Republic 257 (196 AD) - January 18, Hangyeong.

In the southern suburbs of Hanjing City, close to Xiangyang, there is a garrison area covering an area of thousands of acres, and there is a B battalion as a guard, and the security is very tight, and this is the location of the 36th branch of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. The 36th Institute of Engineering is mainly engaged in the research of computers, artificial intelligence and robots, and is divided into eight research institutes, including one (computer subject), two institutes (computer peripherals), three institutes of industrial intelligence, four institutes of robots, and five institutes (software).

Today, the 36th Branch welcomed the inspection of Wen Desi, President of China and Chairman of the Chinese Science and Technology Socialist Party. This is because they have made new breakthroughs in the development of computers.

At this time, in the conference room of the Central Real Building, Wen Desi was holding a transparent card the size of a playing card and looking left and right. The cards have extremely complex lines and dots that look like a maze diagram

He looked at it for a moment and asked, "This is our first generation of integrated circuit processors?"

Branch Dean Feng Yuanzheng hurriedly replied, "Yes, Mr. Wen." This is our first practical integrated circuit CPU. After four years of struggle, the Computer Research Institute of our branch has finally successfully integrated the first B-bit integrated circuit central processing unit that can be put into practical use. The chip integrates about 406 transistors, uses a 66IT address line, can address to the memory, and uses a dynamic random access memory (BAN) chip made of the same integrated circuit, and the operating frequency is 0h. ”

As he spoke, he took out a document and handed it to Wen Desi.

Wen Desi carefully browsed the actual yàn record number on the data, and finally clapped the decision: "Well, very good, then this central processing unit will start to be finalized and produced." ”

According to the evaluation of those real records, the overall computing power is about the same as that of TV1's 66B octet processor in the original space-time, but the memory addressing capacity reaches the level of 660.

However, it is only similar in computing performance, and the difference in volume is large. Compared with the 86 produced by the original space-time TE1, which is only the size of a thumb, the processor taken out by the 36th branch is the size of the entire playing card, with an area of more than 10 times that of 86, and the power consumption and heat are much higher. Wen Desi also knows that this is caused by the limitations of process technology, the level of technology must rely on the accumulation of time, even if there is a complete information of the technology of the later generations, it also needs a digestion process, and it is impossible to reach the level of the later generations for a while, and it is impatient. Although it is possible to make more advanced products by relying on those 2nd century equipment in the base, it is too uneconomical, these equipment is not replenished, and if it is broken, it will be gone. If it is a wasteful act to use them to make products directly, it is the most reasonable way to use them to make production equipment such as machine tools.

So Mr. Wen didn't ask too much. In any case, this is finally a practical B-bit processor, which finally allows him to see the dawn of the PC. This processor is named the 2576L type, which is the 257th type of B-bit processor in the Republic calendar, referred to as the 576L type. Although the PC made of this thing must be big and expensive, what he has now is money.

"Yes, Mr. Wen. We are going to use this processor on the new generation of Hetu 5 computers......," said Dean Feng happily.

The models of China's current computers are all "Hetu", and Hetu Type 1 to Type 4 are all transistor computers. Now that the integrated circuit central processing unit has come out, starting from the fifth type, the computer product has officially entered the era of integrated circuits, which is the third generation of computers.

This is more than 6 years ahead of the original plane. In fact, compared with other subjects, such as materials, energy, etc., the improvement rate of electronic technology is much faster, basically as long as there is a technological breakthrough, the performance will be improved by leaps and bounds. Of course, this speed is also the beginning stage, and the speed is not so fast in the later stage

Wen Deji smiled and nodded: "It's just that the computer itself can't do it, and the auxiliary support equipment such as terminals, inputs, and outputs must also keep up." These new computers will be deployed to various research institutes and the Central Computing Bureau for popularization, and the development of military models will also be accelerated.

Gu Xiaoyuan, the military secretary next to him, said: "Yes, Mr. Wen." Except for the Sunwu-class battleships and Xia Dynasty-class aircraft carriers under construction, which use the Hetu Type 4, the others are still the Hetu Type 3. Moreover, ships below the frigate have not yet installed computers because of lack of space. ”

"The most important thing for a military model is stability, durability, shock and moisture resistance, and you have to find a way to solve these problems," Wen said. Computers are very important in the military field, and you should step up your efforts in this area. ”

"Yes, Mr. Wen, we will strengthen research in this area and strive to make the army use new ......computers as soon as possible," Dean Feng hurriedly agreed.

Next, Dean Feng introduced their current tasks. In addition to this processor that can be officially taken out for application, the computer research institute is already working on a better processor. There are two research directions, one is to cram more transistors to create a more powerful and smaller octbit processor; The second is the next generation of 16-bit processors. According to Dean Feng, this time there shouldn't be too much waiting.

Wende Hei Longyan Dayue, he immediately waved his pen and gave bonuses to relevant R&D personnel, ranging from 3,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan (their average monthly salary is 30 yuan), spending a total of more than 20 million yuan. They are then encouraged to continue working on the next generation of products. At the same time, they were told that after the mass production of this generation of computers, the research institute will take shares in technology and patents and enjoy commissions, and all researchers will be able to get the corresponding shares.

Here is a brief introduction to the history of computer development in China.

From the very beginning, he gave up on tube computers because he felt that this kind of thing was really not powerful. Therefore, in half-plane China, it starts directly with transistor computers, and tube computers are only used as technical reserves, and of course, when the opportunity arises later, these things can also be thrown out and bought at a high price.

The first transistor computer made by the Computer Research Institute in 196 used the first generation of transistors, about the size of a desk, with about 26 transistors, and could perform 60,000 calculations per second. This is a kind of computer that performs 4-bit arithmetic and is equipped with a corresponding card reader, which is roughly equivalent to a large version of TV1464 in the original space-time. It was named Hetu Type 1. However, the number of its manufactures is small, only a few for each research institute, and ten for the computer institute itself. In addition, there are more than a dozen military models, mainly used as ballistic computers, equipped with heavy artillery brigades and fortress artillery units. This is mainly for practice, and its price is not ideal.

After the second generation of transistors came out in 1910, it was different. At this time, what came out was an eight-bit computing system composed of 86 transistors, with a 3K capacity of magnetic core memory, the volume is about the size of two desks stacked up and down, and it is equipped with a complete human-machine interface, mouse, keyboard, display, small speaker, card reader, and even a 7-inch2 super large floppy disk player. However, at this time, it was not practical to realize many of the functions of later computers. This is the Hetu 2 type, with a computing speed of 120,000 times per second, which is also the first type of computer to be put on a ship.

More importantly, this generation of computers fixed the hardware specifications, distinguished the entity and logic layers, and planned the three layers of the operating system core, driver program and application program in the system layer, and established the Computer Software Research Institute (3605 Institute) to start planning and writing the operating system. At the same time, the specifications for the combination of language to binary code and the preparation of related group translators, as well as the planning and formulation of some basic file formats and text codes. For example, the character encoding,CI1 is absolutely not used,Directly use the UE Wanguo code composed of 6 digits,The province will be transcoded everywhere later。 The testing of the latter two is after the initial operating system has been completed. The institute represents the eight symbols of the eight-bit computer in eight trigrams, and at the same time stipulates that the future registers, address lines and busbars need to be doubled up by eight to achieve the purpose of backward compatibility.

At the end of 192, all the relevant supporting software and hardware were completed, the operating system was launched for the first time, and the combined language group translator was completed after several tests and modifications. It took several months for the Computer Software Research Institute to develop a Windows operating system (known as the "Vena 0L" operating system) and hundreds of application programs, such as text editors for composing combined languages, ballistic calculators, scientific calculators, and various command and management software. What's more, they have also developed several simple mini-games, such as eating beanie, arkanoid, bees, etc., and of course, we must not forget the very classic "Tetris", of course, this game on this plane has been renamed "Helo Cube".

Then they began to build factories to produce these computers, in addition to all the research institutes and computing centers, as well as government departments such as central banks, as well as the military. Of course, these computers are kept secret. It's not that Wen Desi doesn't know the business opportunities of this thing, but the impact of releasing it now is too great, so he will only announce it internally. And as soon as this thing appeared, it was widely welcomed by various units, and its high-speed computing power was just that, and everyone preferred the small games attached above

The subsequent Hetu III was finalized and put into production in 1913. This computer uses third-generation transistors, which are smaller and more integrated. It is about the same size as the Hetu Type 2, but the number of transistors has increased to 260, and the speed of operations has reached 240,000 operations per second.

At the end of 1914 the following year, the more powerful Hetu IV was introduced, which was also the last transistor computer in China, integrating 20,000 transistors and achieving a speed of 400,000 operations per second.