Development of productivity started in 1981

Chapter 193 Supercomputer manufacturing is successful, and electronic industry cooperation is reached with the country (asking for monthly tickets)
"Minister, let's go. The car has been arranged." Minister Li's secretary and Director Liu went to the minister's office to invite Minister Li to inspect Tsinghua's supercomputer laboratory.

"Okay, let's go quickly and come back quickly. It's the end of the year and the work has piled up." After reviewing the documents, Minister Li closed the folder, drank a sip of tea, stood up, and went out with his secretary and Director Liu.

After getting in the car, Director Liu reported the latest progress again. Five days had passed since the last invitation to inspect. During these five days, the research team at Tsinghua University did not wait for the hardware to arrive and did nothing else. Instead, they took the time to write some programs to be used on the corresponding supercomputers.

They connected 20 personal computers and 2 workstations with optical fiber to form a local area network, then simulated a supercomputer environment and wrote some computational programs for meteorological data calculations and engineering modeling.

Director Liu went to see them every day during those few days. He became more and more impressed with this research team from Tsinghua University and felt a little regretful for not supporting them before.

In fact, the Tsinghua team was able to make such rapid progress not only because all the participants were highly intelligent, but also because of the leadership of Lang Junjian, who was familiar with this CPU, and the help of Wang Jiankun, a researcher from Nan Jiezhen who installed the brain-computer chip, who stepped in to solve problems at some critical moments and when they encountered difficulties.

"Director Liu, what is the status of Tsinghua's supercomputer? What can we see this time?"

"Minister, I have inquired. Today is the day they start assembling the supercomputer. The Hong Kong company has already airlifted the relevant parts here."

"Oh? They even use airplanes to transport parts. This Hong Kong company must be very wealthy. The renovation funds for our chip manufacturing plants are still waiting for approval, but this Hong Kong company can afford to use airplanes to transport materials."

"Yes, I heard that their sales last year exceeded 1 million US dollars, and this year it is said to reach 5 million US dollars. That's why they are willing to spend money like this." Director Liu told Minister Li about the operating situation of Xingyao Group that he had inquired about. When he mentioned the 5 million US dollars, he couldn't hide his envious expression.

"5 million US dollars? So much? There are not many products they sell in China, and the prices are not expensive compared to those in Europe and the United States." Minister Li asked in confusion.

"Minister, I received some information these days. The majority of Xingyao Group's sales are actually overseas. Their mobile phones and text messages have already occupied the Hong Kong market. Motorola's mobile phones and pagers are no longer selling well. In addition, they have a very high market share in Persia. It seems that they have obtained exclusive operating rights. The telecommunications network in Persia has been handed over to Xingyao Group for transformation and upgrading. In Persia alone, this year's turnover is almost 3 million US dollars. In addition, they are expanding in Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America. That's why this year has seen such a big increase compared to last year."

"Persia, they are fighting Babylon, but they are willing to spend a lot of money to transform the domestic power line network and lay a mobile communication system. Is there any benefit that we don't know about?"

"I didn't receive this. How about I ask the intelligence department for some more information?"

"Well, after today's inspection, you can contact them and see if you can have someone from the department visit their Hong Kong headquarters. Since they are interested in cooperating with Tsinghua and want the domestic market, let's see how sincere they are. If they are willing to provide technology, it's not impossible to give them the civilian market."

Minister Li's words were almost a confirmation to the secretary and Director Liu. If the Xingyao Group really had the strength to compete with European and American semiconductor companies and was willing to cooperate with domestic companies, then it was almost certain that they would get a pass to the civilian market.

At that time, the Ministry of Electronics Industry was very optimistic about the prospects of semiconductors. Unfortunately, except for a very small number of domestic technologies, most of them were 2 to 3 generations behind those of European, American and even Japanese and Korean companies.

Although there is a generation gap, the cutting-edge research of several top scientists has caught up with that of Europe and the United States. Unfortunately, there is not enough funding to implement the project because the entire industry chain is not profitable at present. There is no achievement in civilian use, and although there is demand in the military, it is not large enough. This situation makes it very uneconomical to invest money to upgrade related equipment.

Therefore, the chip manufacturing plants in China are now equivalent to laboratory manufacturing. The equipment is almost all handmade, and there is almost no automation and assembly lines in production, which leads to very low labor efficiency.

It’s not that the ministry has not thought about upgrading, but after much research, it found that if there is no civilian market and it only relies on the military market, the investment will become increasingly large, and it will eventually be forced to return to the original path.

The rapid progress of semiconductor technology in Europe and the United States has actually happened within the past 10 years. At that time, they licensed military semiconductor technology to many companies that focused on the civilian market. After obtaining the technology, these companies designed and manufactured products that the people needed to make a profit, and then used the profits to reinvest in the research and development of more advanced technology, and then continued the next cycle. In this way, semiconductor technology developed faster and faster.

China wanted to copy this method after the reform and opening up. At that time, the technology was only one generation behind that of Europe and the United States. If this method could be copied, then we might have caught up by now. However, after some investigation and research, we found that the domestic environment was completely different from that of foreign countries, and this method could not be implemented at all. Because there was almost no civilian market, the products were still planned and produced. Citizens needed corresponding tickets to buy any goods, so there was no market for free purchase of corresponding electronic products. So this first step would not work.

In addition, most of the people in the country were still living near the poverty line at that time and did not have the financial resources to purchase the electronic products produced.

That method didn't work, so the ministry and the country did not do nothing. Instead, they lifted some restrictions, such as loosening up some state-owned enterprises to allow them to develop some products and seek cooperation with foreign companies. For example, for radios and televisions, which do not require high technology but are in great demand among the public, the state's control was particularly relaxed.

In the past two years, radios almost did not require tickets, but tickets for televisions were issued in great numbers, and almost anyone who wanted one could get one. As a result, the development of these two industries is extremely fast. Now radios and black-and-white televisions can almost be domestically produced nationwide, which has not only greatly enriched people's lives, but also greatly developed the manufacturing capabilities of related companies, although such achievements were achieved at the expense of the color television industry.

Due to these two relatively successful experiences, the ministry and the top leaders of the country are quite satisfied with the method of exchanging market for technology. That is why Minister Li said that if Xingyao Group is willing to cooperate with domestic enterprises, the civilian market can be given to Xingyao Group.

Minister Li had no choice but to think this way. Although the domestic economic development has been on the rise in recent years, the finances have become increasingly tight. There are many reasons for this. One of them is the need to make up for lost time and catch up, import a large number of foreign equipment, and spend a lot of foreign exchange. For example, the large fertilizer industry and the petrochemical industry. The former is to solve the food problem of 8 million people in the country, and the latter is to solve their clothing problem. There is also the unreasonable distribution of benefits and the increasingly low efficiency of enterprises.

The former is a necessary expense for solving people's livelihood issues, so both the central and local governments support it, and are willing to implement it even at the cost of cutting military spending. The latter is more complicated. The opinions of the local and central governments are inconsistent, and the interests of enterprises are also inconsistent. In the end, they were forced to do nothing. Starting this year, a reform of state-owned enterprises kicked off. The central government needs to reduce its burden and relax regulations on those enterprises that are in a mess and are not the lifeline of the country, allowing them to venture into the market on their own. It would be best if they can survive, but if they can't, they can go bankrupt.

The policies regarding cooperation with foreign capital have also been gradually relaxed. State-owned enterprises are no longer required to hold the majority of the shares. In addition, some controls over collective and private economies have been relaxed, and they are allowed to enter some industries.

Minister Li was thinking about his future path while looking at the snow scene on the street.

It snowed heavily last night, and the whole city of Beijing was covered with a white quilt. Now the streets are full of people shoveling snow. Each unit is responsible for its own section, and the government has also organized people to clean public roads.

"It would be great if there were snowplows. Not only would it be efficient, but it would also not waste so much manpower." Minister Li muttered to himself as he looked at the crowded streets. He had also been abroad for inspection. He went to Japan in winter and saw that the roads there were cleared of snow with large bulldozers and trucks. Dozens of people were responsible for a main road and they could quickly clear the road for vehicles and pedestrians.

Unlike now, the jeep drove and stopped, and there were several sections of the road that were too slippery, so he got out and pushed it for a while.

Because of the snow on the road, although we set out not too late, it was almost 10 o'clock when we arrived at Tsinghua's supercomputer laboratory.

"Hello, Minister Li, welcome, welcome." President Gao and Director Wu greeted Minister Li at the door of the supercomputer laboratory.

"Hello, Principal Gao, Director Wu. I heard that they are researching supercomputers here, and they are high-performance supercomputers, so I came to see the research progress."

President Gao only took office as the president of Tsinghua University in May this year. He is an expert in electrical engineering and originally knew little about electronics and semiconductors. However, since the Department of Information and Electronic Sciences started cooperative research on supercomputers with Star Shining Corporation, he has also taken some time to learn more about them. However, due to his busy teaching and school affairs, he only knows a little bit, so the explanation work was handed over to the director of the Department of Information and Electronic Sciences.

After exchanging pleasantries at the door, President Gao accompanied Minister Li, and then Director Wu came to report on the research progress of the supercomputer.

"Minister Li, let's go to the small conference room first. I will use the projector to show you the basic information of this supercomputer, and then we will go to the assembly room to see how the supercomputer is assembled." Director Wu said.

"The guest should follow the host's wishes. Then let me see what your supercomputer looks like."

Director Wu then led everyone to the department's conference room, which housed a high-definition projector sponsored by the Star Group.

After asking the students who came to help to draw the curtains, the light in the conference room dimmed. Only the screen in front was illuminated white by the projector. There was a lightning icon in the upper left corner and a hollow arrow in the center of the screen.

After seeing that everyone was seated and adjusted to the light in the room, Director Wu operated the mouse and clicked the icon. The screen flashed and the rendering of the supercomputer that Director Liu had seen before appeared.

"Please take a look at this. This is what the supercomputer that is about to be completed looks like. It consists of four data processing cabinets and a central task distribution and result aggregation cabinet. They are connected by high-speed, high-capacity optical fibers provided by Sin Chew Telecom Group. The amount of data transmitted per second can reach 4G.

Please look at the next page. These 12 monitors and keyboards and mice are the input and output systems of the supercomputer. They allow 12 workstations to work simultaneously. According to the different tasks and urgency, the supercomputer can divide the computing power according to the requirements for synchronous computing. This innovative design will greatly reduce the cost of using the supercomputer, because not all calculations require the full computing power of the computer, because the computing power of this supercomputer can reach 20 billion times per second. "

Upon hearing this, Minister Li couldn't help but interrupt and said, "Director Wu, you are not exaggerating, are you sure you can do 20 billion times per second?"

"Minister Li, we are confident that this can be achieved. We were not sure at first, but after simulation calculations using the local area network, we are very confident that this speed can be achieved. The supercomputer is being built now, and it is expected to be powered on for testing the day after tomorrow afternoon."

"Director Wu, you built the supercomputer so quickly? As far as I know, it took more than two months in Changsha."

"Director Liu, you don't have to be surprised. Xingyao's technology is completely different from our domestic technology. After receiving the design drawings, they have already used automatic welding machines to weld most of the fixed components on the mainboard. It was sent here mainly for some wiring and fixing the mainboard and cooling system. I'll explain some information about this supercomputer and then take you to see it." So in the next 10 minutes or so, Director Wu briefly introduced the transportation logic of this supercomputer, the basic internal structure and so on. However, he wasted his breath. Minister Li and his party hardly understood anything. They only knew what this computer could do and what functions it could achieve.

Seeing that the people below were confused and absent-minded, Director Wu quickly stopped introducing the technical part and led everyone to the assembly room.

Before entering, he took out dust hats, dust suits and shoe covers from a small room for everyone and instructed them to put them on before entering.

In the spacious and bright laboratory, eight students from the Department of Information and Electronic Science, wearing white dust-proof suits, blue dust-proof hats, and brown shoe covers, were busy in an intense and orderly manner. They worked in pairs, each surrounding a cabinet painted with matte black paint.

"I divided them into three groups, with 3 to 8 people in each group. Each group works for four hours and then takes turns to work. This ensures that they are most energetic when doing the assembly work. The entire supercomputer has 10 CPUs. They are fixed on a circuit board in groups of four to form a computing module. A total of 4 circuit boards need to be installed and wired, so the workload is still quite large," said Director Wu.

Minister Li asked Director Wu some questions while watching these talented students from Tsinghua University busy at work.

These young students did not stop working because other people came in. They just looked at it for a few times and then put their energy into the assembly work at hand. From time to time, they went back and forth to the material cabinet more than 10 meters away, carefully taking out pieces of integrated circuit boards or heat sinks. In one group of students, one person held the integrated circuit board in both hands, as if holding a precious work of art, and walked towards the cabinet with steady steps; the other person was beside the cabinet, slightly bent over, staring at the position to be installed, ready to take over. When the integrated circuit board was handed to him, he took it skillfully and inserted it into the corresponding slot accurately. His focused expression seemed to be completing an extremely delicate carving.

Another group of students, one of them was holding a heavy heat sink with great effort, but his steps were still firm, while the other had already prepared tools and was waiting for the heat sink to arrive. They worked together to carefully fix the heat sink in the appropriate position of the cabinet, ensuring that it was firmly installed to ensure the stable operation of the supercomputer.

In the entire laboratory, only their light footsteps, the clatter of tools, and occasional whispered conversations can be heard. They shuttle back and forth between the cabinets and material cabinets, like a group of busy elves, working hard for the birth of supercomputers. Their every move is full of love for science and exploration of the unknown.

Director Li looked at the busy and orderly assembly work and couldn't help but look forward to Tsinghua's supercomputer. He hoped that they could succeed in one go so that the work next year would be much easier.

"Principal Gao, Director Wu, I will come back to see you during the test the day after tomorrow. I wish you success." Minister Li looked at the time and found that it was almost 11:, so he said goodbye.

"Minister Li, please have your meal here before leaving."

"No, I have an important meeting this afternoon. I have to go back quickly. I'll come back the day after tomorrow."

So President Gao and Director Wu had no choice but to escort Minister Li to the door of the office building.

……

Time passed quickly, and the supercomputer was successfully assembled with the cooperation of a group of students and technicians from Star Group.

"I've checked everything. Is everything ok?" Director Wu asked the students present.

"We have finished the inspection. We checked it against the drawings three times and it is exactly the same as the drawings. We also checked all the joints and found no loose parts." Several students in charge of the final inspection replied one after another that there were no problems.

"Okay, then let's start the power-on test run. First, let's see if the cooling system can operate normally, then start the different cabinets. After completing the subsystem power-on check, we will do a full system power-on check."

So everyone started to power on each subsystem according to the predetermined plan. As the green indicator lights lit up one by one, it meant that the different modules were working normally.

"Director, all subsystems have been powered on and tested, and no faults have been found. Should we conduct a full system test?"

"Well, let's get started. Fortunately, we informed the school in advance and they reserved electricity for us, otherwise the power would have tripped."

Although this supercomputer uses low-power chips, there are so many of them and the amount of electricity required to stack them together is relatively large. Fortunately, Tsinghua University already has large-capacity circuits, otherwise it would be very troublesome and time-consuming to rewire.

Director Wu stood in front of the power switch and personally closed the switches of each subsystem one by one. As the last switch was closed, the green indicator light indicating that all the main machines were powered on lit up, indicating that the supercomputer had achieved initial success.

"Quick, first run a full system test to see if all modules are functioning properly, then run a peak speed test to get the maximum computing power of this supercomputer."

Under the command of Director Wu, his students began to input a series of commands in front of different terminals. Each system began to perform self-checks, and the cooling system began to operate at low power to take away the generated heat.

After completing the subsystem self-check, Director Wu clicked on a test software in front of him. It was a specially designed package that included a series of complex mathematical calculation tasks. When the click was completed, the temperature of the computer rose instantly, the snare system ran frantically, and the temperature in the closed laboratory seemed to be rising rapidly. Director Wu looked at the indicator lights nervously. If there was a problem, he would deal with it immediately.

But his worries were unnecessary, as the supercomputer in front of him withstood the test of its limits. After 10 minutes of tense waiting, the peak computing speed of the supercomputer appeared on the monitor in front of him.

When Director Wu saw this incredible data, his whole body did not move. The students had been waiting for him to read out the data, but everyone just stared at the screen without blinking.

"Director, how much is it? Have we reached our goal?"

"Yes, Director, please report the data quickly. Is there a problem? Is it impossible to calculate it?"

"That's impossible. All the systems are self-checking fine!"

"That's hard to say. Our computer uses parallel computing. Maybe there is a problem in data distribution or aggregation. Even if the modules are running fast, it will be useless."

Several other students were urging and talking.

"Listen carefully, this supercomputer we built is very, very successful. Its peak computing speed reaches 21 billion times per second, which exceeds our most optimistic estimate." Director Wu came back to his senses and happily announced to the students.

"21 billion times per second? Great, we did it."

"Yeah, I didn't expect it to exceed the maximum value we estimated."

"I don't know whether our supercomputer is better or worse than the ones in Changsha and Hefei."

"Ours is definitely better. 21 billion times, that ranks among the top in the world, right?"

"I don't know, but a supercomputer with 21 billion times of computing power is enough to meet the needs of the Meteorological Bureau and the Ministry of Water Resources."

"Director, let's quickly notify the principal. Minister Li didn't show up today as he was supposed to. We need to report this good news as soon as possible."

"Ah! Yes, yes, yes, we have to notify the principal immediately. You continue with the follow-up tests and do all the test items. I'll be back soon." After Director Wu finished speaking, he quickly ran back to the office to make a phone call.

As his call was made, the news of the breakthrough in China's exascale supercomputers began to spread far and wide. The Ministry of Electronics Industry gave the Tsinghua research team the highest praise and also strongly supported the development of Star Group in China.

Minister Li and his delegation also visited the Hong Kong headquarters of Starry Group, where the two sides reached a series of cooperation. Since then, the domestic semiconductor industry seems to have grown wings, developing at a rapid speed, constantly breaking through various barriers, and finally keeping pace with Starry Group. European and American companies originally disdained the domestic market and tried their best to block domestic technology, but with the full support of Starry Group, this situation was reversed in the next two years. China began to restrict the export of high-end semiconductor devices to Europe and the United States together with Starry Group.

This is also a scenario that Wang Jiankun is happy to see. Although doing so will cause Xingyao Group and Xingzhou Group to lose some money, it can promote the rapid development of domestic productivity through this method, and then all his previous work will not be in vain.

(End of this chapter)