Ling Shizhe picked up the coffee on the table and took a sip, and said to Mark: "Look at Mark, personal computers, learning machines, and game consoles, I use the CPU of CISC architecture for these three machines, because these three machines belong to the category of general-purpose computers, not professional computers." For example, the ARM+1 processor developed by our company is upgraded to ARM+2, and many software that can run on the ARM+1 processor cannot run on ARM+2, and the software must be upgraded or rewritten.

According to the characteristics of RISC's incompatibility and versatility, it can only be used on computer cameras, scientific function calculators, word processing machines, photocopiers and other machines, because after these machines are bought back, they can be used directly without buying software. The same is true for the blade server we are developing, although he needs a large number of third-party software support, but you have to pay attention to one point, the blade server is very expensive, the user will not use it for thirty or fifty years to obsolete, the user will use it until it retires or scraps, and then replace it with a new server, at that time the computer is not what it used to be, and the software is not compatible anymore.

And the personal computer is different, although its function is not as powerful as the mainframe and medium-sized machine, but it is completely enough for individuals and general enterprises, after a few years to eliminate it, buy a new machine, then the software bought before if it can not be used, it is very pit for the user, you think, there is an individual user willing to change to a new computer, the previous software can not be used, you must spend money again to buy new software, that user will be willing? So he has to be versatile and compatible.

The computer learning machine and the game console, the same reason, although he does not need to be upgraded every year like a personal computer, upgrade once in five or six years, from 8-bit game console to 16-bit to 32 game console, the user used to buy a variety of game software, to the new machine can still be used, which is also a responsible performance for the user; Of course, after the emergence of new game consoles, game development businesses must follow the new game software before users will buy it, otherwise the new machine can only play the old games on the old machine, and the user does not need to buy a new game console. Got it, Mark. ”

Mark doesn't seem to understand, but there is one thing he understands, that is, these machines must have compatibility, and users will not like it if they don't have compatibility, and the personal computer is easy to understand, but he still doesn't understand why he has to take care of the compatibility problem after the game console is upgraded, if the new game console is used to play the game console games, then is it necessary to buy the new game console? If a new console comes out and the game developer wants to develop a new game for him, then what's the point of him being compatible with the previous game? After thinking about it for a long time, he still didn't come up with a clue.

Ling Shizhe looked at Mark with a puzzled look, and knew that he didn't understand, these things he said to Mark were too advanced for him, if it was a person in later generations, he didn't need Ling Shizhe to say it clearly, he only needed to talk about the beginning, and he would fully understand, because Ling Shizhe said these things have already been proven in history.

For example, in the case of personal computers, since the birth of personal computer PCs in the early 80s, the CPUs used have always been CISC structures, MIPS produced the first commercial RISC processors in history, RISC has been popular throughout the eighties and nineties, and is the mainstream of computers, even Nintendo's game consoles and Sony game consoles are RISC processors, such as Ricoh's 6502 processor, CISC can only survive on personal computers at that time.

RISC has been the mainstream of the computer market since the day it was born, in the tens of billions of chips produced every year in later generations, RISC occupies more than 70% of the market, and the remaining less than 30% of the market is divided by DSP and CISC. Motorola and other various RISC processors have been hit in the field of personal computers, and even in the end even the home game console field market has been lost, people think that INTEL is very powerful, in fact, this is all superficial, the real reason is that personal computer users finally chose CISC, the reason for choosing CISC is not because of how good CISC is, but because of its versatility and compatibility, which is what personal computer users and commercial computer users want, EVEN APPLE'S CPU ON APPLE COMPUTERS HAS ABANDONED ARM'S RISC PROCESSOR IN FAVOR OF INTEL'S X86 ARCHITECTURE.

And how can RISC be lost in the home game console market, aren't the game consoles we used to use all RISC structure, why did they turn around and run into the CISC camp? To illustrate this problem, we must first look at the history of game consoles.

Who invented the first modern home console, the "Odyssey" console from the Magnavox company? No, although the "Odyssey" is the world's first home game console, its structure is not the prototype of modern game consoles, Atari's Pong is the real family video game console, and the CPU it uses is CISC, RISC has not yet appeared at that time, and Nolan Bushnell had no choice at that time.

If it weren't for Atari playing himself in the future, the development of game consoles in the future would always use the CISC architecture, but it's a pity that he got rid of himself. After Nintendo's first home game console FC, the CPU used is the 6502 processor of Ricoh in Japan, this processor is RISC architecture, but Nintendo learned the lesson of Atari's failure, his success makes people mistakenly think that the game console must use RISC is the best choice, and then the super Nintendo game console is a 16-bit game console, and the CPU used above is an improved version of RISC 6502, and later Sony's PS, PS2, The CPUs used in PS3 are all RISC.

Seeing this, you may ask, since the game consoles use RISC, why did they all switch to the CISC camp in the end, and can't they always use RISC? In fact, the answer lies in compatibility.

In fact, the new game consoles developed by Atari later Atari 1000 and 2000 are fully compatible with the downward trend, and it is this ability that ensures that Atari's game consoles dominate the market for more than ten years.

What kind of game console is Atari's Pong game console, as I said earlier, it is a single-purpose home computer, and later Nintendo, Sony, Apple Computer, IBM PC personal computers are actually Pong structures (in fact, people's positioning of personal computers is toys, and in later generations, there is a personal computer that is not used to play games and watch movies on the Internet?). Personal computers are for people to play), since it is a home computer, you should choose CISC and should not choose RISC, but Nintendo, Sony and other companies have chosen RISC, the structure of the game console is Pong structure, and the CPU is RISC, the question is, how to solve compatibility and versatility?

In the early history of the development of electronic game consoles, in today's electronic hardware technology is not yet developed, the single-purpose computer of electronic game consoles is still just a child's toy, and there is no requirement for the versatility of game consoles, but people's requirements for game console compatibility are fully revealed.

When Nintendo was developing the Super FC game console, a reporter asked: Can the Super FC game console produced by Nintendo be compatible with FC games? Pu Yamauchi suddenly realized that if Super FC did not have backward compatibility, it would be blindly launched into the market, and at a time when there was a serious shortage of new games, it was likely to face a total failure.

What do game consoles rely on to sell well? It is a wide variety of games, with a large number of excellent games, is the fundamental guarantee of game machine sales, but between the old and new game consoles, the type and quantity of new games are definitely insufficient, and the types and quantities of old games are very sufficient, if the new generation of game consoles is not compatible with the old games on the old game consoles, if you want to promote the new game consoles, it will be very large, and its cost will be quite high, if the new generation of game consoles is not promoted, Then the enthusiasm of third-party game makers to make games for new game consoles will be hit, and without a third party to make games for the new generation of game consoles, won't the new generation of game consoles die? If you can be compatible with old games, the difficulty and cost of promotion will be much smaller, and it will be much smoother, and third-party game developers will only develop new games for you when they see that the new generation of consoles is popular enough. This is also the reason why in later generations, whether it is Sony or Microsoft, their new game consoles will promise players that our game consoles will be compatible with the old games.

Aware of this, Yamauchi is very stubborn in demanding that the new generation of FC must have backward compatibility, and this requirement cannot be changed. Super FC had to be overhauled, in order to be compatible with the new CPU, the company had to add 6502CPU logic circuits to the new CPU, and the circuit of Super FC had to be overhauled, and its circuits became heretically complex, and the cost was also piled up, so that although the compatibility problem was successfully solved, RISC is still RISC, it is better to simply make it into CISC, so that the performance of the CPU is better, and now a nondescript CPU makes Ricoh company angry, After Super FC, Ricoh also terminated its continued cooperation with Nintendo.

Sony needless to say that PS has been using RISC all the way to PS3, but on PS3 they suffered a failure and were comprehensively surpassed by Microsoft. When the PS4 was developed, it was planned to use the RISC processor, but the game console at this time was no longer a simple game console, it had completely become a cheap multimedia entertainment audio-visual computer, look at what was in it, motherboard, CPU, GPU, memory, cache, optical drive and hard disk and network card, etc., it is no different from the computer people use.

Although RISC performance is powerful, but in the face of the requirements of the game console to have so many functions, but also to ensure the versatility and compatibility of the game console, it is simply a disaster for RISC, it simply cannot complete the task that CISC can complete, and finally Sony had to give up RISC, and switch to the X86 processor produced by AMD.

As for Microsoft's game consoles, CISC has always been used.

You see, after so many repetitions, the game console has finally returned to the right route - the CISC camp, and CISC is the right path for the game console.

Officially, because Ling Shizhe has a clear understanding of the intricate development history of game consoles in his previous life, he will not make the mistakes of those game console manufacturers in his previous life in this life, he used CISC processors for game consoles and learning machines at the beginning, and he also greatly strengthened the function of the graphics card.

These two big changes,Ling Shizhe had to make a lot of modifications to the circuit structure of the FC game console in the previous life,Its circuit structure is more like the circuit structure of the PS4 game console of the later generation,And the circuit structure of the PC has also been very modified,It is not the same as the PC structure of the previous life,Just retain the slot function and removable ability of the motherboard,The rest are all leaning on the game computer,This is a bit similar to the circuit structure of Apple computer + PS4。

The advantage of this is that it will be very convenient to upgrade the game console in the future, no need to upgrade the game console, but also worry about the compatibility of the game, not to mention a comprehensive redesign of the circuit of the new game, just change the CPU, GPU, motherboard, memory, etc. to a better performance, just like the upgrading of later generations of computers, even if it is upgraded to 16-bit and 32-bit, so that the cost will be very saving, saved to the extreme, its performance is more powerful than all 8-bit game consoles in history, There are 36K in memory alone, and how much FC is in history? With only a pitiful 2K, coupled with a powerful graphics card processing scheme, Ling Shizhe is confident that the game effect can reach the effect of a quasi-16-bit game console.

It's a pity that these things can't be explained to Mark in detail, and he can't understand them, as long as he does them, he will slowly understand them in the future.