Go back in time and be a chaebol

Chapter 2694 The Window to Artificial Intelligence (First Update, Please Subscribe)
In September, Chang'an is in the dry season, with little rainfall and relatively dry weather.

This is the best season of the year, with gentle sea breezes easing the city's heat. However, even in the dry season, there is rain, it's just a matter of how much.

As evening fell, a light rain enveloped the entire city. Fine raindrops slanted and tapped against the glass curtain wall of the Paradise Building. Song Mingxuan, the CEO of Paradise Games, slammed a stack of test reports onto the conference table.

The deep voice startled everyone, and they all turned their attention to the CEO.

For outsiders, people are more concerned about his rumored relationships with many female celebrities; it is well known that he likes beautiful women.

There have been many rumors about his relationship with "Heaven's Star," but to the company's employees, he is their president.

The atmosphere in the meeting room became even more oppressive, like the low pressure before a rainstorm.

On the other side, a large screen was playing test footage of Quake in a loop—the firelight in the lava arena flickered, the edges of the polygonal rock walls were glaringly jagged, and when moving at high speed, the character models even showed afterimages and tearing, which was far from the "immersive 3D experience" advertised by competitors.

"This is not the effect I wanted."

Song Mingxuan frowned, his tone becoming more forceful when he said "want," his gaze fixed on the lagging screen on his hand, as he spoke:

"When Need for Speed ​​was released last month, players complained a lot—the car body lighting looked like it had been painted, the track reflections were stiff like a mirror, and the frame rate dropped to below 20 when cornering at high speeds."

The entire industry is now focused on 3D graphics. We pioneered this field, but now all game companies are racing to get ahead. If we can't deliver smooth visuals soon, we'll be eliminated by the market next year.

It will be phased out next year!
This is the most popular saying in the SEA business world, and it is also a core tenet of the corporate management theory advocated by Li Yi'an: Every company is only one year away from bankruptcy!
There is only one way for a bankrupt company to die—its core competitiveness weakens to the point that it can no longer survive. All other reasons for failure are just excuses.

Song Mingxuan was deeply influenced by this theory, and as someone working in the video game industry, he understood the significance of this statement.

One year!
It's not impossible that the bankruptcy could even occur in a shorter period of time.

If a company releases several unpopular games in a row, it's not far from going bankrupt.

Technical Director Lin Yusheng looked at the parameters on the report, his tone tinged with helplessness:

"We've already squeezed the CPU's performance to the limit. The Pentium processors we're using now are simply overwhelmed, having to handle both game logic and 3D graphics."

To improve lighting and shadow precision and increase the number of polygons in a scene, frame rate must be sacrificed; to ensure smoothness, the image quality can only remain at a rough level. This is a hardware bottleneck, not something that software optimization can solve.

To improve image quality, we must wait for the next generation of Pentium processors to be available.

Song Mingxuan remained silent as he listened to the technical director's report.

He understands the limitations of hardware better than anyone else, which is why the company is now going all out to develop a new generation of Pentium processors—for better image processing.

Following the release of the Pentium processor, they quickly followed up with a 3D game, which immediately sparked player interest. The market demand for graphics exploded, and players were no longer satisfied with the flat world of 2D pixels, craving realistic light and shadow and complex scene construction in games. The success of Quake and the Need for Speed ​​series was precisely due to seizing the opportunity presented by the 3D wave.

But now, the lag in hardware is gradually eroding their advantage—players need better graphics, but the hardware can't handle it.

So, as researchers of the Pentium processor, they are now working on a new generation of processors to cope with this change. But will the new generation of processors be able to solve all the problems?
Looking at the game screen, Song Mingxuan's mind raced. Standing in the conference room, he lit a cigarette, pondered silently for a moment, and then said:

"We cannot put all our eggs in one basket with the second-generation Pentium processor."

Stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, Song Mingxuan suddenly looked up, his gaze sweeping over everyone present, and said:
"Perhaps we should consider a new type of processor, the Pentium processor, which is a general-purpose processor that can handle many tasks. Rendering games is only one part of its functionality. That's why it's impossible to dedicate all of its resources to game rendering."

"In that case, could we develop a dedicated processor capable of independently handling 3D graphics?"

The CEO's idea caught everyone's attention; it seemed not impossible.

While everyone was whispering among themselves, Song Mingxuan thought for a moment, then said:
"This processor doesn't need to handle game logic or data transmission; it only focuses on graphics rendering—freeing the CPU from heavy graphics work and, to some extent, allowing all computing power to be used for graphics analysis and rendering."

These words were like a pebble thrown into a calm lake, instantly causing an uproar in the conference room.

Lin Yusheng quickly said:
"President, this is too risky. Although we have now entered the field of chip design because of the Pentium processor, the design and development of the Pentium processor still follows traditional thinking."

If we were to develop an independent graphics processor, it would involve circuit design, algorithm optimization, and compatibility debugging, requiring a large investment and a long development cycle, and there is no guarantee of success.

Furthermore, since we've already launched graphics cards, we can further increase their computing power and improve their performance, which would be a more reliable approach.

"Doing it that way would be too conservative, but the risk is worth taking. After all, we're facing the future," Song Mingxuan said with unusual firmness.
"The graphics cards on the market today, including ours, are essentially just interface cards for auxiliary display and do not have independent computing capabilities."

He was telling the truth. The graphics cards previously released by Paradise Games actually introduced the concept of independent 3D accelerator cards, ushering in the 3D era for PC games. However, whether it was their company or other companies' products, they only continuously improved 2D/3D integration and rendering capabilities, without fundamentally solving the problem.

"What we're going to do is create a true 'graphics processing unit'—one that can handle vertex rendering, texture mapping, and lighting calculations on its own, increasing the efficiency of 3D image generation by ten or even dozens of times. Yes, it's a different kind of processor, a processor specifically designed for graphics processing."

He paused, then said:
“We can contact computer graphics labs at various universities, who have the relevant algorithmic foundation; we also have an existing hardware team. This work is extremely important to us. It's even related to the company's survival. So, we prioritize people, money, and resources.”

And so, with Song Mingxuan's approval, the development of a new hardware was finally put on the agenda. At this time, no one realized what all this meant. Even a few months later, at the new year's electronics trade fair, when Paradise Games launched its first GeForce 256 graphics card, what was the world paying attention to?
Its graphics processing effect miraculously made the originally laggy screen become smooth during gameplay—the flames of lava flowed slowly along the texture of the rock wall, the shadows of the characters changed in real time with the angle, the jagged edges of the polygons were smoothed out by the delicate anti-aliasing algorithm, and the frame rate was stabilized at over 60.

This has also brought about a complete transformation in 3D graphics.

It is also widely recognized in the industry as the first true GPU—Graphics Processing Unit.

It was at that press conference that Song Mingxuan first proposed the term "GPU".

What do experts, scholars, and professionals from all over the world see at this moment?
However, what we saw was its essential leap from a "graphics accelerator" responsible for drawing pixels to a "graphics processor" responsible for calculating and drawing the entire 3D world.

While initially designed for 3D graphics rendering, this processor has revolutionized gaming and is poised to reshape the entire industry. It is no longer simply auxiliary display hardware, but a "pixel engine" that breathes life into games.

That's all there is to it.

However, the massively parallel computing architecture it established laid the groundwork for the future application of GPUs in a wide range of fields, including scientific computing, artificial intelligence (AI and deep learning), and cryptocurrency mining.

For this reason, the GeForce 256 is not only a milestone in gaming history, but also a key starting point for the entire computing industry's evolution towards parallelism.

Or rather, it is the key to humanity truly opening the door to AI and deep learning, but at this time no one realized this.

For the human world, the GeForce 256 was nothing more than an article in a video game magazine announcing—well, a new era of gaming has arrived.

Yes, a new era of gaming has arrived!
It arrived in this world quietly, and for the first time, players experienced a near-realistic 3D world in a game. They screamed and went crazy for the game, but in their frenzy and screams, they had no idea that the era of GPUs had arrived and would soon fundamentally change the entire world.

The whole world knows nothing about this.

As the instigator of all this, Song Mingxuan had no idea how his decision today would change the world.

At this time, he was focused solely on his own career.

Just like now, after the meeting ended, Song Mingxuan returned to his office and instead of continuing to think about the "graphics card" problem, picked up a game console from the table.

A game console that's only the size of your palm!
After the game console was turned on, it played a simple game called "Tetris," which Li Yitao had brought back from Russia.

Although it was very simple, it became a worldwide sensation upon its release, creating a block craze that was installed on almost every personal computer.

However, that was just a game on a PC, and the game console in his hand was a new type of game console launched by Blue Planet Software Company, a handheld console specifically designed to run "Tetris".

"That's interesting."

Song Mingxuan, who was playing a game on his handheld device, was not interested in the game itself, but rather in the small, portable device that could be used anytime, anywhere with just batteries.

This device was his main focus. It was a small, black-and-white screen game console, with familiar geometric patterns flashing on it.

What sets it apart is that it can be carried around with you.

"It uses a cheap green LCD screen, originally used in low-end electronic products like calculators... Yitao is quite shrewd with its budget; it's less advanced than a regular black-and-white screen and can't provide its own light source for use in the dark, but it's cheap..."

Although he didn't consider Blue Planet a competitor, Song Mingxuan continued playing the game. For the next few hours, he played the handheld console, playing the rather relaxing Tetris game. However, he wasn't playing the game; he was learning about the handheld console's performance.

By the time the battery ran out, it was already late at night. Looking at the time, Song Mingxuan frowned, his expression turning serious, and he muttered to himself:
"That's really impressive. It allows you to play games for nearly eight hours on a full battery. In other words, you only need a few batteries to play for several hours anytime... It's sure to become a global phenomenon."

As he spoke to himself, his brow furrowed, he added:

"Do we have a similar product?"

(End of this chapter)