Courtyard House: A Major Power's Heavy Industry, Hand-Crafted Nuclear Fusion

Early summer of 1980, Beijing.

In Zhongguancun, there is an inconspicuous courtyard with a sign that reads "Red Star Software Research Institute".

This place was originally an abandoned royal garden, but now it is filled with a dense network of cables and buzzing cooling fans.

Although it lacks the vastness and desolation of the Northwest 001 Base, the air here is filled with a more anxious and urgent atmosphere.

The conference room was filled with smoke.

"Minister Su, the foreigners are pressing us again."

The veteran cadre in charge of external liaison wiped his sweat. "The delegations from Siemens and NEC are staying at the Beijing Hotel, asking us for 'development toolkits' and 'operating systems' every day. They say that having just the 'Loongson' chip as a heart isn't enough; it also needs a 'soul.' Without an operating system, this chip is just a hot potato, unusable!"

Su Zheng sat at the head of the table, twirling a pen in his hand, his brows slightly furrowed.

This is indeed a big problem.

At the summit in San Francisco, he fooled the world with that "prototype." But only he and his core team knew that the so-called "Red Flag OS" running on that machine was actually just a "shell" temporarily put together for demonstration purposes.

Its kernel is still a rudimentary DOS modified version, and the graphical interface is entirely composed of pre-rendered animations.

If they are to be truly commercialized and to truly support a massive "Loongson" ecosystem, they need a real operating system.

An operating system that is as easy to use as Windows, as stable as UNIX, and... entirely Chinese.

"Time is running out."

Su Zheng looked at the calendar on the wall. "We promised our alliance partners a three-month delivery period. If we can't deliver anything substantial within three months, the 'Global Open Chip Alliance' will become a joke. Those allies we just lured in will jump back into Intel's arms without hesitation."

"Three months?"

An elderly professor below gave a wry smile. "Minister Su, you're a hardware engineer, you probably don't understand software. Writing an operating system is an undertaking involving millions of lines of code! Even if you gathered all the programmers in China, it would take at least three to five years to complete it."

"Yes, the kernel scheduling algorithm alone is enough for us to study for half a year."

"And the driver for the graphical interface..."

"And compilers..."

A chorus of wails filled the air.

"Who said it would take three to five years?"

Suddenly, a clear, cold voice interrupted everyone's complaints.

The meeting room door was pushed open.

Ye Xinyi walked in.

She changed out of the business suit she wore in San Francisco, putting on a loose white T-shirt and jeans, her long hair casually tied back in a bun. She carried the heavy laptop in one hand and held a bottle of… Coke? in the other.

"Three months is enough."

Ye Xinyi placed the cola on the table, her gaze sweeping across the room. "As long as you listen to me."

……

That evening, the "Nuwa Mending the Sky" project was officially launched.

Commander-in-Chief: Su Zheng.

Chief Engineer: Ye Xinyi.

Location: Room 0, Red Star Software Research Institute.

This is a large computer room that has been specially modified. More than a hundred of the latest "Loongson-1" development machines are neatly arranged, and in front of each machine sits a top mathematics or computer science student selected from universities across the country.

They are the nation's brightest minds, yet at this moment they are all like elementary school students, holding their breath and staring intently at the big screen.

In front of the screen, Ye Xinyi sat in an ergonomic chair.

"The operating system, to put it simply, is like a housekeeper."

Ye Xinyi's voice wasn't loud, but it was clearly transmitted to everyone's ears through the microphone: "It manages the CPU, memory, hard drive, and screen. What we need to do is set rules for this butler."

"Now, assign tasks."

"Tsinghua team, responsible for the memory management module."

"Peking University team, responsible for the file system."

"USTC group, responsible for device drivers."

"The rest of you, follow me to handle kernel scheduling and the graphical interface."

As soon as she finished speaking, her hands flew across the keyboard.

crackling-

That wasn't the sound of typing on a keyboard; it was the sound of heavy rain hitting banana leaves.

On the screen, against a black background, green code flows down like a waterfall.

struct task_struct {...}

void schedule(void){...}

int fork(unsigned long clone_flags){...}

The students present were stunned.

They've seen people who write code quickly, but they've never seen anyone this fast.

What's even more terrifying is that she doesn't need to think.

Those complex logics and algorithms that required repeated consideration seemed to be etched into her mind. She didn't need to draw flowcharts, look up information, or even stop to drink water.

She's like a human compiler, directly "flowing" the logic in her mind onto the screen.

"Is...is this a human being?"

An elderly professor from Tsinghua University stood beside Su Zheng, staring at the almost uninterrupted cursor on the screen, his glasses nearly falling off. "This code quality... this structure... is she writing ASCII art?"

No, she's writing C code.

Su Zheng leaned against the door frame, holding a coat in her hand. "But her C language is more concise than encoding and more efficient than machine code."

Su Zheng knew that this was Ye Xinyi's "complete" state.

As the female protagonist in the original work with "unparalleled computing power", she finally unleashed her true strength after the hardware performance finally caught up with her thinking speed.

One person is worth an entire division.

No, in the software field, she is a goddess.

……

Time passed day by day.

Room 0 has become a city that never sleeps.

The students rotated through three shifts, and the professors were so exhausted that they fell asleep on their desks.

But Ye Xinyi did not move.

Aside from going to the toilet and being force-fed by Su Zheng, she had been sitting in the chair for a full forty-eight hours.

Her face was pale, and her eyes were dark-rimmed, but her eyes were frighteningly bright.

That was the light of burning life.

"Xinyi, take a rest."

Su Zheng walked behind her, gently pressed her shoulder, trying to interrupt her rhythm, "The kernel is 80% complete, the rest is up to them to debug..."

"no."

Ye Xinyi didn't turn her head, her fingers still flying across the keyboard. "There's another bug. A memory leak. There's a 0.01% chance of losing the stack pointer during multitasking. If this bug isn't found, the system will be unstable."

"0.01%?" Su Zheng frowned. "That's a hardware issue, isn't it?"

"No, it's software."

Ye Xinyi's voice was a little hoarse, "It's my fault. My scheduling algorithm was too greedy. In pursuit of extreme speed, it sacrificed redundancy."

"I want to rewrite it."

"What?!"

Several students who were still awake exclaimed in surprise, "Professor Ye, rewrite the scheduling algorithm? That's 20,000 lines of code! We spent a week writing it..."

"Delete it."

Ye Xinyi pressed the Delete key.

In that instant, Su Zheng saw the determination in her eyes.

That is "Nuwa".

To mend that final crack, she was willing to refine herself into it as well.

……

Early morning of the third day.

When the first rays of sunlight shone into the server room through the gap in the curtains.

The sound of typing suddenly stopped.

Ye Xinyi's finger hovered above the "Enter" key, trembled for a moment, and then fell heavily.

Build Successful.

Compilation successful.

The screen flickered.

The previously dull command-line interface has disappeared.

Instead, there is a deep, starry blue background.

In the center of the screen, a bright red flag slowly rises and flutters in the wind.

Below is a line of golden Chinese characters:

Red Flag Operating System v1.0

RedFlag OS

"It's done..."

I don't know who shouted it first.

Immediately afterwards, the entire server room erupted in cheers.

The students jumped up, and the professors were moved to tears.

This is the first truly independent operating system with its own kernel, independent graphical interface, and full support for Chinese!

It is no longer a vassal of DOS, nor an imitator of Windows.

It's brand new.

It is the soul of "Loongson".

Su Zheng did not cheer.

He rushed forward immediately and caught Ye Xinyi as she fell backward.

She fell asleep.

The moment the system started, her physical strength finally reached its limit, and she fell asleep in the chair.

Su Zheng looked at the pale and haggard face in his arms, and his heart ached as if it were being pricked by needles.

He gently picked her up, as if he were holding a fragile piece of porcelain.

"Everyone has worked hard."

Su Zheng gestured for people around him to shush and lowered his voice, "Three days off. Go to sleep, take a shower, and spend time with your girlfriend."

"Leave this to me."

……

three days later.

When Ye Xinyi woke up again, she found herself lying on a soft bed.

Sunlight streamed into the room, and a bouquet of fresh lilies sat on the windowsill.

"woke up?"

Su was sitting on the edge of the bed, peeling an apple.

"System..." Ye Xinyi opened her mouth, her voice hoarse like a broken gong.

"The system is great."

Su Zheng held a slice of apple to her lips. "Representatives from Siemens and NEC have already tested it. They said... it's the fastest and smoothest operating system they've ever seen. Even faster than Apple's Lisa."

Ye Xinyi took a bite of the apple, and the corners of her mouth turned up slightly.

"That's good."

"However..." Su Zheng changed the subject.

"What's wrong?" Ye Xinyi sat up anxiously. "Is there a bug?"

"It's not a bug."

Su Zheng pressed her down, "That's another problem. Although the foreigners find it useful, they have one complaint."

"What are you complaining about?"

"They said the comments in the code... were all in Chinese. They couldn't understand them."

Su Zheng smiled, a sly glint in his eyes. "Moreover, in order to meet the deadline this time, we used a lot of 'Chinese character logic' in the underlying compiler. For example, instead of using if...else, we used a structure that is more in line with Chinese syntax."

"This makes it impossible for their programmers to develop software on this system."

Ye Xinyi was stunned for a moment, then smiled.

"That's because they're stupid."

"No."

Su Zheng shook his head. "This means that we not only need to give them the hardware and the system, but also teach them... how to speak."

"How dare you speak like that?"

"Yes. Teach them to speak... the computer's 'Chinese'."

Su Zheng stood up and walked to the window.

"Xinyi, now that Nuwa has mended the sky, it's time for Cangjie... to create characters."

"We are going to release a completely new programming language."

"A Chinese programming language based on Chinese character logic, far more efficient than C language, and specifically designed for the 'Loongson' architecture..."

Ye Xinyi watched Su Zheng's retreating figure.

She knew this man was up to something again.

Moreover, this time, he is challenging the most fundamental cornerstone of Western computer science—the hegemony of the English language.

……