Republic of China: Ace Pilot

Chapter 630 Leading the Era: The World's First Transistor Computer

Upon learning of the research progress made by his own research institute regarding ferrite cores, Fang Wen was so excited that he forgot to listen to Zhao Junping's report on other matters.

He stood up abruptly and strode out of the office.

Gong Xiuneng quickly followed, and Zhao Junping also put down the documents and jogged out after him.

The three went directly to the Taishan Research Institute. In high spirits, Fang Wen couldn't help but explain to his two trusted confidants.

"The emergence of this technology allows us to stay ahead of other technology entities around the world by an entire era."

Gong Xiuneng asked, puzzled, "What does it mean to be ahead of an era?"

Zhao Junping was also full of curiosity.

As Fang Wen walked, he explained, "I plan to develop a device that can replace the human brain for calculations. We'll call it a computer. No one in the world has developed such a device yet. Once we succeed, it will be a cutting-edge super technology."

Gong Xiuneng and Zhao Junping were bewildered.

They both knew that Fang Wen was right, but they still didn't understand the deeper meaning behind it.

Fang Wen sighed. This technology would be considered basic by people in the future, but it would be difficult for ordinary people to understand in the present.

Without saying anything more, he quickened his pace and headed to the Taishan Research Institute.

A dozen minutes later, Fang Wen arrived at the research institute. The guards at the gate immediately stood up straight and saluted when they saw that it was Fang Wen.

"General Manager, according to regulations, everyone entering and exiting must show identification."

Since the spy incident, Fang Wen has set a strict rule that even he himself cannot break.

Therefore, Fang Wen took out his identification and handed it to the guard.

Gong Xiuneng and Zhao Junping also took out their identification documents.

The document verification process is a secret procedure.

The guard held his identification in the unlit guard post, shining a special flashlight on it.

The fluorescent imprint numbers reflected in the document are its true identity.

Immediately, the guard came out with three identification documents and returned them.

"General Manager, everything has been verified and there are no issues. Please come in."

After he finished speaking, the guards stepped aside and watched Fang Wen and the other two enter the research institute.

Upon entering the research institute, Fang Wen went directly to the institute's office, instructing the office director, Lu Zexuan, to arrange a meeting room and notify relevant personnel to attend.

In the research institute's conference room, the technical personnel involved in the ferrite core research, the physics theory expert and rocket project leader Jiang Wenjin, the chemistry group leader Huo Duanyang, and the semiconductor group leader Bai Zeshan were all present.

First, the technicians researching ferrite cores explained this new technology.

This former physics professor from Southwest Associated University stepped onto the podium to demonstrate their technology to everyone.

"This is the device we made according to the general manager's requirements."

What he was holding was a strange object, with joints around the edges and a woven mesh-like mat in the middle.

Apart from Fang Wen, none of the other attendees understood the purpose of this thing.

Jiang Wenjin asked, "How is it made? What is it used for?"

The technician explained:

"According to the general manager's naming, it's called a ferrite core board. We use fine gold wires as conductors, weaving them into a grid array. Each core is located at the intersection of two conductors. As for its purpose, I think it's best if the general manager explains."

Immediately, the technicians went down, and Fang Wen went up on stage.

"Everyone is unfamiliar with this thing. If we want to understand its function, I think we should start from the beginning."

He turned around and wrote on the blackboard, talking as he wrote.

"As everyone knows, I want to create a device that can replace humans in fast calculations. To that end, I conducted research on scientific calculators when I was in Wuhan. However, this addition calculator cannot replace the human brain, and it is even slower than the human brain in terms of calculation speed, which is not the result I wanted. Therefore, my idea is to significantly improve the calculation efficiency. This involves a completely new field."

A simple vacuum tube symbol was drawn on the blackboard, and next to it was labeled "core logic component".

Fang Wen turned around.

"To achieve 'rapid calculation that replaces the human brain,' two core problems must first be solved—how to use machines to 'judge,' that is, logical operations, and how to make machines 'remember,' that is, data storage. Currently, our Taishan scientific adder calculator, the 16-bit adder manufactured by John Vincent Atanasoff and John Berry in the United States, and the Z1 and Z2 mechanical storage calculators developed by Konrad Züze and Schreier in Germany, cannot solve these problems and can only serve a function similar to an abacus. That is not what I want."

He pointed to the vacuum tube symbol on the blackboard: "This is a vacuum tube. When you turn on the current, the filament heats up and allows electrons to pass through the vacuum chamber, which is equivalent to 'conducting'; when you turn off the current, the electrons cannot flow, which is 'cut off'. These two states correspond exactly to '1' and '0' in mathematics—binary, which is the language of machines."

Jiang Wenjin, sitting in the audience, frowned slightly and asked, "Using vacuum tubes for logic operations? But vacuum tubes are quite large. How many would you need to complete complex calculations?"

“Good question.” Fang Wen then drew three boxes on the blackboard: “Arithmetic Unit,” “Controller,” and “Memory,” connecting them with arrows. “This is the basic computer architecture I envisioned before: the arithmetic unit is responsible for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, which is achieved by logic circuits composed of a large number of vacuum tubes—for example, two vacuum tubes working together can complete the ‘AND’ logic; three vacuum tubes combined can achieve the ‘OR’ logic. These basic logic circuits superimposed can handle complex mathematical operations.”

He paused, walked to the podium, and picked up the ferrite core board: "But computation alone is not enough. The machine must 'remember' the data and instructions during the calculation process. Otherwise, if it forgets the previous results halfway through, how can it continue? This requires a storage device. Currently, researchers in various countries are still using punched holes to store data. That method is too outdated and cannot store large amounts of data. Therefore, some people have proposed using mercury delay lines or magnetic drums as storage devices."

Fang Wen paused at this point.

He looked at the attendees in the conference room.

Do you think this kind of vacuum tube computer is feasible?

Bai Zeshan, an expert in vacuum tubes, said, "I think that using vacuum tubes to make a computer would be a huge energy consumption. A single vacuum tube consumes several watts of power, and 1 vacuum tubes would consume hundreds of kilowatts. It would also generate a lot of heat, requiring large cooling fans or even water cooling systems, otherwise the vacuum tubes would burn out due to overheating. Such a device would be extremely large, and it seems to have no use other than for fast calculations, right?"

Fang Wen nodded: "Yes, equipped with memory, this kind of vacuum tube computer can improve computing power to a very high level, but I want more than that. We are the only organization in the world that has mastered semiconductor technology, so naturally we will not use the vacuum tube technology that we have phased out. Therefore, what I want to do is to skip vacuum tube computers and make semiconductor computers directly."

As he spoke, he picked up the ferrite core board.
"This magnetic core board is the 'memory' of a semiconductor computer. As the technician just mentioned, each magnetic core is independent, meaning each core represents an independent physical address. Storing data within these cores enables storage. How is this done? It's achieved by changing the magnetization direction of the cores using an electric current: clockwise is '1', counter-clockwise is '0'. Thousands upon thousands of cores form a grid, allowing the storage of massive amounts of binary data. Our semiconductor integration technology can transform the large number of vacuum tubes required into integrated circuit boards, significantly reducing both size and energy consumption." At this point, Fang Wen held the magnetic core board up to the light, the fine gold wire mesh shimmering faintly.

“But memory alone is not enough; the computing unit must keep up.” He turned and drew a tiny rectangle next to the “vacuum tube” symbol on the blackboard, labeling it “semiconductor transistor”: “Bai Zeshan, the transistors your semiconductor factory makes are only one-hundredth the size of vacuum tubes, and consume only one-thousandth the power. If transistors are used to replace vacuum tubes for logic circuits, the size of the arithmetic unit can be reduced from a table to a wooden box, and the power consumption can be reduced from hundreds of kilowatts to tens of watts. This is the core advantage of semiconductor computers.”

At this point in the meeting, everyone began discussing how to implement this new device.

During the discussion, Fang Wen gradually shared the relevant theoretical knowledge he had acquired.

However, theory alone is not enough; continuous scientific research and practice are necessary to eliminate various problems and realize transistor computer technology.

After returning from Zhijiang Airport, Fang Wen held a research meeting and then devoted himself to the research and development of transistor computers.

The first step is the storage architecture design.

The magnetic core memory consists of a large number of ferrite cores, which are woven into a grid array by fine wires. Each core is located at the intersection of two wires (X-line and Y-line), forming a unique address.

In transistor computers, appropriate circuits need to be designed to control the current in these X and Y lines so that each magnetic core can be accurately addressed and data read/write operations can be performed.

Additionally, a readout line that bisects the magnetic core is required to detect the induced current generated when the magnetization direction of the magnetic core changes, thereby reading the stored data.

Then, how to implement the read/write circuit:
When writing data, a current slightly higher than 50% of the magnetic ring magnetization threshold is input on each of the X and Y coordinate lines corresponding to the magnetic core to be written. Only the magnetic core corresponding to the X and Y coordinates will have current in both lines at the same time. After superposition, the current will exceed the threshold, thus magnetizing the magnetic core or changing the magnetization direction, thereby writing one bit of data.

When reading data, read current is sent to X and Y respectively. The magnitude of the read current is the same as that during writing, which is slightly greater than the 50% magnetization threshold. If the original magnetic field direction of the magnetic core is opposite to the magnetic field direction corresponding to the read current, then due to the reversal of the magnetic state of the magnetic core, there will be a huge change in magnetic flux. A large induced current will be generated on the obliquely crossing read line. It can be seen that the magnetic core stores data that is opposite to the read signal.
If the original magnetic field direction of the magnetic core is the same as the magnetic field direction corresponding to the read current, then there will be no induced current on the obliquely crossing read line, meaning that the magnetic core stores the same data as the read signal.

Because reading is destructive, the data must be immediately rewritten back using the original data stored in the cache after reading to restore the original data.

After designing the integrated memory, Fang Wen led the technical researchers to conduct experiments and adjustments.

With the help of Odin's Ring, he could see the changes in the electric field, which saved him a lot of trouble in the experiment, and he determined the memory in just one week.

Having memory alone is not enough.

It also needs to be used in conjunction with transistor logic circuits:

Transistor logic circuits include arithmetic logic units (ALUs) and control units.

The controller needs to control the read and write operations of the magnetic core memory according to the instructions of the program, and to transfer data between the magnetic core memory and the arithmetic unit; the arithmetic unit needs to read data from the magnetic core memory, perform calculations, and write the calculation results back to the magnetic core memory.

In addition, input and output devices are also required.

A full month and a half.

Fang Wendu stayed at the research institute.

He went all out and used his superpowers to develop this groundbreaking technology.

He needs to consider every component and every problem.

The Odin rune ring, which I previously felt was of little use, has finally come in very handy.

By utilizing the ring's ability to sense electric fields, Fang Wen avoided many detours during the entire research and development process, significantly accelerating the pace of development.

Of course, this device is still far from being comparable to future computers.

However, compared to the large vacuum tube computers built by the U.S. National Laboratory a few years later, the semiconductor computer device that Fang Wen made was much more advanced.

The entire device consists of three parts.

Input/output devices, controllers and logic integrated circuits, and memory.

(Taishan transistor computer input device (buttons), output device (small display))
(Taishan transistor computer, memory (magnetic core board))

(Taishan transistor computer, controller and logic integrated circuit board)
In terms of volume, it can be accommodated in just half a room.

Compared to vacuum tube computers (such as ENIAC, which required three classrooms) and transistor computers (such as the IBM 7090, which required two rooms), this device was much smaller.

However, its computing power is even higher.

At the same time, energy consumption is also greatly reduced, as only one air-cooling device is needed to cool the equipment during operation.

Conference room of Taishan Research Institute.

All project team leaders from the entire research institute participated in this meeting.

Fang Wen took the stage to host the event with a smile on his face.

"After more than a month of hard work, we at Taishan have developed the world's first transistor computer."

There was a burst of discussion afterward; everyone was very curious about this new device.

Fang Wen raised his hand to stop the murmurs and continued, "The equipment has been tested and is ready to use. Now that we have advanced computing equipment, we should make the most of it. However, considering that the equipment is very valuable, it must be operated and maintained by dedicated personnel. Therefore, I plan to establish a computing center and recruit a group of people with strong mathematical abilities from various departments to serve as computing center maintenance staff."

Immediately after he finished speaking, someone asked him a question.

"General Manager, just how advanced is this advanced computing device?"

Fang Wen replied, "What you normally need to do in a month of calculations, you can probably do in just one hour on this machine."

This analogy greatly overturned the understanding of the technicians present.

This also made them realize that scientific research work is about to undergo major changes.

Therefore, the heads of each department are actively addressing this issue.

After the meeting, each department held internal talent referral events for mathematics, hoping that more people from their departments could go to the computing center.

(End of this chapter)