Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 741 The Water Is Deep, You Should Think Twice
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At this time, Intel CEO Andy Grove was listening carefully to Tang Huan's outlook on the next generation of personal computers and the role that Intel80486 could play in it.After all, no matter how the engineers on both sides cooperate or argue on technical issues, the final decision will still be made by the big boss.

For Intel, which puts all its treasures on the microprocessor business, there are currently two major problems-the latter has a slight upper hand in the battle between CISC and RISC, and the flagship product x86 series CPUs are always better than Motorola MC68000 series CPUs in terms of performance. Competitors in the same CPU category are weaker.Even the latest generation of microprocessors from both sides - Intel80486 and MC68040, also continued this trend of strong and weak comparison.

His own products are so unsatisfactory that the outspoken Andy Grove wants to persuade the other party to abandon Motorola's MC20.00 series CPU on the grounds that "Tang Huan owns 68000% of Intel's shares", but he is embarrassed to speak up.

In this case, Zheru's deep skills in compilers, drivers, operating systems and other underlying system software are crucial - in terms of code optimization, as long as Tang Huan lets his subordinates pay a little attention to any party, the rest You can be promoted to the top.

It has to be said that the status of software is becoming more and more important now. In addition to being able to stick to users through the application software operation habits that have been developed on the terminal, it also largely determines whether the new hardware can play the designer's hope. performance.

And Zheru has now achieved such a situation of "supporting two companies with one hand", and Intel has a tendency to rely on others invisibly.Of course, this kind of embarrassment is different from being subject to IBM at the beginning, and it is entirely due to the natural ecological checks and balances.

Fortunately, Tang Huan affirmed that the attitude of Intel80486 seemed to surpass that of MC68040, which made Andy Grove feel relieved.

"In terms of performance, MC68040 is indeed slightly better than Intel80486. However, the heat generation problem of MC68040 is quite difficult, and it may be difficult to make up for it through the process, which has brought a lot of impact on the design of the computer host." Tang Huan raised his hand and pointed outside, "You have also seen the direction of today's press conference. Multimedia and video games can squeeze out the performance contributed by hardware specifications at any time. Intel80486 and MC68040 still need the cooperation of Zheru in this regard. Processor to share the pressure."

Andy Grove naturally had no way to refute, so he had no choice but to aim at the future and said: "The Intel 80486 has integrated the cache and the floating-point unit into the chip. Learn from the design concept of RISC, such as superscalar—superscalar. This requires further communication between Intel, Zheru, and Fangyuan on patent licensing.”

At this stage, one of the main reasons why RISC processors perform faster than CISC processors, so that the industry and academia are quite pessimistic about the latter's prospects, is the former's parallel computing capabilities.

Compared with serial computing, parallel computing can be divided into time-perspective parallelism and spatial-perspective parallelism.Temporal parallelism is mainly instruction pipeline technology, while spatial parallelism uses multiple processing units to perform concurrent computing tasks, such as superscalars.

Instruction pipeline technology splits the computer instruction processing process into multiple steps, and then hand it over to multiple hardware processing units for parallel execution to speed up the instruction execution speed - very similar to the assembly line in the factory, the computer instruction is equivalent to the product on the assembly line conveyor belt, Each hardware processing unit is equivalent to a worker on the assembly line.

Intel has implemented a certain degree of instruction pipeline technology inside Intel80486-under the most ideal conditions, Intel80486 can process one instruction in one time period, and then achieve twice the performance of Intel80386 with the same clock frequency.

The superscalar architecture can be regarded as MIMD-a design scheme of multiple instructions and multiple data, which often implements the instruction pipelining technology, and the mechanism is naturally more complicated.

For microprocessors using this architecture, there will be multiple internal execution units, such as arithmetic logic units, displacement units, multipliers, etc., so that the entire CPU can be assigned multiple CPUs at the same time within one clock cycle. Instructions are executed in different execution units, finally achieving instruction-level parallelism.

As early as the 1960s, the supercomputer CDC6600 of Control Data Corporation took the lead in superscalar design, but the realization of this mechanism on the microprocessor was the first of its kind after entering the 1980s with Philosopher’s RISC microprocessor Holder.

The Holder, which has successfully realized a lot of cutting-edge technology concepts such as superscalar architecture, is outstanding in performance.Top-level models help Fangyuan supercomputer become the fastest computer in the world; mid-to-high-end models help Fangyuan network servers and Fangyuan personal workstations compete for the market share of traditional mainframes and minicomputers; lightweight models help telecommunications switches, Internet routers and other equipment with data throughput capabilities Achieving a leap forward; the most interesting application of a specific model is undoubtedly the CPU that became the third-generation Xiaobawang game console. Although it has not yet been officially released, the evaluation media is overwhelmingly full of praise.

Another successful application of this parallel technology is video processors, audio processors, and other multimedia hard-coded decoding chips.For example, the current CPU does not have the ability to softly decompress and play VCD, so it must rely on a special video accelerator card.

For such technologies, even if the chip is reverse engineered in the laboratory, it cannot be fully analyzed. Whoever is ahead will naturally occupy the advantage in patents.

At this stage, Intel is facing the siege and interception of Motorola, AMD, National Semiconductor and other companies within CISC, and there are uncertain factors in product prospects brought about by RISC outside.In terms of patents, those who can bully AMD and others have to bend down in front of Zheru.

"In order to make Intel's research and development more smooth, there is no problem in principle." Tang Huan said happily: "You are not clear about my pursuit of microprocessor performance. Haven't I been manufacturing Intel80286 and Intel80386 by myself these years? In order to get products with higher clock frequency."

Andy Grove asked curiously: "In this raging dispute between RISC and CISC, Tang not only did not express his attitude, but he seemed to have confidence in CISC?"

"In this kind of technical dispute, everyone has different opinions. No one can guarantee that his prediction is 80586% accurate. As I represent the interests of many teams, it is difficult for me to speak randomly. However, I do still have confidence in the future prospects of CISC. Great hope." Tang Huan answered frankly: "After all, in complex usage environments, the advantages of CISC cannot be replaced by RISC. The real technology development trend should be that CISC continues to absorb the advantages of RISC, just like Intel The next-generation microprocessor, Intel[-], will introduce a superscalar architecture."

Andy Grove laughed, "This should be the most exciting news I've heard in recent months."

"However, Intel seems to have little confidence in the future of its main product - CISC-based x86 series microprocessors. It is also planning to release a new RISC product - Inteli960 this year?" individual shareholders.

"At present, the fact that the performance of RISC processors exceeds CISC processors cannot be ignored. In terms of the excellence of product design, x86 family microprocessors are still not the best one in Intel's research and development project sequence. We have to make two-handed preparations. ’” explained Andy Grove.

In a way, Intel's Intel i960 was a bonus.

When Intel_iAPX_432, which tried to directly support high-level programming languages ​​in hardware, failed completely, Intel turned to RISC to find a solution.Siemens, which once tried to acquire Intel but was preempted by Tang Huan, based on its own business needs, cooperated with Intel on a project called BiiN to develop a fault-tolerant multi-processor high-performance computer system. High-end markets such as transaction processing, national grid services, military, and industrial controls such as nuclear reactor management have a share.

The general cooperation model between the two parties is that Siemens, which has strong financial resources, provides money, and Intel, which specializes in technology, provides talents-most of them come from the failed Intel_iAPX_432 project team.In addition, in order to avoid restrictions on sensitive regulations, in terms of distribution of work results, Siemens owns the software and documentation, and Intel owns the chip design, and they authorize each other.

However, this high-end field is also highly competitive. The system fault-tolerant application market includes Tandem_Computers and Stratus_Computer, and the parallel computing market has competitors such as Sequent_Computer_Systems, Pyramid_Technology, Alliant_Computer_Systems, etc. IBM and Tang Huan also participated in different forms.As a result, until now, the BiiN project has spent nearly 3 million U.S. dollars, but the effect is minimal. Intel doesn't care, but Siemens, which is responsible for paying the money, can't help but think about quitting.

The management above can only use numbers to calculate gains and losses, but the engineers below are unwilling to admit that the R&D process failed.Project leader Glenford Myers lobbied hard. The RISC microprocessor Inteli960 developed for the BiiN system was excellent enough to be introduced to the market even as a separate product - a general-purpose CPU.

Intel's management, who had originally intended to bet on CISC and RISC for insurance, agreed to this proposal smoothly.

Andy Grove finally said: "We have evaluated that Inteli960 performs well and should have a good prospect in the embedded application market. If products such as network cards and SCSI controllers use it as a CPU, it will not only meet performance requirements. If necessary, it can also greatly improve stability."

"I believe this. After all, Intel i960 is overqualified." Tang Huan nodded, "However, I would like to remind you that the reason why Intel gave up memory, the company's traditional business, was because of too much competition in the market. , but also to be able to focus more on the microprocessor business; but now you are hesitant about CISC and RISC, and you are suspected of going astray. You must think twice. When you are doing marketing, do you say that the new RISC Is the product faster than the x86 series processors that are contributing to the company's main profit? Users will definitely have doubts about how to choose."

"The x86 series processors are currently not as outstanding as standing out from the crowd, but don't forget that they have a considerable number of applications, and many of them are flagship products with a wide range of uses and a solid user base. Pure technology Being excellent or not is not the only decisive factor in winning the market. You don’t know this truth, right?”

Andy Grove pondered and probed: "What Tang means is that Intel's product development direction should be to stick to the x86 series of processors, and introduce RISC technology on the basis of CISC, and take the path of integration?"

"I do think so." Tang Huan nodded simply, "At this stage, the video accelerator card, as a separate product, will undoubtedly contribute a lot of profits, but as long as you have some long-term vision, you can judge However, this is just a transitional solution, and future microprocessors can fully include its functionality."

"So, I suggest that Intel's next-generation microprocessor Intel80586, in addition to introducing superscalar, should also enrich the instruction set to directly support multimedia operations. Zheruhui will take a friendly and open attitude on related patents."

Andy Grove touched the hearing aid on his head, thought for a long time, and finally began to see light in the muddy waters of the dispute between CISC and RISC.

After the enlightened person left happily, Tang Huan received another wave of visitors - Sony President Akio Morita and President Norio Ohga.

The recent intensive inspections of these two people in the United States have attracted the attention of the richest man, which made him speculate that Sony is also likely to wade into troubled waters in a field that is brand new to them.

(End of this chapter)