These young people originally wanted to get results quickly, but when Alex came up with the concept of a personal computer PC, they were immediately attracted to the idea.

What's more, Alex gives a very detailed design, and at first glance it is a highly feasible design solution. According to his description, in the near future, everyone will have a PC, at least one in every household.

Moreover, these PCs can also be connected through telephone lines and optical fiber networks to enter a virtual world called the "Internet", where they can interact with information, chat with voice, watch videos, find information, and so on.

If another person told them this, they might still be suspicious for a while, but Alex, who said this, gave them $100 million to study and use. Could anyone fool them with so much money? The eight young men didn't believe that such a thing could happen.

These eight young people were separated by Alex, and one person was responsible for the department to study one direction, and they did not belong to each other, but they had to cooperate with each other in research and development. Some are responsible for the CPU, some are responsible for the system software, and some are responsible for the research and development of the motherboard or other software and hardware.

For those of them who are ambitious, ARK's stage is big enough for all of them to work and dance together.

Naturally, Alex still has to firmly grasp the company in his hands, such as the financial department, the personnel department, etc., and these large pieces are not easily handed over to these young people to manage.

On the one hand, it is to prevent their ambitions from swelling with the increase in power. On the one hand, because these young people are inexperienced in this area after all, Alex does not want to pay for their mistakes.

ARK's headquarters was built on the vacant land next to Shockley's laboratory, and this piece of land was bought for a small amount of money, on the one hand, because it was bought early, and on the other hand, the local government saw the low price given by Shockley's reputation, after all, it is not always possible to attract a Nobel Prize winner.

The money for the land was taken out by Alex extra, and naturally the most reluctant still belonged to him, and after getting the land, he did not rush to develop it, but only built a building for Shockley as a laboratory. Wait until the AKR is formed. Alex put the land to good use. Continued to build higher and larger floors.

This building is not a regular building, not a boxy, box-like building. It is a group of buildings with a curved shape, and when viewed from the sky, it looks like a crescent moon. Lie flat on the ground.

The curved surface is the façade of the building. It's like a giant with outstretched arms. Guests are welcome from far and wide. In front of it there is a beautiful garden with an artificial lake in the woods. The road leading to the lake is made of white pebbles and is lined with flowers. Further on, there is a flat meadow.

Many ARK employees love this garden, and when they are not working, they come here to lie down on the grass and rest.

The AKR building and gardens were both designed by Alex, and when he insisted on building the Ark headquarters into this way, people didn't understand it very well. It was a pure waste of money, and there was no need to build any gardens, lakes, meadows, etc., let alone the strangely shaped building.

But after working here for a while, they finally got a taste of what it means to combine work and leisure. Many ARK employees are so satisfied with their working environment that they don't even want to go home immediately after work, and spend a lot of time walking in the garden.

There was a similar example of a lake next to Seattle University, and the faculty and students loved the scenery. Although professors at Seattle University earn 20 percent more than other universities, they are willing to pay the price for a beautiful working environment.

When Seattle planned to build a building next to the lake to destroy this beautiful environment, not only the university professors objected, but also the students protested. In the end, this matter was settled, and it can be seen how much influence and cohesion a good environment has on people's hearts.

Noyce and the others didn't understand it at first, but they soon admired Alex's design, and some people speculated that the reason why the building was designed like this was that it looked like a ship lying on its side on the ground, whether it was a metaphor for the name of ARK (ark).

In fact, not exactly. Those people are just the right part, in Alex's design, the building is not yet fully built, and the complex needs to be slowly expanded over the next ten years. The final shape should be like the Chinese Hakka tulou, which is surrounded by curved buildings to form a whole.

In it, gardens, lakes and other things will eventually form an ecological environment, which fully reflects the harmony between man and nature.

However, it is not necessary now, ARK has not yet reached the stage of large-scale expansion, and even if so many buildings are built, it is empty and wasteful. It will take a few more years, or even more than a decade, for the construction to be fully completed.

When the time comes, people will be amazed by the whimsical ingenuity of Alex's designs and the long-term vision of their vision.

Seymour? The arrival of Clay and Alex soon alarmed Noyce, Moore and others, who admired Seymour very much, after all, Seymour was now the first supercomputer designer in the world.

Even though IBM's Dragon Slayer series of computers has surpassed the "Clay I", the framework of that series of computers is actually borrowed from the "Clay I", and in this respect, Seymour is still stronger than everyone else.

"Mr. Clay! Hello, I really didn't expect you to come! ”

Noyce, who has a big nose, is still the leader of the eight youths, he is the oldest of the eight, and his thoughts and deeds are also the most mature. When they first defected to Shockley, they were all under the age of 30, in their prime, and they were successful in their studies. are at the pinnacle of their creative abilities.

Now that these eight people have been forced by Alex for a few years, they have long been ready to move, they know how much impact what they are doing will have on the world, as long as Alex relaxes, they will soon be able to completely change people's lives.

Seeing the arrival of Seymour and Alex, they immediately thought of one thing: "Is the time ripe, their success is coming!" ”

"I didn't expect to come here, Alex asked for it!"

Seymour looked at the eight excited faces in front of him, although their expressions were different, but from their eyes. You can feel their passion like a flame.

Listened to Seymour's words. Their eyes were immediately focused on Alex, and it seemed that they were just waiting for him to give an order, and immediately took up their weapons and charged into battle.

It's been nearly 4 years, and they still haven't been able to make a name for themselves in the semiconductor field. If you count in the Shockley Laboratory. It's almost 6 years. There aren't many 6 years in your life.

among them. There are people who have obtained double doctorates, engineers from large companies, researchers and professors from prestigious universities. It was also a large collection of talents that had never been seen in the western United States at that time.

Noyce was the eldest of the eight, and the most determined to 'defect' to Shockley. The first thing he did when he flew to San Francisco was to buy himself a place to live and decide to settle permanently, without any regard for the working environment, conditions and treatment. The other seven young people came to Silicon Valley with a similar experience to Noyes.

However, he was also the most determined person to "defect", and seeing that Shockley was incompetent in command and poor management, he had to lead the other seven to find another way out. Originally, they found a New York photographic equipment company to invest in them and set up the "Fairchild" company.

Now Alex has taken the lead and recruited them all to form ARK. If it weren't for his own ability and skill, he could suppress these ambitious young heroes, otherwise they would have found another way out long ago.

However, looking at their appearance, Alex knew that the patience of these young people had been almost worn out. Although it is a little early at this time, the PC developed by ARK is relatively mature and can be taken out and given a try.

Thinking of this, Alex smiled and said to them, "You can first show Seymour the success of your research in the past few years, and let him see it!" ”

"Good! Good! What a shame! ”

They immediately led the way in front of them, as if they were soldiers about to go to battle. At first, they didn't associate the incident with the IBM attack, but after this time, they had a vague idea in their minds, and they became more and more excited.

Among them, Eugene was among the others, and asked in a low voice, "Do you say ......?"

"Shhhh Don't speculate, if you get it wrong, it's a big deal! Moore quickly interrupted Eugene's words, and glanced at Seymour and the others carefully, and then explained: "I guess IBM is pushing us too hard, so they want to push us out!" ”

"That's fine, if we continue to develop it, I'm afraid we'll all become old men!"

"Be quiet, don't say any more!"

They came to a large, bright room, a room with bright white walls. There are a lot of busy workers here, sitting in their chairs, staring intently at the screen in front of them, crackling and typing on the keyboard.

"The No. 1 test passed, and the CPU speed reached the predetermined ideal value......"

"There are a number of bugs found on machine 2, which need to be dealt with as soon as possible!"

"Unit X! Unit X, did you receive a message from me? ”

"XX software test passed, all the basic functions are running normally, only a few small bugs have been found......"

The employees in the room, while staring at the screen, communicate with the partners around them, and carry out intense and orderly work. At first, Seymour thought it was funny, but soon discovered a strange problem: they each seemed to have their own computer.

Yes, the computer was sitting under their desk, like a black box with a light flashing on it.

Thinking of the concept of the personal computer PC that Alex introduced to him on the road, and then the scene he saw in front of him, he couldn't help but get excited: "Ai, Alex! Is this the PC you told me? Could it be that ARK has already made it? ”

Alex looked at each other and smiled at the other eight youths, and it was a smile of success: "Yes, we have built a PC!" You're looking at PCs, and now ARK staff are testing features, fixing bugs, and improving performance. The PC here is versatile, and in addition to being able to connect to the Internet, it can also share some of the computer's work. ”

The Internet that Alex is talking about is actually just a local area network in later generations, but if there is enough money, they will be able to build the Internet immediately.

In the past few years, under the guidance of Alex, ARK has not taken the path of history, but has gone straight to his personal PC with a very clear purpose. Among them, the patented inventions they came up with, any one of them, can make ARK famous.

However, for the sake of secrecy and in order not to attract the attention of companies like IBM, Alex asked Noyce and others to wait for the product to be fully mature before announcing it to the outside world. If you follow Alex's standards, he wants the PC performance to reach the end of the 70s, and the PC performance of the early 80s was only announced.

However, now the matter is urgent, and we can only launch the PC products that are basically mature at hand. It is believed that it will immediately attract the attention of the world and bring back those users who are hesitant.

"The design of our PC is completely based on the needs of individuals and families, such as graphical operation interface, word processing software, music and audio processing, image processing, etc., which can be realized at a small cost. In other words, you can do what you would need to buy a supercomputer to do now by buying a PC. ”

As he walked, Neus introduced Seymour to the PC features, sometimes stopping to show him some of the features of the ARK staff. Seeing such a user-friendly and versatile PC, Seymour had already set off a storm in his heart.

"Yes, as long as the person or family who buys a PC doesn't need to do some complicated things like weather forecasting." Moore also said a word next to him, and introduced with great interest.

"That kind of supercomputer is for large enterprises, but they also sometimes need to use printing functions, word processing, etc., and if they still use supercomputers to do it, it will be quite a waste of computer resources. They only need to buy a PC made by ARK, and they can do most of the work of the computer. Noyce continued.

"Not only that, but our PCs have unmatched compatibility!" Alex once again emphasized the "compatibility" feature, believing that if he wanted to beat IBM, he had to rely on the compatibility of the PC. (To be continued......)