Development of productivity started in 1981

Chapter 192 Supercomputer Design Completed (asking for monthly ticket)
"Minister, good news. The supercomputer that the Meteorological Bureau needs has been developed." In the office of the Minister of the Ministry of Electronics Industry, Director Liu, who is in charge of the supercomputer project, reported the news he had just received to Minister Li of the Ministry of Electronics Industry.

"Oh, which place was the first to develop it successfully? Changsha or Hefei?" Minister Li asked.

"Uh, neither of them. It's the Department of Information and Electronic Science of Tsinghua University."

"Huh? Tsinghua University's Department of Information and Electronic Science, do they have this ability? BJ doesn't have the ability to produce chips!" the minister asked in confusion.

"Minister, the chips and some electronic components were provided by a Hong Kong company called Star Group. Tsinghua University's Department of Information and Electronic Science worked with Star Group to assemble the supercomputer. Star Group provided the materials and Tsinghua University provided the personnel. The information we have received so far is that the design work has been completed and the computer can be assembled once the CPU and other components arrive."

"Hong Kong can also produce chips? Aren't only the United States and Europe capable of this? Isn't this Xingyao Company just a shell company? In fact, those chips and electronic components are bought from Europe and the United States and then resold here?" The Minister of the Ministry of Electronics Industry obviously didn't know much about Xingyao Electronics, which was already able to produce 10-micron chips, so he only knew in his mind that high-performance chips could only be produced in Europe and the United States.

"Minister, I have already inquired about it, and I have also received a briefing on Xingyao Company. This Xingyao Group actually has a high-tech chip manufacturing plant in Hong Kong. It can currently mass-produce a series of chips such as 5-micron CPUs, memory, and flash memory. They also have a secondary factory in Guangzhou, which mainly produces 10-micron chips and some semiconductor components for use in home appliances such as televisions and refrigerators."

Director Liu quickly reported to the minister the news he had learned in the past few days and some information about the Xingyao Group sent by the intelligence unit.

"The Starry Group has grown so fast. It has grown to this size in less than three years. Moreover, its semiconductor technology is almost the same as that of the United States. Is there something we don't know about?"

"Um, Minister, I'm not sure about that. The briefing given by the intelligence department didn't mention this information, and I can't find out for now. We don't have any channels to learn about it in Hong Kong, but the experts in their product department have tested it, and it's not counterfeit as they advertised, and the price is much lower than that of European and American products. Not only can it be purchased with RMB, but there is no limit on the quantity, unlike when we buy the most advanced chips in the United States, there are restrictions of this and that." Director Liu said.

"Since the experts in the department have tested it, I feel relieved. But how come Tsinghua University designed the supercomputer so quickly? Didn't Xingyao Company just start selling it in BJ not long ago?"

"Minister, I do know a little bit about this, but it's not intuitive enough to explain it verbally. Why don't we go to their place and take a look?"

"Xiao Liu, you are still playing guessing games with me. Go out and talk to your secretary to see when you are free. I want to see what kind of magic makes Tsinghua's R&D efficiency so high." Minister Li said.

"Okay, Minister. I'll go right away." After saying this, Director Liu took the materials and left Minister Li's office, and went to discuss the travel time with the Minister's secretary.

The camera returns to the new computer room of the Department of Information and Electronic Science of Tsinghua University, which is equipped with 20 personal computers and 2 workstations from Xingyao Group.

These are all sponsored by the Starry Group as an initial investment in the research and development of supercomputers. A researcher named Nan Jiezhen who has a brain-computer chip implanted is also among them. Wang Jiankun has introduced a lot of supercomputer knowledge into his brain-computer chip, which will provide some reminders and help during research.

The more than 20 graduate students and doctoral students wearing white coats, blue dust caps and shoe covers sitting in the computer room, as well as the only undergraduate student Lang Junjian, are the human resources invested by Tsinghua University.

They were assigned to this computer room by their supervisor half a month ago, and since then, except for eating and going to the toilet, they hardly ever leave the room because they don't want to miss this precious research opportunity.

Currently, there are only more than 40 graduate students and 6 doctoral students in the Department of Information and Electronic Science. Originally, the department planned to let all graduate students participate, but because of limited workstations, these research institutes also conducted a test for this opportunity. The test questions were the contents of the hardware introduction and software introduction issued by Xingyao Electronics.

Although it was their first time to come into contact with a Chinese system, these people were all selected from thousands of people to be admitted to Tsinghua University, and then went through layers of selection to become graduate students. So half a day after the information was distributed, more than half of the people answered all the test questions correctly. In the end, they had to draw lots for selection, and those who didn't get the chance could only wait for the next opportunity regretfully.

Lang Junjian was introduced by Xingyao Group because he is a developer of CAD software. Originally, he would not have had this opportunity.

The research and development of supercomputers is mainly based on circuit design. In order to speed up the research and development, it is very necessary to use computer graphics and then send them to companies in Guangzhou and Hong Kong to manufacture circuit boards and corresponding components. If manual graphics are used, it will be too slow.

Therefore, Lang Junjian served as a teacher for these graduate students and doctoral students for a while in the early stage, explaining to them the usage of CAD software and some usage tips. Of course, he was not idle in the later stage, because he had some research on the new CPU of Xingyao Electronics. After catching up on some knowledge of supercomputers, he did not lag behind in research and development, and made great contributions in the testing link, helping the team find several major problems and proposing some feasible solutions.

The Department of Information and Electronic Science at Tsinghua University had the idea of ​​developing a supercomputer a few years ago. However, the production capacity of chips and related hardware in the country was very limited at that time, and most of the materials they applied for were not approved. So although they had the idea, they had no physical objects for research.

Now that Xingyao Company is providing the hardware, of course they have to go all out. Although the project has not yet been approved by the ministry, the department has decided to give it a try. Although the supercomputer developed using Xingyao Company's hardware may not be sold, some non-confidential units still have this demand. The first and second units have already been reserved by the meteorological department and the water conservancy department. The price is the cost of the components plus 50% of the research and development funds. By then, Tsinghua University will be able to get the 20 computers and 2 workstations sponsored, and will also receive 5% of the profit share.

The meteorological department and the water conservancy department have been calling for supercomputers for a long time. Weather forecasting requires a lot of calculations, and water conservancy project design also requires a lot of calculations. The two major departments are in urgent need of supercomputers. With the continuous development of the domestic economy, higher and higher demands are placed on the accuracy of weather forecasts. The construction projects of hydropower stations are also increasing in number and size, and high-performance supercomputers are urgently needed for auxiliary calculations and simulations.

Now the two departments are using domestically developed computers with computing power of tens of millions times. The computing speed can no longer keep up with the demand, and each time the computer is turned on, it consumes a lot of electricity, and the probability of problems is greatly increased. So when they heard that Xingyao Group had workstations with computing power of tens of millions times for sale, they had already applied to buy one and tried it out.

Although there were incompatibility issues due to system problems, the researchers from the two departments used their ingenuity to master Chinese programming methods in a short period of time and wrote their own relevant calculation programs.

After trying it out, everyone was impressed by the stability of this workstation, because there is no need to shut down after turning it on, and it can almost continue to work as long as there is no data jam. Moreover, its power consumption is an order of magnitude lower than that of domestically produced tens of millions of times computers.

However, although stability has been achieved and the cost of use has been greatly reduced, the two departments still feel that it is not fast enough. It would be great if there was an exascale supercomputer for sale. So they went to find Manager Xin to ask if Xingyao Group has an exascale supercomputer for sale.

Manager Xin had a plan in mind for this, and told them to try to build a supercomputer themselves. Xingyao Group could provide the corresponding hardware support, such as CPU, memory, cache memory, and could also help manufacture motherboards according to the design, cooling systems, cabinets, and some components that were not available domestically.

Of course, those two departments did not have the ability to design a supercomputer, so Xin Zhixuan went to the Department of Information and Electronic Science of Tsinghua University according to the planned plan and initiated a joint research project for this supercomputer.

The Department of Information and Electronic Science took this pie in the sky very seriously and selected its best talents to carry out research and development, because if they missed this opportunity, it would take an unknown amount of time to raise funds and purchase hardware for research and development on their own.

The National University of Defense Technology in Changsha has national defense needs, and the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei has direct support from the academy, so they can grab the chips and some cutting-edge electronic components that are not produced in large quantities in China. It is understood that the supercomputer in Changsha has been assembled and is about to be turned on for testing. The department started to select personnel while applying to the school. Although this research and development does not require funds, as long as people are available, it is unreasonable not to report such a high-tech research work as a supercomputer to the school. After receiving the news, the school also attached great importance to it and specially approved two large rooms as the research site for the supercomputer, and also helped solve the power and water problems.

In addition, the school quickly reported the news to higher authorities, including the Ministry of Electronics Industry. Because all electronic-related production and research and development work in the country is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Electronics Industry, the development of this supercomputer would of course be reported to the ministry.

Director Liu was in charge of this aspect. After receiving the news from Tsinghua University, he first questioned it because the only surplus chips in the country were supplied to Changsha and Hefei. He didn't know what Tsinghua University would use for research and development. It couldn't just rely on drawing blueprints on paper. After reading the detailed report, he couldn't help but pay attention to it because it mentioned that Xingyao Group would help solve the hardware source.

Director Liu knew something about the Xingyao Group because the Xingyao Group came to him for approval when they opened a computer showroom in BJ. At that time, he knew that there was such a Hong Kong company coming to BJ to sell computers.

However, he did not take it seriously at the time, because the visitor was a Chinese named Xin Zhixuan, and his company was in Hong Kong. He thought that Hong Kong businessmen saw that computers had high prices and high profits, so they became middlemen, changing the brands of European and American companies' products and selling them in the mainland. However, based on the idea of ​​treating Hong Kong compatriots well, he quickly approved their application.

Now, after reading the report materials from Tsinghua University, I was surprised to find that the previous application materials of Xingyao Group were not exaggerated. Their semiconductor production capacity is really comparable to that of several large companies in Europe and the United States. Because the report mentioned that they can make corresponding modifications according to the design of Tsinghua University, this means that Xingyao Group has the ability to produce it, otherwise European and American companies will not cooperate.

So he collected information and asked his friends. It happened that the domestic intelligence department began an in-depth investigation into the Xingyao Group, and the intelligence he wanted was delivered in time. After reading the briefing from the intelligence department, he realized that the Xingyao Group was really not simple. They have built a complete industrial chain from wafer production to high-end chip manufacturing to computer products.

This is even more impressive than those big companies in the United States. It is understood that American companies such as Intel and Texas Instruments that produce chips do not produce terminal products such as computers, while companies such as IBM and Apple that produce terminal computer products do not produce upstream chips and electronic components.

Director Liu feels that the model of the Xingyao Group is very similar to that of domestic state-owned enterprises. It is committed to the entire industrial chain and focuses on not being controlled by others.

In fact, most state-owned enterprises hope to control both the upstream and downstream, mainly because they have suffered losses in the past due to being controlled by others. So as soon as they have some ability, they think about building a complete industrial chain, controlling both the upstream and downstream in their own hands, and keeping all the profits in their own hands.

After reading the intelligence, Director Liu went to Tsinghua University's Department of Information and Electronic Science to conduct an on-site inspection. The day he arrived happened to be the day when the new computer room was put into use.

Looking at the computers with silver-white lightning logos of Xingyao Group neatly arranged in two rows, and two top-configuration workstations placed in a separate small room, Director Liu knew that Xingyao Group was serious and was not just throwing out an impossible project for the sake of building relationships. The 20 computers in this room plus the two top-configuration workstations totaled more than 140 million yuan, a huge amount of money for the country, more than the funding invested in Changsha and Hefei (not taking into account the free supply of hardware).

"Director Wu, you guys are really quick. I just received your report and your research site has been set up." Director Liu said to the director of the Department of Information and Electronic Science.

"We have to hurry up. We have finally found a financial sponsor, so we have to seize the opportunity. I know that the projects in Changsha and Hefei are about to end, so we have to hurry up and make the most of our time." Director Wu said with a complicated expression.

To be honest, the human resources at Tsinghua are superior to those in Changsha and Hefei, and the talents admitted every year are one level higher than those two places. However, due to certain situations at Tsinghua, when the tasks were finally assigned, they were still given to those two places. Director Wu was very dissatisfied at the time, but he could not change his superiors. He had his considerations. After failing to get the project, he thought about it for a long time and knew that he could not wait for the project, so he made preparations while seeking other help.

Isn't it the support from Xingyao Group that he has been waiting for? He agreed as soon as he heard it. Such good conditions for cooperation are hard to find even with a lantern. The previous plan was that the department saved money and begged for money from some companies, and then bought foreign chips and electronic components to assemble in the department. Now there is no need to be so troublesome. Xingyao Group provides all the parts and components, and can also specially make some components according to the design. This is countless times better than the previous plan.

"Are you planning to compete with those two places? What level of supercomputer are you planning to develop?" Director Liu asked.

"I'm not afraid of you telling me that we plan to research supercomputers with 10 to 20 billion floating point operations per second."

"10 to 20 billion times, you're researching so fast right from the start? Director Wu, don't take Hong Kong businessmen for granted and ignore their hardware. It is understood that although their chips and electronic components are cheaper than those in Europe and the United States, they are still sky-high compared to our domestic per capita income. If the research and development fails, and Hong Kong businessmen waste tens of millions of raw materials, it will be a difficult end."

"Director Liu, you don't need to worry about this. The Xingyao Group also supports our research plan, and they have even bigger follow-up plans waiting for us. As long as this first supercomputer is successfully developed, they will continue to cooperate with us on subsequent supercomputers with higher performance. By then, our department may have the final say on our domestic supercomputers." Director Wu said proudly.

When Director Liu heard Director Wu say this, he took back his words of advice. He knew that Director Wu still had some opinions about him. When they were competing for the supercomputer project, he did not support Tsinghua.

"Well, I wish you success soon. I will come to inspect you often. Please don't hide anything when the time comes."

"Our project does not require confidentiality from the department, but Xingyao Company still has some confidentiality requirements. Director Liu, please do not bring outsiders. The specific architecture of the supercomputer cannot be disclosed to outsiders."

"Okay, I'll come alone then. I'll be leaving now."

"Director Liu, take care. The research and development task is urgent, so I won't see you off."

In the following 10 days, Director Liu came to Tsinghua every now and then to see their research progress, and also asked about the progress in Changsha and Hefei from time to time.

In the first two times, he felt that Tsinghua University was just so-so. Their main R&D force was still graduate students and a few doctoral students. Their mentors were not involved, and these people were still fumbling around on the computer and had not entered into formal design.

The next few times he went there, he was more and more shocked, because the design progress of these people was increasing exponentially. In just 10 days, the main structure of the supercomputer was completed, and someone even drew the exterior renderings using computer software.

Director Wu specially demonstrated it to him at that time. On the color monitor, five matte black cabinets were arranged in an X shape. The cabinet in the middle was the shortest, and the other four cabinets were of the same height. The connection between them was very simple. He counted and found only four cables of different colors. According to Director Wu, they were optical cables with high-speed optical fibers inside. The efficiency of transmitting information was dozens of times that of ordinary cables.

After reading it, Director Liu realized that Tsinghua University had already completed the design, so he hurried back to the department to organize the information and reported the situation to the minister. This is the scene at the beginning where Director Liu reports to the minister.

(End of this chapter)