area51novel #420 - The first year of IT starting from 8080
#420 - The first year of IT starting from 8080
The year 1955 in the world of "Bright Sword" was later known as the inaugural year of a technological revolution.
In this year, Dongda University accomplished two major feats.
The first was undoubtedly the global navigation of a nuclear submarine at the beginning of the year, which directly ignited the true nuclear age.
The other was the unveiling of the 8080 chip in October, considered the starting year of the IT explosion.
Microcomputer 8080 CPU
After the introduction of this chip, the IT industry truly began to popularize professional terms like "CPU." This tiny chip, whose performance at the time rivaled a large transistor computer, and its accompanying first DRAM product—the 4KB first-generation DRAM—became the brain of the first generation of program-controlled switches!
After months of effort by engineers in the "Bright Sword" world, a control board integrating the 8080 and 32KB DRAM finally became the core of the first generation of thousand-line program-controlled switches. The new generation program-controlled switch, codenamed G1000, completely realized the function of a telephone exchange after field testing.
Ren Zhong, presiding over Dongda University's independent research and development of crossbar switches, reduced the installation price by two-thirds. However, the initial installation fee was still as high as 2000 yuan for the public.
Such a price, for the general public with salaries still in the tens or hundreds of yuan, meant that telephones were obviously very expensive luxury items.
Now, after breaking through new technologies, the cost increase of a ten-thousand-line program-controlled switch compared to a thousand-line program-controlled switch is theoretically not a multiple relationship, but a weak linear relationship. If production scales up to tens of millions of lines, the per capita installation cost after amortization can be reduced to within 1000 yuan in the short term.
This is equivalent to reducing the threshold for telephone installation by half at once!
Such technological progress will accelerate the reduction of installation costs per household. Facing the mainstream overseas installation cost of $500 or $600 per line for a switch, we have basically reduced it to below half of their cost line.
Most importantly, compared to the lack of underlying technology intellectual property rights of crossbar switches, the core technology of the current program-controlled switch is basically our own patent!
At the same time, we have also accumulated a large number of patents for manufacturing equipment and CPU design in the production and manufacturing of CPUs. Frankly speaking, the underlying architecture and instructions of the CPU have already registered corresponding patents. Not only X86, but also the underlying design of RISC CPUs, represented by the 6800 chip, have now applied for the vast majority of basic patents.
Sweeping up the two major CPU systems of complex instruction set and reduced instruction set in one fell swoop!
In this way, after completing the intellectual property layout and industrial layout, the new telephone exchange field and the broader IT field will become our world.
Beijing.
Wang Jian'an, the technical director of Sihai Computer Company, was unusually excited.
"Director Wang, what's making you so happy?" A company employee next to him looked at Wang Jian'an's appearance and asked curiously.
"Today is a new milestone in the history of our company and even Dongda Computer's development." Wang Jian'an didn't keep everyone in suspense and said directly, "Just now, we held a meeting of the eighteen computer companies in Beijing. Dean Ren of the Liming Research Institute personally announced that our first-generation microcomputer CPU 8080 chip has been officially released. Next, our eighteen computer companies in Beijing will receive a microcomputer reference design from the Computer Research Center of the Liming Research Institute. In the future, we will comprehensively shift from transistor computers to new integrated circuit CPU-based computers."
"Since most of the functions have been implemented with chips, the future computer design will become very small, like a portable suitcase, which can accommodate a computer with a calculation speed of about 300,000 times per second."
"Moreover, this kind of computer is cheaper than the previous transistor computers, which means that from now on, we will enter a completely new era of computers!"
Wang Jian'an briefly explained the matter in a few words.
This was the first meeting after the release of the 8080, where Ren Zhong began to personally promote the use of the 8080. Next, engineers from the Computer Research Center will go to more cities to promote and hold meetings. Since the advent of transistor computers, considering the customization needs of different industries in various regions for computers, basically every province in the country has established more than a dozen computer companies to facilitate full market competition and healthy market development.
On the other hand, Ren Zhong is also cultivating the scale of practitioners in the entire market.
Although the hardware aspects of transistor computers are vastly different from the new integrated circuit CPU-based computers, Ren Zhong still tried his best to guide the software and hardware of the computer industry towards the mainstream direction of future development in terms of operating systems and programming languages.
For example, high-level programming languages such as FORTRAN, COBOL, Pascal, and C are introduced first, while assembly language is still used at the underlying level.
These technologies are also used in the introduction of the main world's mainstream computers to the Fifth District, except that transistor computers are used openly, while the latter is used secretly and completely unpublicized.
"Director Wang, what is a microcomputer?" A colleague asked curiously.
"This is a new concept. It's normal that you don't know. According to Dean Ren, our computers will become small, highly integrated, inexpensive, and powerful in the future. Compared to transistor computers with the same functions, the space occupied by a microcomputer may only be a dozen times smaller than that of a transistor computer. In short, if a transistor computer is the size of a piano, a microcomputer is at most like a drawer, and the input, output, and display will also be connected, eventually making it convenient for ordinary people to use."
Wang Jian'an spoke of these things with some longing. In reality, the application scenarios Ren Zhong described for microcomputers were even more science fiction-like. In the future, almost every family would have one or even several computers, and people's work and entertainment would be realized through computers.
Computers could be used for office work, scientific research, and also for entertainment, like watching movies.
Many things Ren Zhong said, Wang Jian'an felt were too science fiction-like to imagine, and it was even more inappropriate to promote them to colleagues now.
"Hiss, how is this possible?" A colleague gasped, "Computers are so complicated, how can ordinary people use them?" In his mind, those who could use computers were all high-tech talents. Even though Ren Zhong had elevated the training of talents in the electronics industry and computer industry to a priority position, the number of students recruited each year was increasing, and the academic requirements were for the best graduates with the best mathematics scores.
Anyway, there are college entrance exams now, but when it comes to choosing a major, everyone doesn't have the right to choose their own major. Given the extreme shortage of talent, universities recruit students based on their scores in various subjects to arrange majors.
Although this may stifle some people's interests, in this new era of creation and growth, it is necessary to allocate the most outstanding talents to the most urgent places as much as possible.
Nuclear energy and aerospace majors have taken away the most outstanding top talents; electronics, computers, materials, metallurgy, and machinery majors have taken away the next batch of excellent students for training, enriching a large number of factories and research institute systems.
Electronics and computers have the highest requirements for mathematics scores, so students with good mathematics scores will be prioritized by teachers in these two majors.
Therefore, this batch of technical talents from Sihai Computer Company are already the best graduates in recent years.
But even so, they also feel that using computers is still very difficult. If ordinary people were given a transistor computer, it is estimated that after turning on the power, at most they would press the power off button again!
The current transistor computers not only have command-line interfaces for all human-computer interactions, but also have quite primitive input and output devices. From magnetic drums and magnetic cores to disks and tape storage, the threshold for using transistor computers is almost only achievable by professional college graduates.
"Dean Ren has said that the development speed of computers in the future will be a high-speed development with performance doubling every year and a half. Now our computers are unusable for ordinary people, but after iterating two or three generations of computers, the future human-computer interaction mode will become very simple. People can hold an input tool called a 'mouse' and use computer programs without needing to input any command lines! Dean Ren has said that the Computer Research Center will soon design an input device that can simplify computer operations to replace cumbersome keyboard commands. You can use computer functions by moving and clicking."
Wang Jian'an's words surprised his surrounding colleagues. For them, it was like opening a new door.
Although they still didn't understand, they felt it was very impressive.
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"Old Wang, come over here and tell me in detail what exactly is going on at the Dawn Research Institute's Computer Research Center?" Company General Manager Ma Haoxiang walked over at this time and said to Wang Jian'an.
In addition to the technical director of Jingcheng Computer Company, the first 8080 promotion conference held by Ren Zhong also invited the technical leaders of various public institutions in Jingcheng and the heads of computer-related departments in scientific research institutes and universities.
"Okay, General Manager Ma," Wang Jian'an said, and then said to his other colleagues, "I'll give you a good chat about this topic when I get back."
Sihai Computer Company, as the end of the domestic industry chain, previously purchased various transistor computer components to assemble customized computers for target customers, including hardware customization and software application customization.
Upstream of them are various transistor computer component manufacturers, as well as the Dawn Research Institute's Computer Research Center.
The Dawn Computer Research Center doesn't directly sell things, but instead creates reference designs and implementations for various computers, and provides basic things such as underlying operating systems and high-level language compiler environments.
"Old Wang, has the higher-ups decided to transform and develop the computer industry? How many more years can we work on transistor computers?" Ma Haoxiang asked directly.
"General Manager Ma, according to Dean Ren's statement, our Dongda will no longer continue to develop transistor computers. Next, the factory will only supply replacements for existing models. In the future, the production of components will be mostly concentrated on the production and manufacturing of integrated circuit CPUs. They will provide motherboard-level computer core components. We have already obtained the reference implementation schematic diagram of the entire computer. We can freely configure input and output components on top of the upstream motherboard to create a complete new computer," Wang Jian'an replied.
"The volume of the new computer is very small compared to the original transistor computer. If we use this microcomputer for the computer used for factory automation process control, it is very easy to integrate with the production line. Compared with the current transistor computer, both the power consumption and the volume are reduced by an order of magnitude. In the food automation production line application that Sihai Computer is best at, we expect to reduce more than half of the cost by using the new computer!"
"Hiss, the cost reduction of the new computer is so great." Ma Haoxiang gasped, "In this way, maybe many small and medium-sized food factory production line transformations can afford the computer customization costs. Wouldn't our market expand a lot at once?"
"Yes, General Manager Ma, according to Dean Ren's explanation, the new computer is more modular and has lower costs. After our hardware is finalized, we hardly need to modify anything in the future. We just need to work hard on production line access and application development. The new computer will have a unified operating system, a unified development language, and a unified compilation environment. In the future, the things that technical personnel engaged in computer work will learn will not require more than the transistor computer era.
The new computer has fewer components, and the performance will be more reliable."
"Then, all of our company's main technical personnel, as long as they don't need to carry out on-site project operation and maintenance, should all transform and start learning the use and application development of the new computer. In addition, should we recruit more employees to reserve talents, so as not to have a significant increase in our business volume, and we don't have a qualified talent echelon to top up?" Ma Haoxiang's eyes lit up when he heard Wang Jian'an say this. As the soul of a company, Wang Jian'an is undoubtedly the soul figure in technology.
Now, the one who is promoting this is the prestigious Dean Ren. No one doubts what he said, because every boast Dean Ren has made in the past ten years has been realized! (End of this chapter)