Hong Kong films: From street thugs to Hong Kong financial tycoons

Chapter 88: A groundbreaking perspective, dropping a nuclear bomb on the global technology community!

In the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, in Hall One, the giant high-definition screen on the stage, stretching twenty meters in length, slowly lit up with a white light after emitting a deep and long chime.

The previously noisy discussions in the hall seemed to have been muted. More than two thousand invited guests and hundreds of media reporters with their cameras and microphones all held their breath and stared intently at the center of the stage.

There were no dazzling backup dancers, nor any passionate opening remarks.

Lu Qiu, wearing a dark suit that didn't quite fit, pushed up his black-rimmed glasses and walked straight out from behind the curtain.

Holding a microphone, he walked to the white acrylic podium in the center of the stage and stopped.

"Hey, hey, can you hear me?"

Lu Qiu habitually patted the microphone, listened to the echo coming from the sound system, and cleared his throat somewhat awkwardly.

The Western media reporters in the audience looked at each other in bewilderment, and several columnists from Silicon Valley technology magazines even frowned.

What kind of global product launch is this? Yaosheng Technology not only didn't send out the rumored boss, Mr. Lin, who is said to be able to turn the world upside down, but instead sent this guy who looks like a bookworm to the stage.

"Hello everyone, I am Lu Qiu, the chief architect of Yaosheng Technology."

Lu Qiu ignored the doubts from the audience. He took a deep breath and remembered what Lin Yao had told him before he went on stage: no need to boast, let the product speak for itself.

"I invited everyone here today because I want to show you something new."

Lu Qiu turned around and pointed to an object on the podium next to him. It was a computer host that was all black and had a brushed metal casing.

The dark gold dragon logo on the side of the chassis exudes a cool, high-end feel under the spotlight.

Next to the computer is a square color CRT monitor, and a keyboard and mouse with a very ergonomic design.

"Many of you here are colleagues in the technology industry or veteran media professionals."

Lu Qiu spoke slowly, and his voice gradually became calmer.

"As everyone knows, currently available personal computers, whether IBM or other brands, all present a black screen when you turn them on."

"A white cursor is flashing above. We need to memorize and input long DOS English character commands so that the computer can do a little bit of simple calculation work for us."

Lu Qiu shrugged, a helpless, bitter smile on his face.

"This way of operating is so anti-human; it directly shuts out 99% of ordinary people from the information age."

"This isn't a personal computer; it's more like a programmer's personal typewriter."

Several American science and technology journalists in the audience grimaced in dissatisfaction upon hearing this.

While this is true, in 1987, computers had limited computing power, and being able to run a DOS system stably was already quite an achievement.

Although Apple has developed a graphical interface, its hardware is not up to par, resulting in frustratingly slow and laggy performance.

"Therefore, we at Yaosheng Technology believe that a true personal computer should not be cold and impersonal."

Lu Qiu turned around and scanned the entire room.

"It should be like the TV and radio in our homes, so that anyone, even a three-year-old who doesn't understand English or an elderly person over sixty, can know how to use it just by looking at it."

At this point, Lu Qiu stopped his long-winded explanation and reached out to press the round power button on the black metal host.

"Buzz"

Accompanied by the extremely faint whirring of the fans inside the computer case, more than two thousand pairs of eyes on the stage were fixed on the giant screen connected to the main unit's display at the back of the stage.

Ten seconds, just ten seconds passed. There was no long and tedious hardware self-test code scrolling, nor was there a black screen waiting.

Accompanied by a crisp, melodious startup sound, like a drop of water falling, a soft halo suddenly bursts onto the screen.

Immediately afterwards, a fully graphical operating system desktop with bright colors, a clear layout, and a background of a blue sky and green grass popped up.

An uncontrollable gasp erupted from the audience. It was too fast! The startup speed was simply illogical.

And this desktop is so clean and beautiful!

On the left side of the screen, several small yellow folder icons are neatly arranged, with clear Chinese and English bilingual prompts below them, such as My Documents and Recycle Bin.

At the bottom of the screen is a semi-transparent gray taskbar, and in the lower right corner is a ticking digital clock.

At the very center of the screen, there is a white arrow cursor.

Several Wall Street Journal reporters sitting in the front row didn't even notice that their recording pens had fallen to the ground; they were all gaping, dumbfounded.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the new digital world of Loongson Windows 1.0."

Lu Qiu smiled slightly, grasped the mouse on the podium with his right hand, and moved his wrist slightly.

On the giant screen, the white arrow cursor immediately resembled a slippery eel, sliding incredibly smoothly across the blue sky and white clouds on the desktop.

There are no afterimages, no lag, and the mouse movement is as natural and responsive as a human's gaze.

Lu Qiu moved the cursor to a yellow folder icon and quickly double-clicked the left mouse button twice with his index finger.

"Whoosh!"

A window with a border and three small squares in the upper right corner popped up instantly in the center of the screen. The entire pop-up animation transition was smooth and seamless.

"My God—"

A British technology commentator in the front row was gripping his hair tightly with both hands, his eyes almost touching the screen.

He muttered to himself, "How high is the frame rate of this graphics rendering? How is this possible? How can the current CPU computing power possibly support such smooth graphics window dragging?!"

But this was just the beginning. Lu Qiu's next move truly showed the world's media present what a crushing, era-defining attack really meant.

He opened a word processing software called Loongson Docs and quickly typed a line of Chinese characters and English words using the Pinyin input method.

Then, instead of closing the document window, he moved the mouse and clicked the minimize button in the upper right corner.

The document window instantly shrank to a small icon and lay quietly in the taskbar at the bottom.

Immediately afterwards, Lu Qiu opened a music player software and put a CD into the CD drive of the host computer.

A few seconds later, a melodious classical symphony began to play from the top-of-the-line sound system around the venue.

As the symphony played, Lu Qiu once again opened the word processing document that had been minimized in the taskbar and continued typing.

Typing and listening to music can both run in the background simultaneously without interfering with each other!

"Bang!"

A senior software engineer from Silicon Valley suddenly stood up from his seat, his legs trembling. Pointing at the screen on the stage, he hysterically shouted out the thoughts of all the technical staff in the room: "Multi-threaded multi-tasking? That's impossible! Absolutely impossible!"

The engineer's face flushed red, and his voice became somewhat shrill due to excessive excitement.

"Currently, a single-core CPU is already at full load just calculating the lighting and drag feedback of those polygonal windows when running such a complex fully graphical interface."

"You're now not only making it run a graphical interface, but also making it handle audio decoding and text input in the background simultaneously?"

"The motherboard of this machine should have burned through long ago. This must be a pre-recorded fake demo; you're cheating!"

Faced with the on-the-spot questioning from the Silicon Valley engineer, the entire exhibition hall erupted in uproar, and all the cameras were pointed at Lu Qiu on the stage.

Cheating? If this is truly a scam, then Yaosheng Technology is truly going to be ruined today.

However, Lu Qiu did not panic. Instead, his smile grew brighter and brighter. He slowly released the mouse and looked directly at the American engineer who had stood up.

"Sir, your professionalism is exceptional."

Lu Qiu nodded, his tone calm yet firm: "You're right. If you rely on only one central processing unit, it's easy to cause system crashes or motherboard burnout if you try to handle complex graphics rendering and multi-threaded tasks perfectly at the same time."

"but----"

Lu Qiu changed the subject and walked to the other side of the podium. He lifted a tray covered with a red cloth, and inside the tray lay a palm-sized green integrated circuit board covered with precision solder joints and miniature capacitors.

"Since one brain isn't enough, why don't we just give computers a second brain?"

Lu Qiu picked up the circuit board, held it high, and displayed it in front of all the cameras and microphones.

"What I'm holding in my hand is the latest achievement of our Yaosheng Technology hardware R&D team."

"We stripped the CPU of the heavy burden of graphics polygon calculations and lighting rendering, and designed and manufactured a brand new core computing chip specifically for these graphics tasks."

Lu Qiu's voice rose an octave at that moment, booming like thunder in the ears of more than two thousand people: "We'll name it a graphics processing unit, also called a GPU!"

"It will work in tandem with our independently developed Loongson 1.0 CPU, manufactured using a 0.8-micron nanometer process, completely freeing computers from the shackles of computing power."

boom!!!

The entire venue fell silent. Then, a complete, roof-lifting frenzy erupted.

A dedicated graphics processor (GPU) separates graphics computation from the CPU.

In 1987, when major manufacturers were still fiercely competing on single-core processing frequency, Lu Qiu introduced the concept of GPU.

It was like a giant Tsar Bomba that shattered the worldviews of all the Western technological elites present!

The Silicon Valley engineer who had stood up to question the decision deflated like a punctured balloon, his knees buckling as he slumped back into his chair.

His mouth was agape, his eyes vacant. He knew that from this moment on, Silicon Valley's proud X86 hardware ecosystem and DOS software ecosystem had been completely swept into the dustbin of history by that inconspicuous black box on the stage.

On the second floor of the convention center, in a VIP box with a wide view, Lin Yao held a glass of warm water and stood in front of the one-way mirror, taking in the chaotic, shocked, and frantic expressions of the Western journalists in the lobby on the first floor.

Chen Zheng stood behind him, holding a specially made encrypted satellite phone, listening to the unusual data in front of the Nasdaq market in real time.

"Boss, just as you predicted."

Chen Zheng swallowed hard, his voice trembling as he looked at the intelligence report that had just been faxed to him: "The press conference was only halfway through when the demonstration footage of the GPU concept and the Loongson Windows system was transmitted back to the United States via the media's telephone line—"

"The entire over-the-counter market on Wall Street has gone completely mad!"

"Managers from major investment banks and venture capital firms are frantically inquiring everywhere about whether Yaosheng Technology has any plans to go public."

-

"The valuation of all the shell companies under our Yaosheng Capital surged by 300% in just ten minutes during pre-market trading."

Lin Yao didn't turn around, but simply took a sip of water.

"It's just a little interest."

Lin Yao's gaze pierced through the glass, looking at the huge curtain on the stage.

In front of his retina, the liquid funds figure on the wealth prediction panel had not yet shown any substantial increase.

But the curve representing the valuation of the hidden business empire has turned into a red sword pointing almost vertically upwards.

"Old Chen, tell Fatty Wang to get ready."

Lin Yao put down his water glass, straightened his shirt cuffs, and his tone revealed a chilling desolation and composure.

"Just showing off the graphical window on the desktop is enough to get these foreigners excited."

"Next, it's time to let these unsophisticated foreigners see the movie trailer we made with a billion dollars, and that full 3D mythical game that can truly squeeze all the computing power out of the GPU."

"Just slap our Eastern heavy armor matrix right in their faces."

Lin Yao turned around, walked to the leather sofa in the private room, sat down, and a confident smile appeared on his lips.

"Slow down, don't scare them to death."