Blooming America

Chapter 198 Intel Corporation

Fairchild, a pioneer in semiconductors.

Robert Noyce, used to work at Fairchild.

The company started with orders from IBM, and then with the take-off of semiconductors and integrated circuits, the profitability of the entire company is getting higher and higher.

Almost everyone is smug.

However, the general manager of the parent company continues to transfer profits to the East Coast to support Fairchild Photographic Equipment's profitability, but the company's employees have some opinions.

Herney, Roberts and Claire couldn't bear it at first, and they even planned to change jobs.

At this time, the olive branch from Intel stretched out.

The three quickly got in touch with Intel.

At this time, this rising star in the semiconductor industry has become a sacred place in the eyes of Silicon Valley people.

Finally, under the lobbying of the three, the eight of them finally joined Intel together.

After accepting Sanders' reception, their work began.

Sanders said that the company will have an important task assigned to them, so what they have to do now is to familiarize themselves with the company's environment.

Very important task?

All eight people are eager to try, and Roberts is no exception.

However, after coming to the company, Roberts discovered that Intel’s working atmosphere is really very different from other companies.

When I entered Intel, a sentence was written on the wall: "Here, everyone is the chairman of the party."

Once I entered the company, I felt that the atmosphere was different.

In front of everyone's desk, there is a Microsoft computer. Not only that, some people still have X game consoles in front of them, but no one is playing games.

They look very serious and they are all working hard, and a staff member next to them is putting the bedding on the floor back into a utility room next to them.

"Hey I got the 16-bit x operating system"

A person suddenly rushed over from the next door, and then yelled.

He ran into Roberts because he rushed too quickly.

"Oh, sorry."

He smiled embarrassedly.

"What? Ken, are you sure... Wait, aren't you still working on the Gates system?" someone spoke up.

Ken shrugged: "Yes, but I already got it done. Then I heard that the 16-bit CPU was successfully developed a few days ago, so I simply made an operating system."

"The graphics card has not been successfully developed yet, Ken." Someone kindly reminded.

Ken shrugged.

The Pentium computer will use a graphics card that supports up to 4096 colors and has a 2D renderer. The general resolution supports 640×480×16 colors.

The basic requirement for mbus (light wheel) Catherine is that it can support a maximum of 256 colors on the same screen when using dual renderers, and the display effect can reach 640×480.

256 colors are almost sufficient for general games. On the other hand, Catherine desperately wants to make a graphical interface, so 256 colors are necessary.

Of course, Catherine never considered 16-bit color and 32-bit color.

The so-called 256 colors means that the same screen can display 256 colors, which is 2 to the 8th power, which is also called 8-bit color.

With 16-bit color, 65,535 colors can be displayed on the same screen. Later mobile phones are mostly 16-bit colors.

The 24-bit color is also called true color, which can display 16.77 million colors. Many liquid crystal displays use this as a gimmick, because it is difficult for liquid crystals to restore the true colors of objects.

In the 21st century, computers generally use 32-bit true color, which is 16.77 million colors and 256 levels of gray value. ——32-bit color is not the color number of 2 to the 32th power. It is actually 16.77 million colors, but it adds 256-level grayscale. For the convenience of calling, it is specified as 32-bit color.

The strongest is 36-bit color, which can display 16.77 million colors and 512 levels of gray value.

Of course, the problem is not the monitor, but the graphics card.

Approaching, let alone 16.77 million colors, CRT in theory can display unlimited colors, as long as the system supports it.

And now, the problem is on the system.

The graphics card is a big problem.

If this problem is not solved, it is really troublesome for the system.

Ken did write the x system that can support 16-bit CPUs, but when the graphics card has not been fixed, he can't write the driver at all, so it can only do so.

"Okay, okay, that's it."

Ken was about to go back, but Roberts stopped him.

"Excuse me, why does every staff member have an X on the table?"

"Oh, that was used by our employees in their leisure time. It's just that here is the hardware research team, and they are working on graphics card equipment... Our software team is more like playing games."

"Playing games at work? No problem, right?"

Roberts also likes to play X, but he does not think that such a computer can be placed in an office.

"As long as we finish the required work, the remaining time-until the end of get off work, is at our own disposal. If we have a new product of our own, we can also research and release it by ourselves, which is pretty good, right?" Ken seems to be Showing off.

"We can publicly use the company's things for private work. As long as we share 50% of the copyright, the company can even help us promote our products. That's great, right? That's why I came to Intel."

Roberts was stunned, can this company do this?

However, he is more and more looking forward to working days at Intel.

"Here are a bunch of impersonal guys. They only know how to be sarcastic... Hey, wait, who are you and why are you here?"

Ken finally found out that something was wrong, it seems that there are people waiting to enter the house, right?

"Uh...I'm new here."

Roberts revealed his employee certificate.

"Oh, oh. So you work here."

Ken patted Roberts on the shoulder.

"The people here are really boring. If you want, you can go to the software department. It's much more interesting there."

"Thank you."

Roberts ended the conversation with Ken and then entered the hardware development department.

The workshop designed by Catherine is divided into two departments, software and hardware, and then several research groups are subdivided in it, and the two factories are not in the same place.

However, people in the software department will always go to the hardware department to raise questions.

Hardware is the biggest obstacle that restricts the development of current software. Therefore, whenever a problem is encountered, it always appears in the hardware department first. Although there seems to be some contradiction between the two sides, Roberts finds it interesting.

Roberts is now more and more looking forward to the new task that Catherine is going to give him.

...

At the same time, Catherine was thinking about a graphics operating system.

-For the new generation of computers, Catherine is going to adopt a graphical operating system instead of a command line mode. Of course, the command line mode will remain.

However, it seems very difficult to achieve a beautiful 16-color graphic operation screen.

The route taken by Catherine is fashion, cutting-edge and popular. Catherine was not satisfied with developing a monotonous interface.

But...is 16-bit color really easy to use?

Catherine thought she didn't have that strength.

Unless you can get Japanese art from the 1980s, that's pretty much the same.

The Japanese artists in the 1980s and the American programmers in the 1950s are also legendary.

In Catherine’s last life, there were a number of exquisite Japanese games in the 1980s, but most of these games were in 16 colors-16 colors, not 16 bits, that is, on the screen, only 16 colors can be displayed at the same time .

However, Japanese art artists were surprised to be able to create a large number of exquisite games relying on 16 colors.

The most typical is "The Great Voyage 2" and "The Legend of Taige Lizhi". If you want to talk about H-GMAE, "Lost City" is also 16 colors.

Especially the "Era of Great Voyage 2", this game because of the excellent art work, until the 21st century, some people still think that it should be 256 colors.

And the rare 256-color game produced at that time, the pictures are so gorgeous, the most typical is "The Beauty* DreamWorks".

The ferocious art artists in the 1980s are mostly children now, and Catherine doesn't know what the Japanese art skills of this era are. After all, it's almost 20 years ahead of time... 20 years before Einstein created The Theory of Relativity, he was just a small employee.

Art is very important. Since we want to create a graphical interface, art is a must.

Of course, unlike mbus (light wheel), if you want to display 640 × 480 × 256 colors, about 512KB of memory is needed. In order to save costs, Catherine can only use 16 colors in reality.

"Ah...It's really troublesome..."

Catherine was very entangled.

Interface design is really a headache sometimes.

"Maybe Ania will have an idea?"

Elsa, who was packing up the files, said suddenly.

"Annia..."

Annya is very sharp in the use of colors. The paintings on Catherine ~www.wuxiaspot.com~ can be the same as the real ones. The painters seem to be very sensitive to colors.

Maybe... she can do it?

"It's just a dead horse as a living horse doctor, right"

Catherine could only be so sure in the end.

Then, she called to DreamWorks.

After the main station transferred the call to Annia, the other party seemed very excited.

"Hey Kate, I didn't expect you to call, how are you doing?"

"Very good, how about you?"

"The Story of Chunli is ending. Kate, I can't believe it, this novel is so welcome, oh, I have to go to the signing event in a few days, it feels really great"

The other party was obviously enjoying it.

"Annia, maybe you can come over and do me a favor..."