Chinese entertainment for engineering students

It took Wang Xu more than a week to roughly sort out the various technical classifications required for a digital camera. Yes, it took more than a week just to classify.

This is the complexity of modern equipment. Among other things, just one shell uses many kinds of materials, from plastic to rubber, from metal to non-metal, it is called a complete one.

The material of the handheld part and the sealing part are definitely different. Wang Xu can understand that some brackets and other things inside need various supports, and there is no problem with using metal.

But why is it that the battery holder for your camera is actually made of aviation titanium alloy? It is a thin board. In addition to basic support, it may also have a heat dissipation effect, nothing more.

In Wang Xu's view, both copper and aluminum can solve the problem here, but that's where he used titanium alloy. If Wang Xu hadn't combed through it carefully, he wouldn't have discovered that there was a big surprise hidden here.

But of course the surprise does not come from the titanium alloy itself, but from the processing technology of the titanium alloy, because this thing is 3D printed using laser additive method.

The precision is quite high. One-time molding, well, the working principle and basic structural diagram of the processing equipment also exist, but if you go one step further, there will be no more.

"It would be great if this thing could be infinitely recursive, and there would be no need to buy any technology in the future." Wang Xu thought a little greedily.

But this thing is indeed a good thing. 3D printing has actually been invented as early as 1986, and there are even commercial products.

But now these things can only print some plastic or resin materials. Although there are theories for metal printing, no actual equipment has been developed yet.

Moreover, the patent issue is quite annoying, because the earliest inventor applied for a very low-level patent that is almost impossible to bypass.

Later generations also waited for this patent to expire. In 2005, 3D printing really began to develop on a large scale in the world.

But for Wang Xu, it’s not a big problem. Wang Xu probably won’t sell 3D printers. If he develops some equipment for his own use, then no one can take care of it.

When you see a technology that is good, extract it, write a report, explain the technical parameters and indicators, and then bind it into a book.

This is what Wang Xu did in those days. Two secretaries were accused of running around, where he dictated, and then the secretary entered it into the computer.

Some still require drawing, so Wang Xu simply draws one by hand, and then the secretary asks someone to draw it using software such as CAD.

As for the chip, it can only be described in a basic way. The design diagram inside is too complicated. Unless Wang Xu uses software to draw it bit by bit very carefully, he will have no choice but to find someone to develop it.

Moreover, the process required for this thing has exceeded the limit of the process currently available in the world. Even foreign countries do not have such equipment, so equipment must be developed.

These things can only be done in the five-year plan, but that’s fine, these things are originally major items in the plan.

Especially after Wang Xu launched a series of software and hardware products that caused huge repercussions around the world, investment in this area was significantly increased.

Starting in the mid-1990s, the country gained some financial resources, so it began to invest in some major projects.

This was the case in the previous life. After entering the year 2000, these projects began to produce output. By around 2010, there was a concentrated outbreak.

Many of the black technologies we see in later generations were invested in from this era.

The beginning is of course various infrastructures, such as large-scale petrochemical, petroleum, steel, non-ferrous metal smelting, railways and so on.

In fact, there has always been a lot of investment in the research and development of computer software and hardware equipment. In fact, there are some achievements, but compared with the massive investment internationally, it seems a bit insignificant.

What's more, it was troubled by the Hanxin incident, and no one dared to touch this thing from top to bottom for many years.

But everything is fine now, and there are still many ambitious plans, especially Wang Xu's series of big moves, which directly stimulated the entire industry.

Jiutian, oh, it is the company that was founded by the Digital Research Institute for the North and South Bridges in the first place. The RISC co-processor, a general-purpose floating-point computing chip using the open source RISC-1 architecture on GIT, has begun to be taped out.

This is not a CPU, but a GPU that is closer to later generations. It just does not have some preset graphics and image algorithms. This is a very streamlined floating-point computing unit, which is specially designed to do floating-point computing.

It is also a front station for their ambitious CPU plan. The purpose of this design is because Intel has built the co-processor into the CPU since the 486DX, which is responsible for processing floating-point operations and uses a complex instruction set.

This is very unfavorable to the continued development of the stacking architecture developed by Wang Xu. Only then did Wang Xu discuss developing this thing. In the future, whether it is used to stack supercomputers or graphics workstations, it can be adapted through software. Floating point operations are pushed to stacked accessory boards.

In this way, only OpenGL needs to be adapted, and it can be used as a 3D graphics card.

It's just that the RISC model requires more software development, but isn't the software available on GIT? It is originally adapted to RISC.

Even strictly speaking, it is not impossible to use this thing directly as a CPU, it just needs to be re-adapted, and due to the lack of integer arithmetic, simulation operations are required, which makes it uneconomical.

For Wang Xu, it is a timely product.

The new generation of supercomputing plans will use Intel's Pentium processor or IBM's new generation PowerPC chip as the main chip, which is the CPU.

All the required floating-point operations will be pushed to the array composed of new chips for calculation.

Such a structure makes the entire computer's requirements for the CPU very low. It doesn't matter even using some old chips. It is only used to provide basic operating capabilities.

It is not needed for slightly more complex operations. Of course, this requires the operating system to provide such support from the bottom layer.

The latest version of the core of COS and various scientific computing libraries on GIT already provide such support.

What does this mean? Of course, the second generation of workstations are already on the way.

Although it has only been a year since the first generation came out, Wang Xu believes that by the beginning of next year at most, the second generation workstation and server system will be complete and become a commercial product.

This time, it is not a project led by Wang Xu. Although Wang Xu himself still plays an important role in the project, countless scientific researchers have really grown up.

Companies such as Inspur, Founder, Tongfang, Great Wall, Jiutian, and even Huawei and ZTE have all played an important role in this.

Not surprisingly, communication companies have also joined in. Communication between stacked computing units and hosts has always been a major difficulty in the project.

The biggest difference from the development of the first-generation supercomputing project is that this time almost all the main players are commercial companies.

Almost all computing institutes and scientific research units that were originally responsible for important research and development work have separated out this part of research and development and operated it as a company.

This is the biggest progress in this supercomputing project. Researchers can get higher remuneration from commercial companies than before, without having to go through the original complicated approval process.

Plans can be decided within the commercial company without the need for various project approvals and other hurdles.

Don't look at just the server and workstation market. The international market size is also measured in hundreds of billions. Such a scale is enough to support a lot of companies making money in it.

Wang Xu was very happy to see such changes. He even felt that there might be no need for his own intervention in the development of the next generation, and he would just need to replace the machine when the time comes.

At least this is certainly the case in terms of hardware. In terms of software, Wang Xu still maintains control of several core projects, which need to be updated every once in a while.

But that's it. Now he basically doesn't need to make some adaptations for the new things produced by these companies, but only needs to check their code.

Obviously, in this cornfield, it is not just Wang Xu who is breaking the stick. There are no less than 20 or 30 universities and hundreds of companies coming in.

This is only domestic. In fact, due to the openness of this system, although there has been no international cooperation this time, it will almost certainly attract foreign companies to play together next time.

This time, support for Power PC is added because big brothers in the IT industry like IBM are willing to support it.

Both Sun and SGI have become a little angry recently. As the software on GIT becomes more mature, their own ecosystems, which were originally used as barriers, are showing signs of gradually collapsing.

As for GIT's support for workstations and servers, COS is obviously the first priority, which has led to a large number of potential customers starting to switch to the GIT system.

It would be okay if it was just Chinese companies, after all, their products have little reputation in the ugly country. The current sales in Chou Country are still less than a fraction of theirs.

However, some traditional PC manufacturers in Ugly Country that have never been involved in this field have also begun to sharpen their knives.

DELL, COMPAQ, and even AST, which is in danger of going bankrupt, have begun to launch workstations and server products with the same architecture.

This has to make these traditional server and workstation manufacturers anxious.

Under the impact of this system, the barriers between minicomputers and personal computers have almost disappeared. Products that operate like microcomputers and calculate like minicomputers, or even mid-sized computers and mainframes, are springing up like mushrooms after a rain. .

What's even more frightening is that Europe and Xiaori seem to have seen opportunities.

Throughout the 1980s, Europe and the small world were almost completely defeated in the era of personal computers. Not only were they unable to export, but their own markets were also disrupted by the trend of personal computers.

In the face of the powerful WinTel alliance, the whole of Europe and Xiaotian, from hardware to software, can be said to be completely defeated.

The whole world seems to be using computers from China, operating systems from China, and application software from China.

The emergence of GIT and the germination of a new architecture system planted a nail in this strong combination. You must know that COS also started with Intel chips.

Intel has almost no reason to crack down on such an operating system that focuses on various scientific calculations.

But recently, it seems that the trend is a bit wrong, and some people on personal computers seem to be turning to various releases of COS that are more graphical and convenient.

At the beginning, because COS had high hardware requirements and had to be equipped with expensive co-processor boards and even board cabinets to run smoothly, its equipment was too large and unsuitable for home use.

Only a small number of enterprises and departments that have scientific computing requirements use COS for office work. The majority of users are still in the hands of the WinTel Alliance.

But since the latest version of the COS kernel was released in December, this version has added support for the latest Pentium processor, and can even call its own internal floating-point arithmetic co-processor to meet some basic graphics operations and multimedia operations. .

The software even supports the complex instruction set of multimedia MMX, which seems to have opened a Pandora's box.

Because this means that the graphical operating system, smooth and simple mouse operations, various familiar taskbars, notification bars, start buttons, right-click menus, clicks, double-clicks, scrolls, etc. are all in the initialized COS graphics. appears in the interface.

The graphical interface of the initial version of COS is not simple, but it has been full of problems. It has been a year and these bugs have not been corrected.

This is mainly due to the lack of commercial company operations, but now if large hardware manufacturers start to support such an operating system, it means that its defects will be quickly resolved in a short period of time.

No one will doubt the power of these large computer companies, and Microsoft's new operating system is still being tested and is far from being launched. So during this window period, Microsoft is facing an unprecedented strong challenge.

Wang Xu knew this, and it was Director Jiang who told him that since the last meeting, the transfer of GIT to universities has been significantly accelerated, and the attention of relevant departments on various data on GIT has also been significantly increased.

They were surprised to find that the data above could analyze many overseas business behaviors to some extent.

For example, recently, they have clearly noticed that the update frequency, number of contributors, and nationalities of certain GIT projects have increased significantly, and then analyzed the trends in the Western IT industry.

All of a sudden, this thing is not just a technology open source platform, it has almost become a direction indicator of world IT trends. Sociologists and economists are already conducting special research on this thing.

It is said that the Wharton School of Business in Ugly is cooperating with the secretarial school in Shanghai to study the relationship between various dynamics in GIT and the IT economy. They seem to be interested in establishing a set of indexes to identify the development direction of IT.

This is the power of GIT internationalization. All information is public and can be studied by anyone. International cooperation and competition have shown surprising changes in a small GIT.

This is by no means what Wang Xu could have imagined when he was open source. Perhaps the hurricane caused by Wang Xu's butterfly wings in this world was demonstrated by GIT.

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(Start working, see you tomorrow)