Military Industry of Great Powers: Build the Strongest Flanker

Professor Ji Hongbo did not come alone. The person who came with him was Chief Tu Jinda. Zhao Guoqing was familiar with this name.

A few years later, as the commander-in-chief of the Super Seven Project, General Tu’s name was often seen in foreign media.

Seeing Zhao Guoqing, Ji Hongbo directly explained his intention.

"On National Day, we are here to learn from the experience, mainly about chip microcode..."

As soon as an insider asks a question, he or she will know the level of the other party. Logically, the chip can look at the firmware computer program. Just like the software code, the chip also has its own code.

The specific manifestation is machine language and a collection of a series of instruction sets.

"How to unify the oscillation circuit in the chip with the oscillation circuit of the bus outside the chip? What should I do if there is an error in data transmission?"

When it comes to physical chips, numbers like 010011 are physically reflected as level signals. If something goes wrong, there will definitely be a certain probability of making an error. A certain redundant calculation and error correction mechanism is required.

"Professor Ji, the three-reform project of Monster Snake is progressing rapidly!"

Ji Hongbo was in a good mood. Although he was praised by a young man named Zhao Guoqing, it was still a bit strange.

"That is to say, on the drawing, you have decided on the big frame, and we will just sew and mend it!"

"What about on a physical level?"

"The biggest problem has been solved. The results of the pulse high current transistor test are very satisfactory. The reliability and durability should be able to meet military needs. National Day, as you said, gallium nitride transistors have great potential!"

Tu Jinda was silent on the side, and Zhao Guoqing also noticed that Professor Tu's eyes never left him.

Professor Ji Hongbo took out a stack of information, and Zhao Guoqing also helped explain it.

"The computing auxiliary chip adds an instruction register and a data register. It mainly solves a programmable address stack and adds a set of conditional judgment instructions. This can be physically implemented through logic gates..."

Hardware needs software to adapt. There is no compilable high-level computer language. The intention that needs to be realized can only be edited through machine instructions, which involves the operation of addresses and the storage of data. Although compared with the operating system, a The fire control program is much simpler, but compiling it piece by piece in machine language is also a huge project.

At this time, Tu Jinda, who had been recording in his notebook, said his first words, which made Zhao Guoqing appreciate the pioneering spirit of domestic scientists.

"Teacher Zhao, what do you know about high-level computer languages!"

"Master Tu, you can just call me Xiao Zhao!"

"A master is a teacher, Teacher Zhao. To be honest, I still don't quite understand many of the things you just said!"

Zhao Guoqing was very moved by Tu Jinda's frankness, just like a long-established swordsman confessing to a novice that he still didn't know which moves he was good at.

This requires courage. Many people don’t know how to pretend to understand because of their face.

Zhao Guoqing thought for a while and said: "General Master Tu, the emergence of high-level computer languages ​​is also a real need. It originated from the software crisis twenty years ago. Because programs became more and more complex, using machine language to write large programs, the accumulated errors were exponential As the level increases, in order to solve this problem, corresponding high-level programming languages ​​are produced, which also stimulates the design of computers to adapt to the development of high-level languages."

"Teacher Zhao, is this why you designed the register?"

Zhao Guoqing nodded.

"In 1968, Dr. Kraus published a paper in Microelectronics. The setting of registers not only speeds up computer processing, but also facilitates directional pointing when compiling high-level languages..."

Tu Jinda took a long breath and looked at Ji Hongbo with a smile on his face.

"I'm right, Lao Ji. Teacher Zhao's designs are not that simple. There are profound meanings everywhere. Although the functions are simple, every design reflects the current trend..."

Ji Hongbo also nodded and said with a smile: "National Day, I really don't know what you are thinking. When we first started studying the drawings, we thought that many places were cumbersome. In fact, the more we studied in depth, the more emotional we became. Recently We have read a lot of foreign publications, and your design ideas are completely at the forefront of the world, and there are even some ideas that we can’t find the source of.”

"..."

I was careless. Zhao Guoqing designed it based on mature ideas forty years later and based on the current process conditions. I didn't expect Tu Jinda and Ji Hongbo to be so sensitive.

"Mr. Zhao, do you think it is feasible for our country to independently develop a computer language for military industry?"

Tu Jinda's eyes were fierce, making Zhao Guoqing a little hairy. Zhao Guoqing asked: "General Tu, are you also participating in this inspection team?"

"I really can't hide it from you!" Tu Jinda said with a smile.

Zhao Guoqing nodded. He must have learned about the Ada military computer high-level language of the US military and was stimulated.

According to Zhao Guoqing's understanding, the J-10 aircraft a few years later will use a four-redundant fly-by-wire flight control system written in the Ada computer high-level language.

However, Ada software has a fatal flaw, that is, during development, the types, value ranges, space sizes, etc. of many objects can only be inferred from the context during program execution.

Types such as dynamic arrays and function pointers are also difficult to implement in the Ada language. These functions can only be accomplished indirectly through various syntax mechanisms provided by the Ada language.

The U.S. military later felt the limitations of the Ada language and turned to the C/C++ language when developing the F22 and F35.

However, the encapsulation of C language data is weak, the type constraints of variables are not strict, there is no check for out-of-bounds array subscripts, there is no namespace, and the direct defects of accessing internal storage are also inherited, which directly leads to a large number of software in 2023. Engineers catch bugs for F35.

When it comes to developing sixth-generation fighters, the military is reluctant to use C/C++. They would rather re-develop a computer language, of course, in order to be able to solicit public tenders and reduce costs. In order to avoid problems such as poor developability and poor maintainability, the military prefers to use the Java language and has made many arguments.

Tu Jinda's proposal was undoubtedly very prophetic.

Zhao Guoqing thought about the possibility of designing a computer language based on Java.

The Java language is simple, object-oriented, distributed, highly secure, has superior performance, and has dynamic multi-threading. The advantages are obvious.

However, Java is not widely used in the military, and the lack of effective demonstration is also a big problem.

"Teacher Zhao, how are you doing?"

Zhao Guoqing nodded and said, "Master Tu, I think you can give it a try."

Tu Jinda and Ji Hongbo glanced at each other, then turned to look at Zhao Guoqing.

"Teacher Zhao, I would like to recommend you to take the lead in this project and invite you to participate in the Monster Snake Three Transformation Project. What do you think?"

"..."