I Found A Planet

Mid-December.

The "Household Computer" research center established in Suhong City received good news of a breakthrough.

"Mr. Chen, the first batch of prototypes have been produced, and the operation is very smooth. Both the hardware and software systems have achieved success!"

Hu Tengjiao, who is in charge of the project, said excitedly on the phone.

"The prototype is out?"

Chen Jin was slightly taken aback. After nearly two years of carrying out the "Home Computer" project, he finally produced substantial results.

...

the next day.

In order to show importance, Chen Jin's body, along with several company executives, drove to Suhong City and inspected the research center.

He sent his greetings to nearly 2,000 software and hardware R\u0026D personnel in the research center.

Seeing the boss himself, the researchers were very excited. They shook hands and took photos with the boss one after another. Some female researchers even asked for a hug.

"Thank you for your hard work, everyone."

Chen Jin kept waving his hands, and the scene was very lively.

...

Product testing room.

On a long table, Chen Jin saw two prototypes.

One of them is a home desktop computer, with a square mainframe and a 19-inch LCD monitor, which is no different from an ordinary home computer.

The other is a notebook computer. Since it is a test prototype, the appearance is square and square, and its thickness is comparable to that of a ThinkPad.

Hu Tengjiao, the general manager of the project, did not turn on the two computers immediately, but asked someone to bring two chips.

Computer CPU chip!

The physical size of one of them is 4CM×4CM, half the size of a palm, four times the size of a common Intel CPU... This is a desktop computer CPU.

The physical size of the other one is 2.5CM×2.5CM... This is the CPU for notebook computers.

"Both CPUs use Zhongxin's 28nm process technology, which is two to three generations behind Intel's most advanced 10nm process... However, Intel's 10nm production capacity is seriously insufficient, and they are now mainly producing 14nm CPUs .”

The manufacturing difficulty of a computer CPU is much greater than that of a mobile phone SoC. The surface area of ​​a computer CPU is several times larger, and the number of transistors is several times higher, even reaching tens of billions.

Under the same process technology, the larger the processing area, the lower the yield rate and the higher the cost.

Therefore, Intel's 10nm CPU finally achieved mass production in 20X0 after delaying tickets for three or four years.

The CPU made by Zhongxin's 28nm process is of course worse, and the performance gap can only be made up by increasing the wafer area and the number of transistors.

Fortunately, after Chen Jin helped solve the problem of the lithography lens, the super-resolution lithography machine that Shangwei Electronics will soon launch can be used in the manufacture of 10nm computer CPUs, and can ensure a high enough yield...It can almost match Intel in no time State-of-the-art CPUs.

In addition, the size of the CPU here is several times larger.

In terms of performance, there is no need to worry about insufficient performance.

More importantly, this CPU named "Qinglong Generation" has a huge competitive advantage in terms of physical architecture, which is more common in X86 and MIPS architectures.

Liang Yongping, an engineer in charge of architecture, said:

"Mr. Chen, the CPU architectures currently used by Intel and AMD are both X86 architectures, which occupy the absolute mainstream of the market."

"The X86 architecture with a complex instruction set has the characteristics of fast single instruction speed and small number of instructions. The mechanism of sequentially executing instructions makes its control easier."

"But the X86 instruction set has only 8 general-purpose registers, while CISC mostly accesses data in memory during execution, and RISC (reduced instruction set) systems often have a lot of registers, which slows down the entire system. speed, and in some micro-decoding scenarios, the decoding speed will be very slow and complicated...resulting in low utilization of various parts of the computer and slow execution speed."

"The MIPS architecture using the reduced instruction set is similar to the ARM architecture. Both have a large number of core registers, which reduce the amount of data access to the memory and greatly reduce power consumption...Under the same performance, the MIPS architecture can provide every square millimeter of chip design. The lowest energy consumption, and the use is more flexible and open."

"The disadvantage of the MIPS architecture is that there are certain limitations in the support of memory and cache, and there will be some problems when dealing with high-capacity memory...and this aspect is the advantage of the X86 architecture."

Liang Yongping held the chip in his hand, put it in front of Chen Jin and said:

"However, the 'Vega architecture' used by our CPU takes into account all the advantages of the X86 architecture and the MIPS architecture. It achieves fast speed, high performance, fast memory data exchange, and high CPU utilization. The MIPS architecture is comparable."

"There are more or less shortcomings in other architectures, but in our Zhinu architecture, all of them have been resolved!"

"The fundamental reason is that the transistor distribution of this CPU is no longer the previous matrix arrangement, but a special 'array', which can evolve into many kinds of changes, so that those Transistors are sometimes combined into computing units, sometimes into memory units...intelligently changing to meet various usage scenarios."

"Perfect combination of high performance and low power consumption."

Chen Jin nodded.

He brought the Weaving Girl Organization from the Dakeng base. Of course, he is fully aware of the strength and advantages of this structure.

In a word, this architecture is ahead of all the mainstream architectures currently on the market.

It is an advanced product beyond a generation.

It not only achieves high performance and low power consumption, but also has a killer function.

That is it can be not only pure CPU, but also pure GPU.

That is, it can complete all graphics computing functions that can only be completed by a graphics card, without having to purchase a graphics card separately.

Generally speaking, the price of a slightly better CPU is about 1,000 yuan, but the performance of the built-in integrated graphics card is very poor, and you can only play some low-configuration games.

If you add a better graphics card dedicated to processing graphics operations and play a game of eating chicken, the price will be at least 1,000 yuan or more.

Even spending 2,000 yuan, 3,000 yuan, 5,000 yuan...a graphics card accounts for about half of the price of the entire host.

The combined price of the two things is equivalent to 60% to 70% of a high-performance computer.

Now, the "Qinglong" CPU based on the Vega architecture allows you to buy a high-performance graphics card separately, and the price is only 1500. Would you be tempted?

Of course, considering that both the CPU and the GPU will greatly increase power consumption, if you run a game with extremely high configuration requirements, the operating power of several hundred watts, the huge heat generation may not even be able to suppress the water cooling, and you still have to develop an independent graphics card.

But for now it's quite enough.

Because Hu Tengjiao shook the CPU that was half the size of a palm and said: "Mr. Chen, if this U can use a 10-nanometer process, the performance after all it participates in graphics processing is probably equivalent to RTX2080... This is enough for the time being." With it, most users don’t have to think about adding a graphics card.”

Chen Jin nodded. The RTX2080 is already a super nuclear bomb. The market price exceeds 10,000 yuan. I don’t know if the number of people who can afford this kind of nuclear bomb exceeds 1%.

Except for a very small number of wealthy users, for more than 99% of ordinary users, a CPU with a "Vega architecture" is enough to handle them for the time being.

Of course, no matter how good the hardware architecture is, it must be used in conjunction with the operating system and software to exert its greatest power.

For example, although the X86 architecture has many shortcomings, but because of the win-tel alliance with Microsoft, it has occupied the absolute mainstream of the market. The Windows system has played a decisive role in the wide application of the X86 architecture.

So Chen Jin turned his gaze back to the two computers in front of him.

"Turn on the computer and let me see the performance of the operating system."

"yes."

Two staff members pressed the power button at the same time.

Sorry for the lateness, I checked the information all morning