Video Game Empire

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As soon as Li Xuan returned to Hong Kong, he got good news. The supercomputer project that has been in place for more than two years has finally begun to bear fruit!

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The "Pearl of the Orient" supercomputer just developed by Chen Shiqing and his team exceeded 4.8 billion operations per second during the first test run. This is more than double the speed of 2.4 billion operations per second, the world's fastest supercomputer m-13 released by the Soviet Union-Moscow Institute of Computer Science not long ago.

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Two or three years ago, Li Xuan ordered two supercomputers of the latest model from the American company Cary. As a result, one of the supercomputers originally planned to be installed in the Oriental Experimental Building in Hong Kong was restricted from export by the US government on the grounds of preventing the spread of technology.

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At that time, Li Xuan spent a lot of effort to carry out public relations, and finally let the United States release it. But the supercomputer that finally arrived in Hong Kong was an old model of the previous generation, not the latest model Li Xuan originally ordered.

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As the so-called "do not steam the steamed buns," Li Xuan made up his mind in a fit of anger, and planned to develop a world's fastest supercomputer by the Dongfang Group himself. At the beginning of 1982, the brand-new processor s-100 using the fan ps architecture was officially launched for sale. This powerful processor newly launched by the Oriental Research Institute has laid the foundation for the research and development of supercomputers by the Oriental Company.

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Li Xuan took its chief technical officer from Cary, the world's most famous supercomputer manufacturer, and Mr. Chen Shiqing, a Chinese engineer, dug from the United States to Hong Kong.

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Chen Shiqing led the R&D team for more than two years, costing more than 20 million US dollars, to break through a series of technical difficulties, and now finally successfully completed the research and development of the "Pearl of the Orient" supercomputer project.

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"Li Sheng, our 'Pearl of the Orient' supercomputer consists of 75 nodes. Each node has 8 s-100a processors, and each s-100a processor has a computing power of 8 million operations per second. That is to say, the computing power of each node is 64 million times per second. The total computing power of 75 nodes is 4.8 billion times per second!" Chen Shiqing pointed to the rows of chassis in the computer room and introduced.

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The advent of the "Pearl of the Orient" is a milestone revolution for the research and development of supercomputers. Before it came out, the research and development direction of supercomputer was based on the vector processing technology proposed by Mr. Cray, the founder of Cary Company. In layman's terms, it is to continuously tap the computing potential inside a single processor.

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However, Li Xuan proposed to Chen Shiqing, a new design idea for parallel processing. The so-called parallel processing, generally speaking, is the superposition of the computing power of multiple processors.

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Before that, supercomputers had only one core processor. The performance of this processor directly determines the performance of the computer. The parallel design idea is to superimpose the computing power of multiple processors. The biggest problem is how to solve it. The problem of "1+1<2" when multiple processors work together.

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Once this problem is solved, the development of supercomputers has actually become a game of saving chips. The later U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory also produced a supercomputer composed of 1760 Sony ps3 game consoles. Even handheld game consoles can be used to assemble supercomputers, Americans can really play!

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And Chen Shiqing did not disappoint Li Xuan, and it only took more than two years to successfully solve the problem of processor parallelism. You must know that Li Xuan only put forward an idea.

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You must know that the idea of ​​parallel processing has only just begun to sprout in the 1980s. Chen Shiqing really turned Li Xuan's idea into reality without any reference. This is really amazing! The entire team has published dozens of papers and applied for patents during the research and development of the "Pearl of the Orient" project!

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To continue to improve the running speed of supercomputers in the future, it is only necessary to increase the number of chips or replace processors with better performance. It can be said that Chen Shiqing and his team have successfully opened a new door for the manufacture of supercomputers!

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Vector processing techniques have come to an end. It will become more and more difficult to increase the operation speed of a single processor. The s-100a processor used in the "Pearl of the Orient" supercomputer, although it is a special improvement of the s-100, still belongs to the category of general-purpose processors. The production difficulty and production cost are not high.

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"Li Sheng, our 'Pearl of the Orient' also has a disadvantage, that is, the power consumption is too high! After the computer is started, there are 600 processors working at the same time, and the power consumption and heat release are not a small value! Therefore, our computer It is necessary to build a special constant temperature machine room to dissipate heat, and the annual electricity bill will be very considerable!" Chen Shiqing shook his head and said.

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"As the saying goes, nothing can be perfect! But the next step is to improve the control program inside the computer, and let it automatically shut down some nodes and put them in a sleep state when the computer does not need to be saturated.

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This can improve the economics of computers. It is very beneficial for future market sales! By the way, when are you going to announce the news of the 'Pearl of the Orient'? "Li Xuan said.

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"The 'Pearl of the Orient' is still in the testing stage, and the operating system still has some minor problems that have not been fully debugged! Moreover, the computer lacks specific application software. We and the University of Hong Kong are jointly developing a typhoon path simulation software. Apply it to the 'Pearl of the Orient' to predict typhoons and make the 'Pearl of the Orient' famous!" Chen Shiqing introduced.

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To measure the overall performance of a supercomputer, the operation rate is only one of the indicators, and others include the common constraints of many factors such as floating-point computing power and the number of application software.

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Li Xuan just returned to his office after visiting the "Pearl of the Orient" supercomputer. Han Peng came to the door.

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"Li Sheng, I have a few things to report to you here!" Han Peng said very seriously.

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"What's the matter?" Li Xuan asked curiously.

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"According to the investigation of the Ministry of Security and Supervision, the 'Pearl of the Orient' project team was infiltrated by commercial spies!" Han Peng took out an internal document from his briefcase.

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"Do you know which spy it is?" Li Xuan frowned and quickly began to browse the files.

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"It should be sent from the north!" Han Peng replied, "They just completed the research and development of 'Galaxy-1' last year. The calculation rate is only 100 million times per second. It is estimated that they want to learn from our technology!"

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Among the materials that Han Peng brought. Including speculation on the general performance of the "Galaxy-1" supercomputer. It should be far behind the cary-1 supercomputer being used in the Oriental Experimental Building. cary-1 is a product of cary company seven or eight years ago, and the calculation rate is also 350 million times per second.

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"This is the 6th case of commercial espionage discovered by the Ministry of Security and Supervision in the past year! 4 of them are from the north, and all the infiltrated departments are concentrated in the Oriental Research Institute!" Han Peng said solemnly.

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The Security Supervision Department is a very special department within the Oriental Group, whose main responsibility is to investigate and detect potential commercial spies within the group. The internal security system of the Oriental Group is relatively complete, and units like the Oriental Research Institute are the top priority of prevention.

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The person who was found to have a problem this time was just a low-level technician in the "Pearl of the Orient" research and development team, and it was difficult to access the core information of the supercomputer project. When he was inquiring about the details of the project from a core R&D member of the team, he was directly reported to the Safety Supervision Department by the other party.

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Because according to the company's internal confidentiality regulations. It is strictly forbidden for R&D personnel to discuss related issues involving the company's technical secrets in private. Especially those who do not have the right to know the relevant content, if they are too curious, they will be listed as suspected targets of commercial espionage for the first time.

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Every employee in the Oriental Group must receive training on confidentiality at least once a year. The training frequency of units such as the Oriental Research Institute has been increased to once a quarter. At the beginning, this regulation once aroused the collective resentment of R&D personnel, and Li Xuan also personally came forward to explain and appease it.

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"It seems that the last time I asked President Xu of the Xinhua branch for tea, my tone was still too gentle! Lao Han, bring these materials with you tomorrow, and go to President Xu for tea again! If they are so reckless, I will call the police. The Political and Political Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has come to help deal with it!" Li Xuan said with a smile.

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There is a Political Department under the Hong Kong Police Force, which is the department responsible for counterintelligence and internal security within the Hong Kong police system. But in fact, this Political Department is a spy agency affiliated with the Fifth Division of the British Communist Party.

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Naturally, Li Xuan would not really have to cooperate with foreign intelligence agencies. to deal with domestic agents. That would break the bottom line of his life! But it's okay to use this to scare some people.

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In the past, when Li Xuan was just a little bitch, he wished that domestic agents could get all the advanced technologies in the world. But when the victim becomes himself. Li Xuan is definitely not so willing.

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After all, these technical materials were developed after the company invested a lot of real money and silver, and there is no reason to give them away! More importantly, if Li Xuan really gave it away easily, his kindness might bring disaster to the Oriental Group!

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"By the way, I have another news here! Oriental Commercial previously had an agent registered in Singapore, and it would place orders from us for a large number of erm-1 processors every quarter!

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The reason they gave us to purchase is to supply some compatible machine manufacturers in Southeast Asia and Australia. At first we didn't care too much. But then they added erm-2 and s-100 processors to their purchasing catalog.

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You must know that computer manufacturers who purchase erm-2 processors will seek technical support from us. After all, this will allow them to understand the performance of this new chip faster, thereby shortening the development time of compatible products!

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The s-100 processor is generally used in high-end workstation computers and servers, and the manufacturers who choose it are far less than the manufacturers of compatible machines! And this Singapore agent, the demand for erm-2 and s-100 is not small!

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At first we thought it was a new competitor in the high-end computer market. So start collecting data! However, after investigation, it was found that the origin of this Singapore agent is very problematic.

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The large number of chips they took away from Dongfang Shoji were not supplied to the so-called Southeast Asian compatible machine manufacturers. But after a lot of trouble, it was secretly smuggled - smuggled to mainland China! "Han Peng said.

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Batumi prohibits the export of advanced computer products and core electronic components to China. Several processors from the Oriental Research Institute are all within the scope of the banned list. Li Xuan speaks from the national sentiment. Definitely disgusted with this Batumi organization. However, the Eastern Company never dared to violate the regulations, otherwise the entire company would likely be severely sanctioned by Western countries.

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In 987, the later Toshiba Company exported five-unit CNC machine tools to the Soviet Union. As a result, the silent ability of Soviet-Soviet nuclear submarines has been greatly improved. After the deal was revealed, even the prime minister of Japan was forced to apologize. Toshiba, as one of the core companies of the Mitsui Consortium, was able to escape the disaster even though it suffered heavy losses.

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However, there is no country behind the Oriental Group, and its main markets are in Europe and the United States. Once charged with the charge of deliberately spreading advanced technology, it may be a disaster for Dongfang Company!

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"Open one eye and close one eye!" Li Xuan just said the words, but after thinking about it, he quickly changed his words and said, "No, let's kick this Singapore company out of the ranks of agents! Even if we turn a blind eye Close an eye, but at least their disguise can't be too perfunctory!

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Since their reason for placing an order with us is to supply compatible machine manufacturers in Southeast Asia, they have to find a few real downstream compatible machine manufacturers to support the front! You must know that Dongfang Commercial conducts investigations on its own agents every year, and eliminates some agents with poor qualifications!

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They are so careless that even we can easily find the problem, not to mention those professional intelligence agencies! If something goes wrong in the future, we can't even find an excuse for prevarication! "

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It is a principle that Li Xuan must abide by not to put himself in a dangerous situation. As a profitable business company, Orient Group should not undertake some responsibilities and obligations!

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Li Xuan suddenly thought again that the current director of the Hong Kong Xin-Hua branch, Xu, is also not very reliable. This guy later defected and fled to the United States, and he must be guarded against!

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So Li Xuan changed his mind and said to Han Peng: "You don't want to look for President Xu at all, his level is too low! Anyway, you will soon go to Beijing with a delegation of Hong Kong entrepreneurs. Find an opportunity then, directly to the The relevant leaders of the central government should reflect on these problems and bring up our difficulties!”

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In fact, Li Xuan does not think that after expressing his dissatisfaction on his side, the domestic penetration of the Oriental Group will completely stagnate. But after Dongfang Electronics protested, at least the future infiltration will be planned more carefully and carefully!

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If the domestic personnel can really take the relevant information away from the Dongfang Group without being aware of it~www.readwn.com~, Li Xuan should be contributing to the socialist modernization construction.

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For example, the supercomputer technology spied on by relevant domestic parties, anyway, under the constraints of Batumi, it is impossible for Dongfang Group to sell its products to the country. Even if China benefits from the related technologies of the "Pearl of the Orient" and greatly improves the performance of domestic supercomputers, there is not much business loss for Li Xuan.

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But this supercomputer can be used to simulate a series of cutting-edge defense industries such as nuclear-bomb explosions and missile launches. At present, the computing power of the domestically produced "Galaxy No. 1" supercomputer is more than 1 time per second, while the computing power of the "Pearl of the Orient" supercomputer is 5 billion times per second.

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Li Xuan is interested in spreading supercomputer technology, so he must first find a way out. If the Eastern Group has already taken the most stringent security precautions in advance, but the technology is still stolen.

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Then it will have enough reasons to stand on the position of a victim and shed its political responsibility! (To be continued.)

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