Li Xuan had just returned to Hong Kong and got good news. The supercomputer project, which has been in place for more than two years, is finally starting to bear fruit!

Chen Shiqing and his team have just completed the "Pearl of the Orient" supercomputer, and when it was tested for the first time, the peak operation rate exceeded 4.8 billion times per second. This is twice as fast as the world's fastest supercomputer, M-13, which was recently released by the Moscow Computer Science Research Institute of the Soviet Union, with a rate of 2.4 billion operations per second.

Two or three years ago, Li Xuan had ordered two latest models of supercomputers from the American company Cary. As a result, one of the supercomputers, which was originally intended to be installed in the Oriental Real Building in Hong Kong, was restricted from being exported by the U.S. government on the grounds of preventing the proliferation of the technology.

Li Xuan spent a lot of effort to carry out public relations at that time, and finally let the United States let him go. But the supercomputer that finally arrived in Hong Kong was the old model of the previous generation, not the latest model that Li Xuan had originally ordered.

As the so-called non-steamed steamed buns compete for breath, Li Xuan was angry and simply made up his mind to prepare for the development of the world's fastest supercomputer by the Eastern Group itself. At the beginning of 1982, the new S-100 processor based on the MIPS architecture went on sale. The new powerful processor launched by the Oriental Research Institute laid the foundation for the independent development of supercomputers by the Oriental Company.

Li Xuan took the world's most famous supercomputer manufacturer, Cary, and put its chief technical manager, Mr. Chen Shiqing, a Chinese-born engineer, from the United States to Hong Kong.

Chen Shiqing led the R&D team for more than two years and spent more than $20 million. A series of technical problems have been overcome, and now the research and development of the "Pearl of the Orient" supercomputer project has finally been successfully completed.

"Li Sheng, our 'Pearl of the Orient' supercomputer consists of 75 nodes. Each node has 8 S-100A processors. Each S-100A processor has a computing power of 8 million operations per second. In other words, the computing power of each node is 640 million times per second, and the total computing power of 75 nodes is 4.8 billion operations per second!" Chen Shiqing pointed to the rows of chassis in the computer room.

The advent of the "Pearl of the Orient" is a milestone revolution for the development of supercomputers. Before its inception, the development of supercomputers was based on the vector processing technology proposed by Mr. Clay Sr., the founder of Cary. In layman's terms, it is to continuously tap the computing potential inside a single processor.

However, Li Xuan proposed to Chen Shiqing a new design idea - parallel processing. The so-called parallel processing. In layman's terms, it is the superposition of the computing power of multiple processors.

Before that, supercomputers had only one core processor. The performance of this processor directly determines the performance of the computer. The parallel design idea is to superimpose the computing power of multiple processors. One of the biggest challenges is how to solve them. The problem of "1+1<2" when multiple processors run together.

Once this problem is solved, the development of supercomputers will actually become a game of chips. Later, the U.S. Air Force Research Office also built a supercomputer composed of 1,760 Sony PS3 game consoles. Even a handheld game console can be used to assemble a supercomputer, and Americans really know how to play!

And Chen Shiqing really did not disappoint Li Xuan. It only took just over two years to successfully solve the problem of processor parallelism. You must know that Li Xuan just put forward an idea.

You know, the idea of parallel processing was just beginning to sprout in the 80s. Chen Shiqing really turned Li Xuan's ideas into reality without any reference, which is really amazing! The whole team has published dozens of papers and applied for patents during the research and development of the "Pearl of the Orient" project!

In the future, if you continue to increase the speed of supercomputers, you can simply increase the number of chips or replace them with more powerful processors. It can be said that Chen Shiqing and his team have successfully opened a new door to building supercomputers!

Vector processing technology has reached the end of its rope, and it will become more and more difficult to increase the computing speed of a single processor. The S-100A processor used in the "Pearl of the Orient" supercomputer, although it is a special improvement of the S-100, still belongs to the category of general-purpose processors. The difficulty of production and the cost of production are not high.

"Li Sheng, our 'Pearl of the Orient' also has shortcomings. After the computer is booted, there are 600 processors working at the same time, and the amount of power consumed and the amount of heat released are not a decimal value! Therefore, our computer needs to build a special constant temperature room to dissipate heat, and the annual electricity bill will be very considerable!" Chen Shiqing shook his head and said.

But the next step you can do is improve the control program inside your computer and let it automatically shut down some nodes and put them to sleep when the computer doesn't need to run at saturation.

This will improve the economic efficiency of computers and will be very beneficial to future market sales! By the way, when are you going to announce the news of the 'Pearl of the Orient'?" Li Xuan said.

"The Pearl of the Orient is still in the testing stage, and there are still some minor problems with the operating system that have not been fully debugged! And the computer lacks specific application software, and we are jointly developing a typhoon path simulation software with the University of Hong Kong. I hope it can be applied to the 'Pearl of the Orient' to predict typhoons and make the 'Pearl of the Orient' famous!"

To measure the overall performance of a supercomputer, the computing speed is only one of the indicators, and many other factors include the floating point computing power, the number of application software, and many other common constraints.

After Li Xuan visited the "Pearl of the Orient" supercomputer, as soon as he returned to his office, Han Peng came to the door.

"Li Sheng, I have a few situations here that I need to report to you!" Han Peng said very sternly.

"What's the matter?" Li Xuan asked with some curiosity.

"According to the investigation of the Ministry of Safety Supervision, the 'Pearl of the Orient' project team has been infiltrated by commercial espionage!" Han Peng pulled out an internal document from his briefcase.

"Do you know what kind of spy it is?" Li Xuan frowned. Quickly start browsing the text.

"It should have been sent from the north!" Han Peng replied, "They just completed the development of 'Galaxy One' last year, and the computing rate is only 100 million times per second. I guess I want to learn from our technology!"

Among the materials brought by Han Peng were speculations about the general performance of the "Yinhe 1" supercomputer. It should be far behind the Cary-1 supercomputer currently in use in the Dongfang Shi yàn building. Cary-1 is a product of the Cary company seven or eight years ago, and the rate of operations is also 350 million times per second.

"This is already the sixth commercial espionage case discovered by the Ministry of Security Supervision in the past year! Four of them came from the north, and all the departments that were infiltrated were concentrated in the Oriental Research Institute!" Han Peng said in a deep voice.

The Department of Security and Supervision is a very special department within the Eastern Bloc, whose main responsibility is to investigate and detect hidden commercial spies within the group. The internal security system of the Oriental Group is still relatively perfect, and units like the Oriental Research Institute are the top priority of prevention.

The person who was found to have a problem this time. Just a low-level technician in the R&D team of the "Pearl of the Orient", it is difficult to get access to the core materials of the supercomputer project. When he inquired about the details of the project from a core R&D member in the team, he was directly reported to the safety supervision department by the other party.

Because according to the company's internal confidentiality regulations. It is strictly forbidden for R&D personnel to discuss issues involving the company's technical secrets in private. In particular, those who do not have the right to know the relevant content will be listed as the object of suspicion of commercial espionage in the first place if their curiosity is too strong.

Every employee in the Oriental Group is required to receive training on confidentiality at least once a year. The frequency of training in units such as the Oriental Research Institute has been increased to once a quarter. At the beginning, this regulation also caused a collective resentment among R&D personnel. Li Xuan also personally came forward to explain and appease him.

"It seems that the last time I had tea with President Xu of the Xinhua Branch. The tone is still too gentle! Old Han, you bring these materials tomorrow and go to President Xu for tea again! If they are so unscrupulous again, I will have to ask the Political Department of the Police Department to help deal with it!" Li Xuan said with a smile.

The Hong Kong Police Force has a Department of Political Affairs, which is the department responsible for counter-espionage and internal security within the Hong Kong Police System. But in fact, this government is an intermediary-spy agency affiliated with the British MI5.

Naturally, Li Xuan would not really have to cooperate with foreign intelligence agencies to deal with domestic agents. That would break his bottom line! But it's okay to scare some people.

In the past, when Li Xuan was just a small fart, he wished that the domestic agents could get their hands on the world's advanced technology. But when the victim becomes himself. Li Xuan was definitely not so willing.

After all, these technical data are developed by the company with a lot of real money. There is no reason to give it away! More importantly, if Li Xuan really gave it away easily, his kindness might even bring disaster to the Eastern Bloc!

"By the way, I have another news here! Oriental Commercial has a registered agent in Singapore, and every quarter it will place orders with us to purchase a large number of ERM-1 processors!

The reason they gave us for purchasing was to supply a number of compatible machine manufacturers in Southeast Asia and Australia. At first, we didn't pay much attention to it, but later they added ERM-2 and S-100 processors to their procurement catalog.

You must know that computer manufacturers who purchase ERM-2 processors will turn to us for technical support, after all, this will allow them to understand the performance of this new chip faster, thereby shortening the development time of compatible products!

The S-100 processor is generally used in high-end workstation computers and servers, and the manufacturers who choose it are far less than the manufacturers who make ABC compatible machines!

At first, we thought that a new competitor had emerged in the high-end computer market, so we started to collect information!

The large number of chips they got from Dongfang Commercial were not supplied to the so-called Southeast Asian compatible machine manufacturers at all. Instead, after several poundings, it was smuggled - smuggled to Chinese mainland!" Han Peng said.

Batumi prohibits the export of advanced computer products and core electronic components to China. Several processors of the Oriental Research Institute are within the scope of the prohibited list. Li Xuan, from the perspective of national feelings, is definitely disgusted with this Batumi organization. However, the Eastern Company will never dare to violate the law, otherwise the entire company is likely to be severely sanctioned by Western countries.

In 987, Toshiba exported five CNC machine tools to the Soviet Union, which greatly improved the silent ability of the Soviet Union's nuclear submarines. After the deal was revealed, even Japan's prime minister was forced to come out and apologize. Toshiba, as one of the core companies of the Mitsui Foundation, was able to escape the catastrophe despite being hit hard.

But there is no country behind the Eastern Bloc, and its main markets are in Europe and the United States. Once charged with deliberately spreading advanced technology, it may be a catastrophe for Dongfang Company!

"Turn a blind eye!" Li Xuan just spoke, but after thinking about it, he quickly changed his words, "No, let's kick this Singapore company out of the ranks of agents!" Even if we turn a blind eye, at least their disguise can't be too perfunctory!"

Since the reason they placed an order with us is to supply to compatible machine manufacturers in Southeast Asia, then we have to find a few real downstream compatible machine manufacturers to support the façade! You must know that Oriental Commercial will check its own agents every year and eliminate some agents with poor qualifications!

They are so careless that even we can easily find problems, let alone those professional intelligence agencies! If something goes wrong in the future, we can't even find an excuse to prevaricate!"

Don't let yourself fall into a dangerous situation, this is a principle that Li Xuan must abide by. As a profitable commercial company, there are some responsibilities and obligations that should not be borne by the Eastern Group!

Li Xuan suddenly thought that the current president Xu of the Hong Kong Xin-Hua branch was not very reliable. This guy later defected to the United States, and he had to be guarded against!

So Li Xuan changed his words and said to Han Peng: "You don't want to look for that President Xu at all, his rank is too low! Anyway, you will soon go to Beijing with a delegation of Hong Kong entrepreneurs." When the time comes, we will find an opportunity to directly report these problems to the relevant leaders of the central authorities and mention our difficulties!"

In fact, Li Xuan did not think that after expressing dissatisfaction on his side, the penetration of the Eastern Bloc in the country would be completely stagnant. But after Dongfang Electronics protested, at least the future infiltration will be more carefully planned and more cautious!

If the domestic personnel can really be unaware of the ghosts, they will get the relevant materials from the Eastern Bloc, and Li Xuan will be regarded as contributing to the socialist modernization drive.

For example, the supercomputer technology snooped on by the relevant departments in China, anyway, under the constraints of Batumi, it is impossible for the Eastern Bloc to sell its products in the country. Even if China benefits from the related technology of the "Pearl of the Orient" and greatly improves the performance of the domestic supercomputer, there is not much commercial loss for Li Xuan.

But this supercomputer can be used to simulate a series of cutting-edge defense industries, such as nuclear bomb explosions and missile launches. At present, the computing power of the domestically produced "Yinhe No. 1" supercomputer is less than 1 time per second, while the computing power of the "Pearl of the Orient" supercomputer is 5 billion times per second.

Li Xuan is interested in spreading supercomputer technology, and he must first find a way out. If the Eastern Bloc had already taken the strictest security precautions beforehand, the technology was still stolen.

Then it will have enough reason to stand in the position of a victim and clear its political responsibility......!