Siheyuan: I eat melons while doing scientific research

Chapter 1103 I Don’t Like Big Blue’s Technology

Gao Zhendong felt the same way about her happiness. He felt the same way every time he succeeded in showing off in front of everyone.

He picked up Gao Changhe and said, "Come on, come on, bring some delicious food, let's go to Sha Zhu's house for a meal and celebrate, hahahaha."

The family of four went to cause trouble for Sha Zhu's family so blatantly.

Chief Engineer Chi came as soon as he said he would. The next day, Gao Zhendong saw him in his office, accompanied by two comrades.

"Please sit down, Mr. Chi. How is your work recently?" Gao Zhendong warmly invited them to sit down.

"Not bad. Thanks to you, there is a lot of work to be done in the promotion and research of computers, especially microcomputers." Chief Engineer Chi said happily. Computers began to be deeply used in all walks of life. Not only did they have work to do in the original mainframes, but the work in microcomputers was actually more arduous.

According to the original rules, the computers that could be put into a single chassis at this time began to be named "microcomputers", or microcomputers for short. This can be regarded as a convergent evolution in naming, but the time was moved much earlier.

"Didn't you participate in the cooperation with Gauls' industrial software? How are you doing now?"

Speaking of this, Chief Engineer Chi is no longer sleepy: "Well, very good, now the first version has been used in some domestic factories, but the price is really high. Fortunately, we also have a part of the shares, so almost half of the meat is in the pot."

The fine tradition of the Gauls - the goods are good, but the prices are really high.

Gao Zhendong didn't mind. Even if the price was high, we would still make a profit. The ones used by the Gauls themselves and the ones sold to the Oceanic Treaty countries later, in the end, not only did we not lose money, but we even made a profit.

More importantly, regardless of whether this thing is expensive or not, the most important thing is that it is useful.

"What's the matter with you looking for me today?" After chatting about daily life for a while, Gao Zhendong said with a smile.

Chief Engineer Chi nodded: "It's true."

After saying that, he took out a stack of papers and said, "Here, take a look. These are some of the emails sent to us by comrades who use computers. Most of them are focusing on one problem - the network is too fast!"

Gao Zhendong laughed: "Isn't it good to have a fast network?"

"It's good, but everyone's opinion is that this thing is fast, so other things seem slow. Maybe it's because they can tolerate it if they haven't used the good ones before, but now they feel a little bit unbearable."

So that's how it is. Gao Zhendong nodded in understanding: "Where are the main opinions focused?"

Chief Engineer Chi pointed to the latest microcomputer on Gao Zhendong's desk and said, "Floppy disk!"

Gao Zhendong laughed: "They think this thing is too slow, right?" Compared with the speed of the Internet, the reading and writing speed of the floppy disk is indeed a bit behind.

"Yes! That's what I mean. The read and write speed of this thing is a bit slower than that of the network. It's okay for data running in the memory, but if the data is larger and can't fit in the memory, it will be troublesome to write it to the disk or tape."

To be honest, Chief Engineer Chi himself felt a little uncomfortable listening to the creaking sound of the floppy disk.

Gao Zhendong nodded: "Well, that's true. I just happened to have thought about this issue and wanted to find you guys."

"Chief Engineer Gao, do you have a solution?" Chief Engineer Chi's face was full of surprise. He didn't expect that everyone had the same idea. Chief Engineer Gao said that he wanted to come to him, so it seemed that he must have an idea.

"Well, you should know that Big Blue has a new technology called hard disk, right?" Gao Zhendong said.

Chief Engineer Chi was very excited: "I know, Chief Engineer Gao, do you want to make a hard disk?" Although the Citigroup guys were unwilling to sell this thing to him, he still knew its basic performance. In terms of reading and writing speed, it was much faster than a floppy disk, although in terms of storage density, it was even lower than the floppy disk made by Chief Engineer Gao.

In fact, Chief Engineer Chi also thought this was quite magical. Chief Engineer Gao and his colleagues actually achieved a storage density that was even higher than the latest technology of Citigroup.

It seems that the thing called hard disk is not better than the floppy disk in other aspects, but it has one feature that is much better than the floppy disk.

——The reading and writing speed of this thing is indeed incomparable to that of a floppy disk.

If we have this thing, most of the regrets of our comrades can be solved.

Although this thing is very expensive, overall, it is still much stronger than the magnetic core.

Gao Zhendong nodded and shook his head: "Yes, and no. Their hard disks don't actually have much of a breakthrough in principle compared to our floppy disks. They're all magnetic induction, so they're still a little off."

As soon as Gao Zhendong said this, Chief Engineer Chi knew what Chief Engineer Gao was thinking.

——He doesn't like the blue giant thing.

"Chief Engineer Gao, isn't this a step too big?" Chief Engineer Chi raised his doubts out of concern. After all, we don't even have a hard drive now.

Gao Zhendong said: "We are starting from scratch anyway, so why should we repeat the same mistakes made by the Citigroup guys? We have better technology but we don't use it. Aren't we losing money?" The earliest hard drives of this era still used magnetic induction technology, which utilized magnetic head induction or magnetic field changes to read and write data. This is why Gao Zhendong said that there is no essential difference between Big Blue's hard drives and floppy disks. The only difference is that the disk is harder and can rotate at high speeds, but there is an upper limit on the speed because magnetic induction reading and writing, especially reading, requires the disk to directly contact the head.

Gao Zhendong really looks down on this thing.

His words surprised and delighted Chief Engineer Chi. He was happy that Chief Engineer Gao had indeed found a new way, but he was surprised that his brain worked so quickly.

This method of directly finding a new path is extremely difficult compared to walking along the path that Citi people have already walked.

"Are you sure?"

Gao Zhendong smiled and nodded: "Yes! But I still need to make some preparations for this matter. I'm just here to inform you first. You can spend some time on the hard drive control software and disk drive first."

Compared with magnetic head technology, these hard disk software are much more versatile and are also the parts that can be directly activated by computing power.

As for the magnetic head technology, Gao Zhendong was ready to do the whole job. He spent 8 search opportunities to get this thing from the system.

The reason why he only had 8 chances was because the hard drive was related to Qianshan, and it originated from an unsuccessful technology investment promotion event in Qianshan that he had seen in his previous life.

——Micro hard drive.

This lack of success has little to do with the technology of the micro hard drive itself, but is simply due to being crushed by technological development.

When Qianshan introduced and produced micro hard drives, USB flash drives and Flash storage chips had already started to explode in popularity. Micro hard drives were naturally sold out in seconds and had a very short life cycle. They were even used in mobile phones, but were only a flash in the pan.

But don’t worry about whether it succeeds or not, just ask if this thing is a hard drive, and it was a hard drive using the latest technology at the time, with everything it should have.

So Gao Zhendong found a lot of things in his eight attempts, and even some extraordinary gains - things behind Winchester hard drive head technology.

"Okay! We'll do it with you! Mr. Gao, if you don't use magnetic induction technology, what are you going to use to read it?"

Chief Engineer Chi could not think of any other reading and writing methods except magnetic induction. Chief Engineer Gao said that magnetic induction was not necessary. This would directly subvert the foundation of current magnetic recording - hard disks, floppy disks, and magnetic tapes all rely on this thing.

Gao Zhendong laughed: "To be precise, only the reading part does not use magnetic induction, but the writing part still needs magnetic induction."

Read-write separation? This is interesting.

"Then what do you use to read it?"

Gao Zhendong wrote two words: "Magnetic resistance!"

Magnetic resistance? Chief Engineer Chi was confused.

To be honest, Chief Engineer Chi is not familiar with this thing. Although this is an effect that was discovered in 1851, it was not actually used in hard drives until later.

"Mr. Gao, I don't quite understand magnetic resistance..." Chief Engineer Chi had an embarrassed smile on his face. There was indeed a big difference between this thing and the computers he knew.

Gao Zhendong had no choice but to explain the magnetoresistance effect to him again. Chief Engineer Chi and other comrades listened with great interest and nodded as they listened.

"Oh, I understand. In other words, changes in the magnetic field will cause changes in the resistance of certain materials? Although the change is very small, it is relatively easy to read this change through an amplifying circuit?"

Gao Zhendong nodded: "Yes, in this way, the reading can leave the disk surface and perform non-contact reading at a certain height and distance from the disk!"

This is where the Winchester hard drive is truly advanced: it can read and write contactlessly, and the read and write speed can be very fast, without considering the wear between the head and the disk. Although the distance is very small, non-contact is non-contact.

The comrades were not fools. After Gao Zhendong’s explanation, they immediately understood the advanced features and huge potential of this thing.

Chief Engineer Chi exclaimed as he listened: "This is a great principle! It is much more advanced than magnetic induction reading, and it solves the major defects of contact reading."

Another comrade was a little puzzled: "What about writing? You still need to contact it."

This time, Chief Engineer Chi explained it to him himself: "Are you stupid? Writing can also be contactless. As long as the power of the write head is increased, writing will be fine. The reason why reading requires contact is that the magnetic material on the disk has limited residual magnetism after writing, and it cannot be read without contact. However, there is no such problem for writing. The write power of the head can be increased!"

Gao Zhendong was very satisfied. Look, all the comrades are eager to answer the questions!
"But this technology is so good, why didn't Citi people consider it?" asked a young comrade from the computing institute.

Gao Zhendong shook his head: "I guess it's not that they haven't considered it, but they have problems that they can't solve, such as materials, such as control... They can't do it for the time being."

Materials... materials again...

(End of this chapter)