Global Monopoly of Technology

The latest website: Everyone did not say a word, and looked at Luo Sheng intently and waited for his next sentence.

Luo Sheng sat comfortably in his seat, and everyone's curious eyes hadn't dissipated, and they were all waiting for him to speak.

"You don't know too much about the chip arena, but you must know, because we are all in the arena, so we must know what's going on in the arena, so I'll tell you about it. "

Luo Sheng smiled, and in a few words brought these young and excellent engineers in the hall into that period of time.

"It starts from one day in the summer of 2000, when Sony and Toshiba knocked on IBM's door. At that time, both companies were in full swing, especially Sony, winning the war of two generations of game consoles in a row, PS2 It has become the most wanted Christmas present for American children, it can be said that it is easy and fun to punch Sega and kick Nintendo.”

"Sony's movement in the game industry is so great that Microsoft, a giant in the software industry, is not calm, and it is also clamoring to join the war. At that time, no one took Gates seriously. Now, Xbox is just killing it. A bloody road."

Luo Sheng looked at the engineers and said, "At that time, IBM was still in the transition period from a hardware company to a software + information company, and the situation was quite embarrassing, and the big sponsor of the small book naturally did not dare to neglect it. , seeing Sony and Toshiba two wealthy grandfathers coming, thought they were interested in IBM's hard disk storage technology."

"But Toshiba and Sony have no interest in it at all, and IBM thinks they should look at the server solution in the store for use in home entertainment networking services?"

"Still no interest, IBM asked again: Are you interested in our OS/2 operating system? You want to use it in home entertainment equipment, haha, it's really a hero, we are more coquettish than Microsoft's... Sony can't bear it. Finally interrupted IBM's crazy self-bragging, and expressed his intention in a succinct manner: Let's work on CPU together, you IBM will make money, and Toshiba and I will pay and make money."

Luo Sheng spread out his hands vividly and looked at Lu Siming and others: "IBM's people are shocked, Watt?

Everyone couldn't help laughing. The boss's speech was really simple, like listening to Jin Yong's martial arts story, and it was also a stand-up comic.

I only saw Luo Sheng substitute himself into a scene to restore a story scene.

"Toshiba: Hey, I said, that PowerPC is the thing you developed for Steve Jobs, we have conducted in-depth tests on this CPU,

The performance is also wide. "

"IBM: There are prizes and prizes, so what do you want to do?"

"Sony: Haha, of course, it's the unification of the rivers and lakes. Let's copy Intel's backyard together. At that time, the three of us will be the 'Lanbo Bay' in the world's civilian chip field, how about it?"

Luo Sheng's stand-up cross talk said this, he sighed and shook his head suddenly, took a sip of tea and found that the cup was empty, a staff member immediately brought him a cup upon seeing this, Luo Sheng took a sip and continued to talk eloquently:

"IBM was speechless and thought: These two people are probably not stupid, no wonder they say that the small book is not reliable, such naive words can be said, how many cups did you drink yesterday? Didn't wake up today..."

"Sony seemed to see IBM's puzzled expression and laughed a few times, so he took out a bottle of Lafite in 1982 from his arms, poured a bottle according to the habits of Europeans and Americans, and recalled the past with the strength of the wine. glory days."

Having said that, Luo Sheng put down his legs on the workbench, changed his sitting position to look at the crowd, and continued: "The semiconductor industry in the 1970s was in a stage of explosive development, both in the theoretical stage and the application side. Rapid iterative updates are advancing, and there are two important inventions that have brought chips from military exclusives into civilian households in a true sense.”

"These two inventions are the personal computer and the game console. The personal computer created giants such as Apple, Microsoft and Intel, and the game console created Atari, Nintendo, and Sega. They are all rookies who have risen for a while, and they are in full swing. ."

"Game consoles in Greater China have been banned. I don't think the ban will be lifted in ten or eight years, and there is no market for stand-alone games, but why did Cote d'Azur enter the game console market? Why do we come to this mess? Water? Why are we getting into this strife? Who knows?"

After speaking, Luo Sheng looked around the crowd, and the more than 200 engineers looked at each other, all at a loss.

In fact, Luo Sheng didn't expect them to see it. After a while, he continued: "Do you understand that even in the 1990s, the shipments of game consoles were higher than that of personal computers, and even the shipments of console game software were higher than PC software.”

"The reason is not complicated at all, the game console is cheap, you can take it home for two or three hundred dollars, it can meet the needs of family entertainment, and fun things are always best-sellers, and our little Bawang learning machine is more expensive than cabbage; The average price of personal computers is more than one thousand US dollars, seven or eight thousand yuan, and the multimedia technology is not mature, and the entertainment effect is poor.”

"However, from the perspective of hardware structure, the game console is actually a customized version of the computer. It also has CPU, GPU, PPU, memory, storage and other configurations, but it is designed to focus on entertainment attributes."

At the end, Luo Sheng said with a long sigh: "In those days, the technical route of civilian computer chips can be described as a hundred flowers blooming, but today, Intel's x86 series has become the dominant PC in the world, and now AMD, Cyrix and other x86 compatible manufacturers are also Following the soup, we ushered in the darkest era of toothpaste factories in the industry."

"In those days, IBM's PowerPC was the non-mainstream Apple niche market of the Joe Gang, and it also had a presence in the server market, as well as Fairchild Semiconductor, NEC, TI, Motorola, Mostek... etc. You have heard of it or not. All the great gods in the world are in the arena of chips."

"The blossoming of chip technology has given game console developers a lot of freedom. They can choose their most satisfactory solutions from various solutions, and then make deep optimization and customization to differentiate them from all competitors. For example, Nintendo's SFC adopts MOS6502 CPU, Sega MD adopts Motorola's 68000 CPU, Sony PS adopts 3D soft acceleration technology route, Nintendo N64 adopts 3D hard acceleration which seems to be more advanced..."

"This kind of blooming situation, while meeting the technical requirements, maintains a high cost performance, and also facilitates the development of third-party software, thus forming a complete ecosystem."

"However, by the end of the 1990s, this custom route could no longer be played. The civilian computer chip market was almost completely dominated by x86, Texas Instruments, Motorola, etc. were all marginalized, and NEC's self-enclosed PC98 was also on the verge of extinction. That's how Intel went down the road of no return to the dark toothpaste factory."

"If this goes on, who will we turn to for customization in the future? Sony PS2 uses EE CPU developed by Toshiba and deeply modified by itself, but what about competitors? Microsoft's Xbox simply uses Intel P3 Celeron CPU, which may be the most common solution on the market. Solution. Although the Xbox launch didn't have much success because of Microsoft's inexperience, the scary thing is this trend."

Luo Sheng talked eloquently, and Lu Siming and other more than 200 engineers who were sitting in the hall listened intently, but when they heard Luo Sheng talking about this, a question involuntarily appeared in their minds.

If one day, x86 completely dominates the rivers and lakes and monopolizes the civilian chip market, then the game console industry may really have no chance, and it will be impossible to play.

Because everyone's technical routes are similar to the same, they are all half a catty, and no one can win by customization, so it only depends on cost performance and scale of the market.

Thinking of this, Lu Siming and the others realized that this kind of thing is happening right now, isn't it?

Li Chunsheng couldn't help but said: "Isn't Microsoft, who is in trouble with Intel, eager for this to happen? Sony can bear it?"

Luo Sheng said with a smile: "Of course Sony couldn't bear it, so they took action and found IBM. Straight to the point, let's work together and let Intel get rid of it. In the face of the Microsoft + Intel alliance, Sony thinks that this is an extremely vicious opponent. , it is impossible to defend, we must take the initiative to attack.”

"Sony made a cold decision, but IBM smiled bitterly. How to attack?"

"Sony said it was not panic, and quickly comforted IBM, saying that the first- and second-generation PS consoles sold more than 100 million units, and the supporting games sold more than 1 billion sets. This is the ecosystem. Let's work together to develop a super-powerful CPU, If it is used in the next-generation console, it will definitely be able to completely blow up the competitors. At that time, we will be out of the game market and use the scale advantage to counterattack the PC market. I don’t believe that Intel can stand it.”

Luo Sheng re-entered the scene: "Toshiba quickly agreed: You are right, we will also use this CPU for our own smart TVs and unify the emerging smart home appliance market. At that time, we will be the majority, and Intel will be the minority. Pie. You IBMs hate Intel, right? We hate it too, so let him die."

"In the face of these two second-hand goods, IBM murmured in its heart: The small book has been bloody moldy for eight lifetimes, and finally two IT technology giants were born, but they both suffered from this kind of paranoia. However, IBM is still polite and euphemistic. Said: Do you two know how much it will cost to do this?"

"Sony: Is $400 million enough?"

"IBM shook his head."

"Toshiba: What about the $4 billion?"

"When IBM heard 4 billion knives, that little eyeball secretly rolled around."

Lu Siming and the others burst into laughter, and the laughter continued unabated. They suddenly discovered that the boss's brand-new skills were able to say such a slippery stand-up comedy.

I saw Luo Sheng clasping his hands in front of him, leaning back on the seat and saying lightly, "A few months later, the Cell chip R\u0026D center jointly owned by Sony, Toshiba and IBM will be established in Austin, Texas. In the next four years, There are more than 400 of the world's top chip engineers working here. At the inauguration ceremony, a friend of IBM's businessman whispered in a whisper: You were drunk last night and scolded Sony and Toshiba for being delusional. Why are you here today?"

"IBM shrugs and spreads hands: it's not me who paid for it anyway... I can still give it a shot, why not?"

The audience burst into laughter again. The more Lu Siming and others listened, the more interesting they became. Bai Lang said, "Boss, listen to you, IBM is not a good bird. We are cooperating with them now, and this kind of plastic ally has to be guarded. "

Li Chunsheng said firmly: "It is necessary!"

Luo Sheng did not answer this, and said comfortably: "In the year when the IT bubble burst, Sony and IBM jointly held a press conference to announce for the first time the technical indicators of the Cell chip in the R\u0026D center: 1 trillion floating operations per second. Point computing, with distributed computing capabilities, is comparable to supercomputing. Under the word of mouth of the media, the Cell processor can simulate the earth.”

"If it's true, Sony will definitely win the next-generation game console battle. As for Intel, it shouldn't die, the toothpaste factory will slowly degenerate into an insignificant role, and the x86 architecture's domination of computer chips will also go away. At the end of the day, the future will be a big era of Cell, and I think that's how Sony envisions it."

Speaking of this, Luo Sheng paused, took a sip of water and turned on the large screen dedicated to the conference behind him, and then released a detailed picture of the chip. The dense distribution in the chip is like a microscopic mentality. Super metropolis.

Chip, this may represent the crystallization of the highest level of process technology in the world. There is no process product that is more demanding than the chip. If there is, it is the next generation chip.

Everyone looked at the big screen of the conference, Luo Sheng also glanced back at the image on the screen, and then said:

"Cell's architecture is very complex and strange. It has the functions of both CPU and GPU, and it also leaves room for cloud computing and edge computing. It is essentially a supercomputer chip. In my opinion, this chip is really It can be said that Sony's ambition and unwillingness are everywhere."

Luo Sheng's eyes shifted from the screen to Lu Siming and others, and said: "But in order to greatly expand the needs of home entertainment, it must meet four distinct needs at the same time: supercomputing and high-end servers, desktop PCs, game consoles and Smart appliances such as HDTVs.”

Speaking of which, Luo Sheng smiled and joked: "Fortunately, there was no smartphone market at that time, otherwise Sony's paranoia would require the development of a low-power version to compete with ARM. Until today, there is still no A processor and any kind of technical architecture can seamlessly meet all of the above needs, Sony will be damned if it does not fail, Sony needs an indispensable condition to realize this ultimate dream.”

Oh?

Everyone opened their eyes and stared at the boss.

At the end, Luo Sheng said with a laugh, "They just need to invite me over and host Cell. It's a pity, I was still playing soy sauce in high school at that time. As for now...hehe..."

Everyone: "..."

Everyone expressed that they were caught off guard by the sudden wave of pretending by the boss, but after a while, everyone's heart suddenly thumped, the boss said this just to pretend to be a comparison or what else did he mean? ! !

Could it be that the boss has also developed a paranoia like Sony?

...