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

Base 504, three underground floors.

This place was originally a lead room for storing radioactive materials. The walls are more than half a meter thick and can block most radiation and electromagnetic interference.

It has now been transformed into a temporary "cleanroom laboratory".

The renovation was done in a very rudimentary way: the walls were covered with discarded white plastic sheeting from the hospital, and the floor was sprinkled with water to absorb dust. The air inlet was wrapped in more than a dozen layers of gauze, barely filtering out the ubiquitous sand and dust of the Gobi Desert.

"hiss--"

Su Zheng took a deep breath and put on the specially made double-layered goggles.

On the worktable in front of him lay the core radar component that had been removed from the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft.

It was a dark green circuit board with hundreds of black "squares" densely soldered onto it.

The first generation of silicon-based integrated operational amplifiers manufactured by Texas Instruments (TI).

In the 1960s, this was absolute cutting-edge technology. Each of its pins represented the pinnacle of human semiconductor industry at the time.

"I like tweezers."

Su Zheng extended his hand, which was wearing a rubber glove.

Ye Xinyi stood beside him, holding a tray covered with a white cloth. Her eyes were focused and tense, and she breathed very softly, as if afraid that the airflow would disturb Su Zheng's hands.

"Let's begin."

Su Zheng's voice was as calm as a machine.

The tweezers in his hand firmly gripped the pin of a chip.

The Eye of Truth is opened.

[Microscopic vision mode, magnification: 50x.]

In an instant, Su Zheng's world changed.

What was originally a chip the size of a fingernail transformed into a massive black fortress in his vision. Those hair-thin pins became thick steel beams.

He could clearly see the microscopic texture of the solder surface, resembling lunar craters, and the faint iridescent sheen of the metal oxide layer.

"rise."

Gently touch with the soldering iron.

There was no extra smoke, no burnt smell. The drop of solder was like obedient mercury, melting instantly and then shrinking rapidly.

The chip was removed perfectly.

If Texas Instruments engineers were present at that moment, they would have been utterly astonished. Su Zheng's disassembly process did not damage the chip in the slightest; even the gold plating on the pins remained intact.

One, two, three...

Four whole hours.

Su Zheng maintained the same posture, like a neurosurgeon performing craniotomy.

Sweat streamed down his forehead, stinging his eyes. But he didn't even blink.

Ye Xinyi silently wiped his sweat and handed him tools. She didn't understand those complex circuits, but she could feel the almost divine focus emanating from Su Zheng.

"alright."

When the last chip was removed and neatly arranged in the tray, Su Zheng finally straightened up.

At this moment, there were two hundred "black cubes" placed in front of him.

This is the heart of "Red Star-1".

……

Outside the laboratory.

Observe from the window.

The old professor was holding a high-powered telescope, staring intently at the activity inside. Behind him was a group of experts, equally focused and tense.

"Teacher, what is Dean Su doing?" a young lecturer couldn't help but ask. "He's taken all those operational amplifier chips off, but... those are analog circuits! How can they be used as logic gates in a computer?"

The core of a computer consists of AND gates, OR gates, and NOT gates. They process discrete signals consisting of 0s and 1s.

Operational amplifiers, on the other hand, process continuous analog signals.

It's like using bread flour to build a house—the properties are completely wrong!

The old professor did not answer. Fine beads of sweat appeared on his forehead, and his hand holding the binoculars trembled slightly.

"He's building a bridge."

The old professor suddenly spoke, his voice trembling with disbelief.

"Build a bridge?"

"Look," the old professor pointed into the window, "he removed the feedback resistor from the op-amp, making it work in an 'open-loop' state."

Everyone quickly went over to take a look.

Su Zheng was seen soldering on a brand new copper-clad board.

His movements were incredibly fast; the soldering iron in his hand seemed to be dancing.

"In open-loop mode, the gain of the op-amp is infinite," the old professor muttered to himself as he looked at the document. "As long as there is even the slightest difference in the input voltage, the output will instantly jump to the limit of the power supply voltage—either a positive voltage or a negative voltage."

"This...this is the saturation zone, isn't it?" the young lecturer realized.

"Yes! It's the saturation zone!"

The old professor slapped his thigh. "By utilizing this saturation characteristic, a positive voltage is '1' and a negative voltage is '0'! He's essentially turned an analog device into a digital switch!"

"Genius... what a genius idea!"

"But..." another expert frowned, "While this achieves the logical function, the circuitry is far too complex! A simple NAND gate might require three or four operational amplifiers. How can so much logic circuitry be crammed onto this board with so little space?"

The old professor put down his binoculars.

His eyes became extremely complicated.

"So, he's doing something even crazier."

"What?"

"He's doing micro-carving." The old professor pointed to Su Zheng's hand. "Didn't you notice? He's not using ordinary wires. He's using enameled wire taken from the U-2 transformer, with a diameter of only 0.05 millimeters."

"He is performing three-dimensional stacking welding."

……

Inside the laboratory.

Su Zheng has entered a state of "meditation".

In his "Eye of Truth," the copper-clad plate has transformed into a three-dimensional city rising from the ground.

Is the flat circuit board area insufficient?

Then let's increase the area by utilizing space!

Su Zheng used those enameled wires to stack the chips layer by layer. The bottom layer was the instruction register, the middle layer was the arithmetic logic unit (ALU), and the top layer was the cache.

This is a true "transistor skyscraper".

Each layer is connected by enameled wires as thin as a hair.

This requires an extremely high level of spatial imagination and hand stability. If even one wire is connected incorrectly, or if even one solder joint short-circuits, the entire building will collapse (burn down) instantly.

But in Su Zheng's eyes, it was not chaotic at all, but rather full of a geometric beauty.

"RISC architecture..."

Concepts that only existed in later generations flashed through Su Zheng's mind.

Reduced instruction set architecture. Pipelining technology. Branch prediction.

These technologies, commonplace in the 21st century, were like a "ghost" of dimensional reduction in this era when vacuum tubes still reigned supreme.

He's using 1960 hardware to force 2000-year logic to run.

"Sizzle—"

The last connecting wire has been soldered.

Su Zheng breathed a sigh of relief and put down the soldering iron.

Before him appeared a black monster, no bigger than a lunchbox. It was made of four layers of circuit boards, with countless golden enameled wires densely wrapped around it, making it look like a cyberpunk-style work of art.

"This...is this the CPU?"

Ye Xinyi looked at this ugly yet exquisite thing and could hardly believe it.

"To be precise, this was the prototype of a CPU."

Su Zheng took off his goggles and rubbed his sore eyes. "Although it only has a 4-bit bus and a main frequency of only a few hundred kHz, in terms of architecture, it is thirty years more advanced than any computer in the world today."

"How fast can it run?" Ye Xinyi asked.

Su Zheng smiled.

"If we don't consider the limitations of peripherals, its pure logic operation speed is probably a thousand times faster than that '103 machine' next door."

"One...a thousand times?!" Ye Xinyi exclaimed in surprise.

Don't get too excited yet.

Su Zheng poured cold water on the idea, saying, "This is just a brain. Having a brain alone isn't enough; you also need rules to make it think."

He pointed at the monster.

"Now, it's just a corpse. Because it has no soul."

"soul?"

"It's the instruction set. In other words, the software." Su Zheng stood up and stretched his stiff neck. "I built the hardware myself. There's no ready-made compiler to program it. I have to use a language it can understand, which is 0s and 1s, to personally feed it every instruction."

……

the next day.

All the math experts at Base 504 were summoned to that warehouse.

Everyone looked at the "black lump" on the worktable, which was no bigger than half a watermelon, and exchanged bewildered glances.

"This...this is the computer that Dean Su built?"

"It's not even as big as a radio, will it work?"

"I doubt it. Without even a vacuum tube, how can they calculate the implosion data using just a bunch of transistors?"

Questions and criticisms arose one after another.

Su Zheng did not offer any explanation. He walked in carrying a thick stack of manuscript papers.

There were no formulas on the manuscript paper, only densely packed "0"s and "1"s.

This is machine code that he wrote entirely by hand after staying up all night.

"Professor Su," Su Zheng handed the manuscript to his mentor.

"What is this?" The old professor put on his reading glasses, took a look, and immediately felt a chill run down his spine.

"This is the instruction list for 'Red Star One'," Su Zheng said calmly. "The first four bits are the opcode, and the last four bits are the address code. 0001 represents addition, 0010 represents subtraction, 0011 represents shift..."

He turned to face the mathematicians.

"Comrades, I've built the machine. But it's still mute."

"We need to translate all the formulas for the implosion model into this language of 0s and 1s, and then input them one by one through switches."

The crowd erupted in uproar.

"How is this possible?!" one expert exclaimed. "The implosion model involves hundreds of thousands of calculations; just inputting all those 0s and 1s would break your fingers!"

"And if you lose even one digit, you lose the whole game! It's even harder than using an abacus!"

Su Zheng looked at them with piercing eyes.

"Disaster?"

He sneered, "Then tell me, is it harder to lose with 0s and 1s, or to watch our mushroom cloud fail to materialize?"

"Is it harder to lose a finger, or to watch an American plane poop overhead?"

The entire room fell silent.

Su Zheng walked up to the "black lump".

There was no keyboard on it, only a row of simple toggle switches and a row of small red light bulbs.

"I'll go first."

Su Zheng sat down.

He held the manuscript paper in his left hand and placed his right hand on the switch.

"First instruction: Load initial pressure values."

「0……1……0……0……1……1……0……1……」

"Slap! Slap! Slap!"

The crisp sound of flipping a switch echoed through the quiet warehouse.

Once. Twice.

Su Zheng's movements were very rhythmic, like playing a silent piano piece.

Once you have finished typing, press the "Write" button.

The red light flashed once, indicating that the data has been stored in the register.

"Second instruction: Load explosive density parameters."

"Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap..."

Ten minutes have passed.

Twenty minutes have passed.

Su Zheng's forehead was covered in sweat, but his hands remained as steady as a rock.

Gradually, there was movement in the crowd.

Ye Xinyi silently walked to Su Zheng's side and picked up another piece of manuscript paper.

"Dean Su, let me read it, and you lose."

Immediately afterwards, the old professor also came up.

"I'll check it."

Then, Li, the young technician who had coughed up blood earlier (who had just run back from the infirmary), also squeezed in.

"I...I'll write down one set."

One by one.

The doubts disappeared. In their place came a poignant, unspoken understanding.

Dozens of mathematicians spontaneously formed a long queue. They held their translated "binary cryptic texts" and waited to take turns.

This is an unprecedented "human-powered programming" in human history.

There was no compiler, no written language, and no monitor.

They are using the most primitive methods to inscribe the future of the Chinese nation on this most advanced architecture.

……

Ten hours later.

The last command has been entered.

At this point, the memory of that "black lump" (which Su Zheng had also hand-made with a magnetic core) was nearing saturation.

Su Zheng's fingers were already blistered and bleeding.

He stopped and looked at the red "Run" button.

Hundreds of eyes in the audience were fixed on that finger.

Pressing this button could either lead to a miracle or a joke.

"Teacher," Su Zheng turned to look at the old professor, "if it explodes, remember to keep those transistors safe. They can still be used."

With tears in his eyes, the old professor cursed, "Get lost! Just press the button!"

Su Zheng took a deep breath.

[The Eye of Truth, Full-Power Monitoring.]

[Heat monitoring: Activated.]

[Voltage monitoring: Started.]

His fingers pressed down sharply.

"Buzz—"

A faint hum of electricity was heard.

On that ugly "black lump," the row of red LED lights that had been still suddenly began to flash wildly.

The flashing was so fast that it formed a continuous red line.

It's like... a heart beating wildly.

"It...it's moving!"

"It's calculating!"

Everyone held their breath.

There was no sound of the printer spitting out paper (the printer was still being tested), only rows of red lights dancing.

one second.

two seconds.

three seconds.

……

Five seconds later.

All the red lights suddenly went out.

Then, the green light in the very center turned on.

That's the sign that "the calculation is complete".

With trembling hands, Su Zheng pressed the "Read Results" switch.

On the oscilloscope, the green light strip flickered and displayed a string of numbers.

That was a peak pressure data point.

The old professor suddenly lunged in front of the oscilloscope and pulled out the "estimated range table" that he had spent three months calculating with an abacus.

He looked at the number again and again, rubbed his eyes, and looked at it once more.

Then, he suddenly turned around, hugged Su Zheng tightly, and burst into tears.

"That's right! That's right! Everything's right!"

"Even the last six decimal places... are correct!"

"It's done! Our computer...it's done!"

"boom--"

The cheers that erupted from the warehouse almost shook the straw curtains off the roof.

Su was tossed high into the air by the crowd.

He looked at the green light from the air, his vision gradually blurring.

This is just the beginning.

This machine, no bigger than a lunchbox, is about to unleash a silicon-based revolution in this ancient Eastern country.

Meanwhile, thousands of kilometers away on the northern border...

A silver-white high-altitude drone, like a ghost, once again swept across China's airspace.

It thought that what lay below was still a sleeping desert.

Little did they know, deep in the desert, a red eye had already opened.

The hunter is sharpening his knife.