In 1978, I was admitted to Harbin Institute of Technology

Chapter 319 Connecting microcomputers and supercomputers is not a new technology.

After changing into an anti-static cleanroom suit and putting on plastic slippers, Xie Wei entered the newly built temperature-controlled cleanroom for the first time.

Inside the laboratory, three rows of 18 microcomputers are neatly arranged.

Following Xie Wei's suggestion, the computer was designed as a tower case from the beginning and placed under the computer desk.

The computer desk is set with a standard keyboard and a wired mouse. The 14-inch monitor is no different from the early microcomputer monitors, and because the resolution is not high enough, the computer screen flickers constantly.

"These computers are prone to CPU overheating when running, which can cause them to crash... During this period, most of the microcomputers were running CAD-aided design software, while only a few over there were testing and modifying the Windows operating system..."

Xie Wei looked at the three rows of computers in front of him, each with technicians wearing anti-static suits and hats conducting tests.

"Is CAD working?"

Xie Wei asked again.

"No problem, but the current processor speed and graphics card performance are very slow when performing CAD operations... You'll see once you try it."

Yu Guofeng was somewhat embarrassed.

He knew Xie Wei valued CAD-aided design. The entire project had taken more than two years and cost tens of millions of yuan. Xie Wei had previously proposed that 3D models could be generated from 2D drawings using operation commands, and then the 3D models could be used to verify the design.

During the research and development process, the entire software development team realized just how difficult it was.

"Row!"

Xie Wei couldn't wait to get to the chair in front of a microcomputer that wasn't turned on yet at the very edge.

The designs were all provided by Xie Wei, so both the monitor and the host computer were designed exactly as Xie Wei remembered. He quickly pressed the power button in the middle of the monitor and then pressed the power switch on the host computer.

"Om~"

The internal cooling fan starts up immediately the moment the power switch is turned on.

The monitor lit up, and against a black background appeared a silver-white gear-shaped logo, below which was displayed HGD-OS 1.0, and below that was a progress bar that kept sliding to the right.

The name is actually an abbreviation of Harbin Institute of Technology Operating System 1.0.

After waiting for almost two minutes, the screen changed: the image disappeared, and a program interface appeared.

A series of white codes rapidly ascended against a black background.

Finally, two options appeared.

"The top section defaults to the operating system, and the bottom section is the programming system. The computer will automatically enter the default system in 10 seconds..."

Yu Guofeng explained to Xie Wei.

Xie Wei could understand it without his explanation.

"We still need to translate the English text into Chinese... If we want to promote it on a wider scale, many technical staff may not know English."

Xie Wei said.

A technician standing nearby tried to speak up in protest, but Yu Guofeng stopped him.

"The boot-up time is too slow..."

After 10 seconds, the display screen changed again, but the transition took about 40 to 50 seconds.

"This is a hardware performance issue, and no matter how much the program is optimized, it cannot be resolved... For the past six months, we have been working hard to improve boot speed and software startup speed..."

The young man who had been stopped by Yu Guofeng finally couldn't hold back and voiced his dissatisfaction.

To solve problems such as excessively long boot times and software startup times, they have lived, worked, and traveled entirely in the laboratory for the past six months!
"Even this temperature-controlled, dust-free workshop was built to improve the stability of microcomputer operation!"

"Oh?"

After powering on, the black display screen showed only one icon with the HGD CAD software. Xie Wei moved the mouse and double-clicked it, and the mouse cursor changed into a slowly rotating small circle.

All of these proposals were put forward by Xie Wei.

At this moment, Xie Wei looked at the unfamiliar young man in front of him. He was not one of the earliest graduate students that Yu Guofeng had supervised.

"Liao Qiang, a graduate student this year, graduated from the National University of Defense Technology with his undergraduate degree..."

Seeing Xie Wei sizing him up, Yu Guofeng quickly introduced them.

"Oh? You were involved in the design of Galaxy-1?"

Xie Wei asked.

"Correct!"

Liao Qiang, head held high and a smug look on his face, said, "I participated in the entire design process of Galaxy-1..."

That is something to be very proud of.

"Crack~"

Seeing his student showing off in front of Xie Wei, Yu Guofeng couldn't help but slap him.

"The HZ80 chip used in Galaxy One was designed by Xie Wei, who also led his team to develop it. He also provided architectural suggestions to your school. Otherwise, Galaxy One wouldn't have been able to achieve a peak computing speed of 5 million operations per second! In addition, the CAD and OS window systems were also designed by Xie Wei..."

"what?"

Liao Qiang's eyes widened instantly, his face filled with disbelief.

The best computer skills in the school were all provided by Xie Wei, who laid the foundation?
He looks younger than me.

"I've always told you there's always someone better! Just stay out of the way!"

Yu Guofeng glared at Liao Qiang with annoyance. He was still very satisfied with Liao Qiang. Although Liao Qiang was among the last batch of worker-peasant-soldier college students, he was very hardworking and diligent during his university studies. If it weren't for the fact that Harbin Institute of Technology needed someone with solid technical skills to maintain and debug the Galaxy-1 satellite it purchased, Liao Qiang wouldn't have come to Harbin Institute of Technology.

"Xie Wei, don't take it to heart by arguing with a young man. Try to mentor him more often in the future..."

Yu Guofeng said to Xie Wei with a forced smile.

"..."

Liao Qiang and Xie Wei were both completely bewildered.

Liao Qiang, in particular, was surprised to see that Xie Wei was younger than him and had only been a junior for half a year, yet he was being mentored by a graduate student like himself.
Xie Wei didn't think there was anything wrong with bringing Liao Qiang along; he just felt like he was old in Yu Guofeng's eyes, so he rolled his eyes and said, "Director Yu, I'm a young man too..."

"Those who have achieved success are teachers; those who have achieved success are teachers..."

Yu Guofeng looked embarrassed. As Xie Wei's abilities became stronger and stronger, and his status at school rose day by day, no one cared about Xie Wei's age. Even Zhang Mingqiu and Liu Debao communicated with Xie Wei as an equal.

"Let's check the software first; it's already open."

Fortunately, the software interface has already opened.

The area around the drawing area is a taskbar and toolbox, with a black background. In the lower left corner of the drawing area, there is a rectangular coordinate system, with the upward axis being Y and the horizontal axis to the right being X.

It's exactly the same as the CAD software Xie Wei remembers.

Xie Wei clicked the icon with a straight line on it, but no Chinese command prompt appeared. He clicked on it in the drawing interface and moved the mouse; the straight line moved accordingly, but the response was very slow.

After trying it for a while, the basic functions were working fine. The software can generate various basic graphics based on the input data, and it also has a table annotation function.

"You previously suggested that when the mouse hovers over the command button area, a Chinese tooltip should pop up. We did design that feature, but it has very high hardware requirements. With the Chinese tooltip, even slightly complex calculation commands are prone to crashing..."

Before Xie Wei could ask, Yu Guofeng explained that it wasn't that they were unwilling to add these functions, but that the hardware couldn't support them.

"Senior, based on your understanding, Galaxy One's performance should be able to support all the functions of CAD, right?"

Xie Wei turned to Liao Qiang, who was still in a daze, and asked him.

"what?"

Liao Qiang snapped out of his daze, not having heard clearly at all, and was slapped again by Yu Guofeng.

"Senior, although Galaxy One's peak computing speed reaches 5 million operations per second, it's only used for calculations. The display-related hardware is similar to that used in these microcomputers... However, the processor and other components are fully capable of supporting it..."

Liao Qiang snapped out of his daze and said with a bitter face.

Galaxy One was designed for computing and did not need to have many functions. Even its system was different from that used by ordinary computers.

Running CAD software on Galaxy One makes drawing and calculations very fast, but the displayed results are not much different from those on a microcomputer.

When will Galaxy One arrive?

Xie Wei thought for a moment. Since Galaxy-1 was running without problems and wouldn't crash due to excessive computational load or slow processing speed of the microcomputer's central processing unit, he figured he could install the software into Galaxy-1 and network it with Bank-1...

Therefore, research into internet technology must be accelerated.

"Some parts have arrived. The original plan was to assemble them and then transport them over, but the journey was too long, involving both cars and trains. They were worried about problems, so they transported the parts to the school for assembly and testing... right in the basement downstairs."

Yu Guofeng introduced the situation of Galaxy-1.

"Want to take a look?"

Xie Wei shook his head, "How's the progress of the internet technology that was already started? We need to network the microcomputers with Galaxy-1 to achieve data exchange. At the same time, we need each microcomputer to be able to connect to Galaxy-1 and use its computing power to solve the problem of insufficient computing power for microcomputers..."

"This……"

Yu Guofeng was stunned. When they were researching Internet communication technology, they thought about connecting each microcomputer to the network so that each microcomputer could exchange data. They never thought about connecting a supercomputer so that all the networked microcomputers could access the supercomputer's computing speed.

"In theory, this is feasible. The computing speed of Galaxy-1 is based on connecting numerous data processors to perform simultaneous calculations."

Liao Qiang's eyes lit up when he heard this.

This is a new direction in computer technology.

"It's unrealistic to upgrade the hardware performance of all microcomputers in a short period of time. However, Galaxy-1 has upgrade capabilities. As long as the National University of Defense Technology develops a faster one, we can directly upgrade Galaxy-1..."

"What if the distance is far?"

Yu Guofeng raised a question.

Computer communication technology is also a key research project in the Computer Science Department.

"Use a switch! However, the school's network must be designed from the outset to avoid external connections. If we want to research external connections, we need to create a separate network; the internal and external networks must be separate! Especially for cutting-edge projects, we need to consider computing power allocation, access permissions, etc. Otherwise, any computer on the internal network, as long as it's connected to Galaxy One, can access all project and technical data..."

Xie Wei only had a basic understanding of computer technology.

How to implement the various functions is a problem that the computer team needs to solve.

The development of the international internet is not very fast at present, and domestic experts have rarely even heard of it.

What Xie Wei wanted to do was to create an independently operating local area network, and ultimately use relevant technologies to connect research institutions and military systems across the country. For external communication, however, international technology would be used…

I think it's better if you don't come!

After Xie Wei dropped a bunch of new ideas, Yu Guofeng rubbed his throbbing head and complained, "Every time you come, you casually mention a few ideas, and we don't know how much effort we have to put in, and there's no guarantee we can even implement them..."

"This is our chance to catch up with international standards in computer communication technology. The Americans started researching this technology in 68, mainly to enable users to share mainframe resources..."

Xie Wei looked at Yu Guofeng with disdain.

If I don't come for a long time, he blames me for not coming; but if I do come, he complains about my presence.

"Alright! I'll just complain a bit. Let's work on the plan first. If you have time, come over and give us your suggestions!"

"I don't think there will be time."

Xie Wei shook his head, "It's not just me, I guess you'll have to come with me too."

"how?"

Yu Guofeng was puzzled.

"In order to accelerate the development of computer hardware, I previously asked Principal Li to propose to the military that a group of personnel be transferred from the Computer Institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences to the university. Principal Li agreed, and the military leaders did not object."

"Not opposing is supporting!"

They didn't even say they weren't against it in principle.

"But it's been so long, and not only has no one come, there's been no movement either. I'm afraid the Chinese Academy of Sciences won't agree. I'll ask Secretary Liu first. If that doesn't work, we'll have to go there in person. We might have to use some of the school's computer technology as leverage!"

Xie Wei became melancholy at the mention of this.

The mother of Loongson!
Once they arrive, the school's experience in large-scale integrated circuit design and the technical team they have trained are enough to barely support the launch of the Loongson project.

Ni Guangnan and other bigwigs at Lenovo who had insisted on developing domestically produced chips instead of importing foreign chips were ultimately kicked back to the Computer Research Institute by Liu, who betrayed the country, wasting a lot of their time!
Xie Wei had already put in a lot of effort to come up with the design for the HZ80 chip.

He wasn't a professional integrated circuit researcher, so after providing the school with the first decent chip, he mostly just made requests and rarely got involved.

In order to prevent China from being held hostage by the international chip industry, he set his sights on the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, aiming to build the nation's top integrated circuit research team for this era.

A top-notch chip research team.

Led by Mr. Huang, the "Mother of Loongson" who "prostrated himself on the ground to wipe away the shame on the motherland"!

"The Chinese Academy of Sciences might not release them! Once they're here, can they go back? The Chinese Academy of Sciences definitely knows that... If something goes wrong, it means that the offer President Li made didn't sway the Chinese Academy of Sciences..."

Xie Wei looked helpless.

Would someone like Li Rui be willing to pay the price?

That guy is a scoundrel who always likes to get something for nothing.

"To be honest, the price that Principal Li can offer may not be as appealing as the price you can offer."

Yu Guofeng paused for a moment, then gave a wry smile.

Xie Wei not only had the ability to mobilize the school's resources, but also, because of his keen insight, he was able to clearly present something that would impress the Chinese Academy of Sciences, whether it was technology or something else.

(End of this chapter)