billion mark in 1927, the 3 billion mark in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, and 5 billion in 1987. The overall population of the world is approximately 8 billion as of November 2022. Currently, population growth is fastest among low wealth, least developed countries. The UN projects a world population of 9.15 billion in 2050, a 32.7% increase from 6.89 billion in 2010.


title: Demographics of the world

text: Historical migration of human populations begins with the movement of "Homo erectus" out of Africa across Eurasia about a million years ago. "Homo sapiens" appear to have occupied all of Africa about 300,000 years ago, moved out of Africa 50,000 – 60,000 years ago, and had spread across Australia, Asia and Europe by 30,000 years BC. Migration to the Americas took place 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, and by 2,000 years ago, most of the Pacific Islands were colonized.


title: Demographics of the world

text: Until c. 10,000 years ago, humans lived as hunter-gatherers. They generally lived in small nomadic groups known as band societies. The advent of agriculture prompted the Neolithic Revolution, when access to food surplus led to the formation of permanent human settlements. About 6,000 years ago, the first proto-states developed in Mesopotamia, Egypt's Nile Valley and the Indus Valley. Early human settlements were dependent on proximity to water and, depending on the lifestyle, other natural resources used for subsistence. But humans have a great capacity for altering their habitats by means of technology.


title: Demographics of the world

text: During the rule of Cleopatra, the last pharaoh and ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, the world's population reached a quarter of 230 million people.


title: Demographics of the world

text: Since 1800, the human population has increased from one billion to nearly eight billion, In 2004, some 2.5 billion out of 6.3 billion people (39.7%) lived in urban areas. In February 2008, the U.N. estimated that half the world's population would live in urban areas by the end of the year. Problems for humans living in cities include various forms of pollution and crime, especially in inner city and suburban slums. Both overall population numbers and the proportion residing in cities are expected to increase significantly in the coming decades.


title: Demographics of the world

text: The following estimates of global trends in various demographic indicators from 1950 to 2021 are from UN DESA's "World Population Prospects" 2022. In July 2022, UN DESA published its 2022 World Population Prospects, a biennially-updated database where key demographic indicators are estimated and projected worldwide and on the country and regional level.


title: Demographics of the world

text: The world's population is over 8 billion and Earth's total surface area (including land and water) is . Therefore, the worldwide human population density is 8 billion ÷ = . If only the Earth's land area of is taken into account, then human population density increases to .


title: Demographics of the world

text: Several of the most densely populated territories in the world are city-states, microstates or dependencies. These territories share a relatively small area and a high urbanization level, with an economically specialized city population drawing also on rural resources outside the area, illustrating the difference between high population density and overpopulation.


title: Demographics of the world

text: The table below lists religions classified by philosophy; however, religious philosophy is not always the determining factor in local practice. Please note that this table includes heterodox movements as adherents to their larger philosophical category, although this may be disputed by others within that category. For example, Cao Đài is listed because it claims to be a separate category from Buddhism, while Hòa Hảo is not, even though they are similar new religious movements.