Video Game Empire

Although supercomputers are far inferior to mainframes in commercial applications, there is still a large market in many scientific research fields. For example, when the Oriental Research Institute conducts chip research and development, the use of supercomputers can improve efficiency. Of course, the average semiconductor design company cannot be so extravagant.

In addition, supercomputers are used in many fields such as wind tunnel tests when car manufacturers develop new models, chemical molecular formula synthesis when pharmaceutical companies develop new drugs, weather forecasting, and oil exploration. Cray's sales exceeded 100 million US dollars last year, and it can be said that this market still has a certain scale.

Of course, Chen Shiqing's ability to do business is far less than his ability to engage in research and development. Li Xuan remembers that this academician of the American Academy of Engineering, later failed to run the company and created a salary arrears, which was widely reported by the media.

"Mr. Li, the large-scale parallel processing design idea you proposed earlier, after careful thinking in the recent period, I feel that it is indeed very imaginative, and it is likely to be the direction of future supercomputer development!" Chen Shiqing's eyes flashed a light, said seriously.

For high-level talents like Chen Shiqing, the temptation of pure money is not so great. Although his net worth is not a multi-millionaire or a billionaire, he still has assets of several million dollars, which is enough for the whole family to live comfortably in the United States for a lifetime. For Yu Chen Shiqing, the attraction of pursuing one's own career and constantly climbing the peak is even greater.

Therefore, when Li Xuan communicated with him before, in addition to offering a series of generous benefits, he also discussed with him the direction of future supercomputer research and development. The current guiding idea for supercomputer research and development is the vector processing technology proposed by Cray, the founder of Cray Company. Simply put, by optimizing the internal structure of the processor and continuously compressing the clock cycles required to complete a single instruction, the potential performance of the processor is continuously exploited.

But as clock cycles approach the physical limit, the maximum performance the processor can perform eventually hits a bottleneck. The idea of ​​supercomputers in the future will turn to massively parallel processing (MPP), which is simply a stack of chips, which improves the overall performance of the computer by continuously increasing the number of processors.

And the key to MPP technology. It is to maximize the performance of multiple processors at the same time, so that one plus one equals two as much as possible. For example, the later "Tianhe-2" supercomputer used 32,000 12-core main processors, 48,000 co-processors, and 4,096 domestically produced FT-1500 processors.

It is necessary to make the total number of processors exceed 80,000, and all of them will exert their maximum performance to form a joint force to create a supercomputer with a computing power of up to 4,900 trillion times per second. By no means an easy task.

And the current CaryX-MP supercomputer runs only 914 million times per second, which is less than one-fifth millionth of the future "Tianhe-2" supercomputer, and there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Compared with the previous vector computing processing to improve computer performance, the biggest difference of MPP technology is that there is no need to customize a special vector processor, just use a general-purpose processor. This avoids Cray's heavy patent barriers on vector processing technology.

Later U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. Once made a very special supercomputer. The supercomputer named "Condor Group" is special in that it is actually composed of 1760 Sony PS3 game consoles, and its computing speed once ranked 33rd in the world. Li Xuan is naturally not going to develop such a nonsensical supercomputer.

The "Pearl of the Orient" project will use the S-100 processor newly developed by the Oriental Research Institute. In another space-time structure, Silicon Valley Graphics has used it to develop a number of supercomputers, which are synthesized by various CG shots that are widely used in Hollywood blockbusters, including film productions such as "Jurassic Park" and "Titanic" There are also the use of supercomputers.

"The first $3 million of the 'Pearl of the Orient' project has been deposited into the account, and your team will also receive the full support of the entire Oriental Group, as well as the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong!" Li Xuan said to Chen Shiqing.

He has prepared $10 million in research and development funds for the "Pearl of the Orient" supercomputer project. Hope to have results in three years. The research and development of supercomputers is a huge systematic project, and Dongfang Research Institute, Dongfang Software Company, Dongfang Semiconductor Company, etc. will give special cooperation and support.

If Chen Shiqing can successfully develop a supercomputer that runs the fastest in the world, the benefits to the entire Dongfang Electronics Company and the S-100 processor will definitely be huge, but the development of supercomputers is not an overnight thing.

For Li Xuan, what he is most concerned about now is the success or failure of the second architecture of the Oriental Research Institute. And this also depends on the first application of the S-100 processor - the CW-8203 workstation computer that Ikon has just launched. CW is the English abbreviation of workstation computer (), and 8203 represents the market in March 1982.

The CW-8203 workstation is divided into two models, A and B, according to the frequency of the S-100 processor and the configuration memory. The price is US$34,900 and US$31,900 respectively. The S-100 processor integrates nearly 100,000 transistors. The direct result of the complexity of the design is that the production yield is low.

This is also the reason why the initial price of a new processor is generally higher. Yields will slowly increase as fabs continue to improve their production processes. However, in the first batch of S-100 processors, less than 45% of the initial design performance can be achieved. Li Xuan naturally cannot accept such a low ratio, which will greatly increase the average manufacturing cost of the S-100 processor.

But improving the factory yield is not something that can be achieved overnight, so Li Xuan can only find another way. The most effective method is naturally to reduce the frequency. Many defective products do not mean that the entire chip is scrapped. But only a small area of ​​it does not work properly, so that the overall performance does not meet the design requirements.

It is a pity that these chips are directly destroyed as waste. They can be specially treated to shield the damaged area. Although it will cause performance degradation, it is still a processor that can be used normally. After this frequency reduction process, the S-100 processor is divided into two versions with different frequencies, A and B, and the overall yield rate has reached 65%.

"Well, alright, Albert, this is another good news! The order from Industrial Light & Magic is enough to prove that our workstations also have excellent capabilities in graphics processing. Before the East Software Company acquired a CAD (computer-aided design ) software development companies, I think CW workstations can also be bundled with their software, after all, the demand for advanced workstations in the field of semiconductor design is not small!"

Li Xuan hung up the phone. The news brought by Albert Hawke, president of Aikang, was very good. Industrial Light & Magic decided to purchase a batch of CW-8203 workstations. This product has been on the market for less than half a month. to the second largest customer.

Compared with General Motors, which purchased 300 workstations in one go, ILM purchased only 85 workstations. But this company's orders have no less impact on the subsequent sales of CW workstations than Tongtong Motors.

This customer, General Motors, represents the success of CW workstations in the field of CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing). The order from Industrial Light and Magic gave Ikon a better example to persuade other companies in the graphics processing field to purchase CW workstation computers.

People who love movies are no stranger to the name Industrial Light and Magic. It is a computer special effects company specially established by Hollywood director George Lucas in the 1970s to shoot "Star Wars". Most of the Hollywood blockbusters that you have seen, such as "Terminator", "Avatar", "Transformers", "Harry Potter", etc., behind the cool movie pictures, are the computer special effects of Industrial Light and Magic. support.

In addition to computer-aided manufacturing in the industrial field, and graphics processing, the computer-aided design (CAD) field is also a big market for workstation computers. In fact, the first user of the CW-8203 workstation was Dongfang Electronics itself. All Oriental companies, including Oriental Research Institute, Oriental Software, and Oriental Games, have already taken the lead in large-scale internal adoption of CW workstations before they go public.

And the listing of the CW workstation of Aikang Company, the original minicomputer market ~www.readwn.com~ The appearance of Apollo Computer Company has already grabbed a lot of minicomputer market share. The CW-8203 workstation computer launched by Aikang Computer is much more powerful than the Apollo workstation using the chip.

If we only discuss the computing speed of the processor, the VAX-11 series minicomputers use the VAX-11/780 processor developed by the company itself. 100 processors. Although the company's VAX-11 series of minicomputers use a parallel design of multiple processors, the overall performance is slightly better than the CW workstation computer.

However, the company's VAX-11 minicomputer is priced as high as 200,000 US dollars. It also needs to build a special constant temperature machine room, and the maintenance cost is very high. And Aikang's CW-8203A workstation, the price is only 34,900 US dollars, post-maintenance is more simple and convenient.

Such a disparity in price/performance is doomed, and small opportunities will die quickly in the wave of personal computers. The orders from General Motors that Ikon obtained were obtained in the competition with the company. It is said that the company's stock price has plummeted by 20% within half a month after the CW Workstation was listed. The company was forced to urgently announce that it would launch its own workstation computer within six months. (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welcome to come to the starting point () to vote for recommendation and monthly tickets. Your support is my biggest motivation. Mobile users, please read it.)