In the long run, this is worth it, after all, the manufacturing, modification, and sales authorization of the X86 architecture are of great use, and they are incomparable, not to mention that the chipset development commitment used to 'exchange' this time is not outrageous, Intel itself has 'handed over' the control chip development contract to AMD, and AMD has therefore been authorized by Intel.

This is a win-win business, but AMD's technical strength is really not good, no Intel is strong, ordinary new control chips have been developed for a long time and there is no eyebrow, 'get' 286 molding is seriously lagging behind, Intel is also miserable.

However, on the surface, it is a win-win situation, and both parties have left their hands and feet on this contract, and the licensing agreement does not mention when it will be authorized, what model will be authorized, and I don't know if Intel is pretending to be stupid or what.

Naturally, it has been quiet for a long time, and this agreement is generally similar to AMD's one, and there will be a war of words in the future.

At the beginning of 85, the microcomputer market undercurrent surged, and generally the end of the year is a good time to change jobs, and the flow of talents for a time often exceeds the sum of the whole year.

The same is true of the IBM Boca Input and Output System Division, Lovo personally went out, using a generous salary promise to attack everywhere, quite digging a lot of corners, what is suspicious is that this guy seems to have mixed tastes, and he has both soft and hard among the people he pulled, which shows that his ambition is not small.

"This guy Lovo now has a loud nickname. Xu Zhixing lamented and reported to Chang Chang, "This guy is not a manager, if he opens a headhunting company, he can become famous." Hundreds of companies have been patronized by his people, at least 13 of the main R&D forces have been successfully rebelled by him, and now he has been listed as persona non grata by various companies, the Teutonic headhunter, which is the nickname they gave. ”

"Then what about our military spirit, this dog of Lovo didn't deceive us, right?" Chang Chang picked up the teacup and took a sip, taking a break while Xu Zhixing was reporting.

"We are now a thorn in IBM's side, although everyone has not turned their faces, but the relationship has reached the freezing point, and the contract is almost torn up. Xu Zhixing said, "On the whole, it is still good, because our measures are timely and effective, there is no loss of personnel." ”

"Personnel is technology!" nodded for a long time, "You guys are doing a good job, I'd rather lose a million than see a person leave." What else is going on?"

"There's good news and bad news, which one do you want to hear?"

"Do you returnees have this 'problem', and give me multiple-choice questions at every turn. He pinched his eyebrows for a long time, "Let's talk about the good news first." ”

"The good news is that the production of chipsets is already scheduled, and it will not be a problem to ship next month if it is fully produced. Xu Zhixing said with a smile, "And the orders from various manufacturers have flooded our office." ”。

"That's good news. "For a long time, it was like bathing in the 'spring' wind, as if I saw a large amount of dollars falling, "What about the bad news?"

"The bad news is ......" Xu Zhixing paused, "We don't have enough production capacity, because there are too many orders, we can't meet everyone's requirements, so we ......"

"So I had to subcontract. "It's a bit heart-wrenching for a long time, the 'meat' hurts, and it feels very bad that the falling dollars have been picked up by others.

"The market is big and we can't swallow it all. Xu Zhixing said, "Today's plan is to invest in building factories, or direct mergers and acquisitions to expand production capacity." This is not a "waste" fee, the result of our analysis is that it is a period of strong demand for the "sex" of the integrated circuit product cycle once every few years, and now is the best period to expand production capacity. ”

"Agreed! You come up with a plan, and you can do it quickly. Nodding for a long time, he naturally knew what was going on, the competition mechanism of the free market had led to the unusually weak integrated circuits in recent years, and the price had dropped like cabbage, and many manufacturers could not hold on and went out of business.

The law of nature is that production declines, and when demand is strong, prices rise, and seeing that there are signs of this now, if you have money in hand, you should not expand quickly.

"Also, this is an application for personnel transfer, you better take a look. Xu Zhixing took out another form and handed it to Changchang.

"Stephen Chow?" asked Chang Chang, frowning, "what kind of person is this, what a strange name." ”

"A Chinese technician who entered VS Company as a college student last year interned and was responsible for the programming of the compiler. Xu Zhixing's endorsement is average, and the things on the information are not bad, "Later, this little guy wanted to quit, and the reason was that he wanted to change careers!"

"Changing careers?" I didn't understand for a long time, "what do you mean?"

"This kid seems to be much more interested in hardware than in programs, so he's going to give Intel a try. But at that time, this guy quit me and was left behind. ”

"I like the hardware, what about the others?" said Chang Chang with interest.

"People are very diligent, study in school during the day, come to work in the company at night, from knowing nothing to being able to complete the task in a very timely manner, very potential, have put forward several suggestions, and have played a role in the process of research and development. Xu Zhixing added, "In addition, he and I are also friends, hehe." ”

"That's it!" Chang Youyou glanced at the information in his hand, "Although this guy is very basic, do you think he can join our integrated circuit research and development team?"

"You think you're bad!" Xu Zhixing said with a smile, "It's not that I want him in, it's the engineers in the group who apply." They felt he was a good fit, and I certainly agreed. ”

Chang Daqi, could it be that he inadvertently pulled a great god-level genius here? But after thinking about it, I can't find this name, but it doesn't matter, the key is that this guy is already in his own hands.

"Okay, let's focus on training!" Chang Chang closed the information in his hand and put it in his folder, "I don't think the chip design team of our research institute will necessarily be worse than the Hong Kong side, just let them compete, it's not safe to put 'chicken' eggs in one basket." ”

At the end of this conversation, 1 6k mobile station ap.1 leaned on the sofa for a long time and closed his eyes in contemplation.

Summing up what IBM has done these days, I can roughly imagine what Lovo wants to do for a long time, but I didn't expect that this guy not only wants to control the software platform, but even has ambitions to get involved in the processor hardware system.

This is a good phenomenon, at least Intel will also rely more on the Compatible Machine Alliance because it feels threatened, otherwise it will be a really difficult time, and I will look forward to it for a long time and even very much, and what will be the expression on Grove's face when it is rejected by IBM after the 386 is developed.

It seems that Lowo's policy towards Esrich has been messed up, and the compatible machine has indeed become a heart disease, he doesn't see the vitality that the open system brings to the PC, but he jumps out for the sake of the compatible machine's profits.

"Damn Apple, it actually sold 270,000 Mac machines, how can God always favor these ruffians. Lovo held Apple's sales report in his hand and cursed incessantly, "It's so surprising that I'm almost dead, how can I still come back to life." He threw his hand on the ground.

The secretary coped carefully, this irascible supervisor is not easy to serve, and a little unsatisfactory may end miserably.

"These wastes, what kind of contract they signed with them at the beginning, make them so passive now. Lowo was annoyed, as a real manager who climbed up from IBM headquarters, he had always considered the PC business in the context of the entire IBM company, so he was very angry that all kinds of PC components were controlled by others.

"We must unify the software and hardware architecture in the hands of IBM, and we can't let those thieves plagiarize unscrupulously!"

But the situation will definitely change in his own hands, Lovo thought. One of his marketing managers proposed a CAA plan, called the Software System Application Architecture Program, which aims to unify all machines produced by IBM with a mainframe-centric software interface, so that IBM's various machines can "talk" to each other without barriers.

The old men at the headquarters were very interested in this, as if the IBM 360 plan was repeated, but Lovo didn't think so, because it was pointless, but it could be used to help take back control of the 'operation' system, which was the biggest purpose.

But the AT machine obviously can't accomplish this goal, and Lowo even put Microsoft's dos as a reference, but was frustrated to find that this thing is really overwhelmed, so it can only be developed from scratch.

Naturally, the subcontracted company can no longer choose viesoft, which is obviously not in the interest of IBM, even if it cannot develop its own independent research and development, it cannot make a company bigger, so Lovo still chose to cooperate with Microsoft to use the software interface of IBM mainframe to implement this modern system called OS/2.

Working with Gates is tantamount to seeking skin with a tiger, Bill has been waiting for this day for a long time, and it is something he has always dreamed of defeating VS in the field of "operational" systems, so IBM agreed to it as soon as he contacted him, regardless of how difficult the job was.

As it turned out, this was not an easy task, and developers complained and asked to continue developing software for Mac machines.

In the eyes of these programmers, the complexity and cumbersome instructions of the Mac have become more pleasing to the eye than the difficulty of kneading the mainframe system into the microcomputer, and the most important thing is that there is not enough time to complete the research.

Lovo didn't care what these people thought, he knew that he was a strategist, and the combatants had to carry out his orders perfectly, so IBM in early 85 was indeed in full swing to carry out a series of 'sweeping' activities.

However, the good times did not last long, the situation has undergone subtle changes, and a dazzling new product appeared on the market at the beginning of the year, as if it appeared overnight, that is, the codename 160 chipset products, with different models, including Intel 160, Deyi 160, West 'Gate' 160, five 'flowers' eight 'doors', but the same feature is that the price is very cheap.

The controller of these products is specifically aimed at Intel's 286 products, and the level of integration is quite high, and a set of three chips is enough to replace most of the chips on IBM's AT motherboards, but it only costs $49.

Lovo was horrified to find that the originally moist AT market is now also invaded by compatible machines, Compaq and other old companies are just that, and a large number of inexplicable compatible machine brands are actually listed in one go, but it is incomprehensible, many names have not been heard, and there are even products from South Korea, Taiwan and China, which is simply incredible.

Without exception, these machines all use these chipset products codenamed 160, and the price is more than half cheaper than IBM's original machines, which greatly reduces IBM's profits and has to reduce prices to cope with the competition.

However, Lovo never believed in these chips, maybe for the sake of face, or maybe it was still profitable, and he never thought of using this kind of chipset, so he added a sentence in the advertisement: IBM is really talented!

Due to IBM's brand effect, the sales of AT machines are still soaring, which makes the company's numbers on the books very good, and the bigwigs at the headquarters still believe in Lovo's ability.

Chang Chang and Xu Zhixing have also grown up in the struggle, often commanding in high positions, at least their behavior and temperament have undergone a qualitative change. For a long time, he rarely made decisions for the trivial things in management, and the staff of the institute has grown to 300 people, but his work is idle, just to give some instructions for the direction of research, and the rest of the time is considering the overall architecture of the software and hardware system.

Godson's 'operation' system has been developed to version 3.2, as far as the current technology is concerned, the development has been quite perfect, basically capable of anything that the current microcomputer can do, and the rest of the work is not challenging 'sex', modifying the code to be compatible with various programs is the work of ordinary programmers.

Therefore, Bill Joy, the first programmer of VS Company, and his team were transferred to the research institute, and a large number of tips were added, and they began to study how to implement a graphical interface on the basis of the godson system.

In this era, software engineering is not as easy as it will be in the future, and if a programmer does not know the platform hardware very well, then the program he writes usually does not match the 'sex' ability of the machine.

As a simple example, the games we play pay more attention to this, Atari had a lot of software vendors developing games on it at that time, but there was always that kind of garbage game, not that it could be played 'sex' garbage, but it couldn't run at all, and the picture was slow to death, usually we think that this was a lack of optimization, in fact, it wasn't that those programmers had no experience, and the software that was programmed exceeded the processing capacity of the hardware system?

So an experienced programmer can tell at a glance whether the program he's writing will work well in an ideal state, and Bill Joy is clearly one of those people.

Therefore, when he asked for a long time whether it was possible to implement a graphical interface like a mac on an AT machine, he said no without thinking about it.

"The 286 doesn't have enough computing power, and the AT system doesn't have extra memory. Joey didn't even raise his eyelids and said, "If you want to do it, you can do it, and the effect is estimated to be similar to that of a slideshow, if you can bear to refresh a picture for half a minute, it doesn't matter." ”

This is consistent with what I have been thinking for a long time, and there is no suspense, and the development of the current IBM-AT system has been rejected.