Rebirth of the Tech Madman
Chapter 607: 2D Acceleration and
phone-reading
...
Against the background of the rapid development of the IT industry dominated by microcomputers, the developer conference held in spring and autumn every year is not a public relations activity that is superfluous and gang-forming. It is so rich that it has become the most influential in the industry at this stage. technology event.
Its content covers a wide range, ranging from a specific technical realization to an industry standard, and the final results can even affect various standardization organizations in the United States and even the international level. It can be said that its power is increasing day by day.
Compared with the turmoil caused by the debate and game of standard competition at the macro level, most technical elites are more obsessed with the sense of accomplishment brought about by the functional application of technology at the micro level.
This autumn developer conference, centering on the 32 architecture of the fourth-generation Fangyuan personal computer under development, further introduced various technical achievements to the participants.
Although IBM is aware of the importance of openness to personal computers, the actual operation is only reflected in the expansion slot of the IBM-PC motherboard, and the unintentionally caused uncontrolled tide of IBM-PC compatibles, and the mind has not reached the level like Tang. In this way, people in the industry gather together to introduce and promote third-party development before the product is launched.
In fact, in high-end fields such as Fangyuan workstations and Fangyuan servers, out of technical confidentiality considerations, Tang Huan also conducts R\u0026D in a closed-door manner similar to IBM, but when it comes to Fangyuan personal computers, his attitude appears to be very open. And radical, thus attracting a large number of third-party developers to join in.
There are many big companies among these participants. The new technologies adopted by Gein Fangyuan personal computer are often extended from the advanced technologies of Fangyuan workstations and Fangyuan servers, which can be said to contain a lot of valuable opportunities.
For example, the theme of today's conference—the display subsystem of the fourth-generation Fangyuan personal computer—is destined to disrupt the industry again. Tang Huan's appearance also shows this point.
The entire Fangyuan computer product line has a set of unified display standards called Video Graphics Standard—Video Graphics Standard, or VGS. Among them, the Fangyuan Graphics Workstation has the highest specification, while the third generation Fangyuan personal computer uses VGS version 2.0, and supports the highest resolution of 640×480. The number of colors is 16 kinds.
The display subsystem specification of the fourth-generation Fangyuan personal computer was upgraded to VGS version 2.5, 640×480 became the standard resolution, and the number of supported display colors reached 256 through the color index table.
The most basic beneficiaries of this hardware enhancement are applications like word processing.
On the 640×480 standard resolution screen of VGS2.5, the text mode supports displaying 80×25 or 40×25 letters and numbers; the block area of each character can choose 16 kinds of foreground colors and 8 kinds of background colors; The character itself can also be set to blink or not.
Feature support like this. When displaying the text content, there are richer means.
Tang Huan personally dressed in battle. After introducing the features of VGS2.5, I demonstrated it on the slideshow software PowerPresenter, and the audience can see the operation results directly on the big screen.
The personal computer used in the demonstration is a third-generation Fangyuan personal computer, but the matching graphics card is a new product that fully supports VGS2.5. This smooth transition can only be provided by the Fangyuan computer system, which can break down the entire complex R\u0026D plan into Easier-to-operate modules can make it easier for third-party developers to build a development and testing platform in a timely manner.
The number of indexes in VGS2.5 reaches 256 color tables, which is not fixed. This is also a strong point compared with other types of personal computers such as IBM-PC, which can display only a few fixed colors such as red, green, blue, black, white, and yellow.
The former group of 256 colors can be designated as any color.
The reason is that VGS2.5 uses 6 binary bits to represent each channel of red, green, and blue, that is, each has 2 to the 6th power equal to 64 combinations, and the three primary colors are further combined to form 64×64×64=262144 colors . The 256 colors in the color table can be selected among the 262,144 colors.
In order to illustrate the power of this color palette, Tang Huan used the bitmap program that comes with the operating system to demonstrate, and pointed out some programming skills that are very useful for the effect of the game screen.
After the introduction at this stage, everyone in the audience asked their own questions in the most popular interactive session.
It was impossible for Tang Huan to answer them one by one. Seeing that there are a lot of people who care about the graphical user interface operating system, he expressed his opinion.
The graphical user interface is the general trend of the development of personal computer operating systems, which is already a consensus in the industry. But I don't know if you have thought about it. What elements must a graphical user interface operating system with practical functions and costs have? In my opinion, Cooperative multitasking, memory protection and other features are indispensable. Judging from the current development level of the IT industry, it is obvious that everyone is not ready yet. Those pioneers that have appeared are good examples .”
Although Tang Huan didn't name them, everyone in the audience naturally thought of Apple's Lisa and Mac. The former supports advanced features such as multitasking, but its operating efficiency is low, and it cannot attract users to spend $10,000 to buy it; the latter does not support multitasking, and even hard disks do not support it, so the price has dropped to a quarter, but the operating efficiency Equally passable.
Tang, it is said that Zheru's R\u0026D center already has a prototype of a GUI operating system. I wonder when it will be displayed to the public? Or do you think when will a practical GUI operating system be launched on a large scale? The participants asked enthusiastically.
We are indeed developing a graphical user interface operating system. After Tang Huan answered the first question lightly, he quickly turned to the second question, As for when the practical graphical user interface operating system will become popular, I think it depends on It depends on when the microprocessor vendor can provide a powerful enough CPU.
Speaking of this, Tang Huan raised his finger to the Logo on the big screen, The fourth generation of Fangyuan PCs opened the era of 32-bit personal computers, which is only the first step. The next step is to popularize and practical GUI operating systems, because the 32-bit architecture Provides more computing performance.
Tang Huan then smiled slightly. I understand everyone's expectations for the GUI operating system. In fact, this does not affect our development of GUI applications, such as the Shell program of FeeDOS, and office software such as spreadsheet CGrid, word processing WordEasy, and slideshow PowerPresenter. Both provide a mouse-driven graphical user interface.
The difficulty of development is too high. For some software projects, the gains outweigh the losses. The programmers in the audience began to complain. For example, when we make a game, we naturally have to focus on the game itself. We can't focus on the graphical user interface.
The fourth generation of Fangyuan personal computers will provide everyone with a framework for developing graphical user interface programs more easily. Tang Huan tapped the keyboard a few times, and the slide content changed accordingly, Including a more powerful BIOS, and an operating system level However, this topic will be introduced by others, and what I will say next is related to the development of video games on the Fangyuan personal computer platform.
VGS2.5 defines how to convert the digital video signal inside the host and the analog video signal of the display. For programs like video games, it is just a better visual display platform. But it happens inside the host The processing of digital video data still relies heavily on the CPU for calculation.
If an acceleration mechanism can be provided to reduce the burden on the CPU so that it has more resources to process game AI, then I believe the game experience will be improved to a higher level.
This acceleration mechanism is implemented on the Fangyuan Graphics Workstation through the 2D accelerated graphics card on the hardware side and the OpenGraphicsLibrary on the software side—the Open Graphics Library, namely OpenGL.
2D accelerated graphics cards can directly realize drawing squares, straight lines, circles and other graphics by hardware. And functions such as area filling and block image transmission; OpenGL defines a cross-programming language, cross-platform application program interface specification for generating two-dimensional Image. It’s similar to floating-point arithmetic, although it can be implemented completely in software, hardware acceleration can exert its full power.”
With the maturity of this acceleration mechanism, we are now preparing to introduce it to the Fangyuan personal computer platform. It will bring innovative convenience to video game development.
Tang Huan talked eloquently on the stage, and everyone in the audience listened attentively. Occasionally, a thought flashed through his mind, The four generations of Fangyuan personal computers are aided by these high-end technologies. It seems that an era is really about to start. .”
Tang Huan will not be like IBM, in order to distinguish between high, medium and low-end products, and let the research and development of personal computer products be tied up. No matter who is missing, the earth will continue to rotate. You're stuck on your laurels. Others will naturally look at the opportunity to surpass it, so it's better to hold the initiative in your own hands.
What's more, in the era of microcomputers, there are also many methods for dividing products into high-end and low-end products, and operations can be performed on indicators such as operating frequency, cache size, and parallel line width.
Therefore, Tang Huan never worried that such an approach would shoot himself in the foot, and his family would rob each other of their jobs.
When the subject of VGS2.5 and 2D acceleration was almost introduced, Tang Huan picked up the remote control and pressed it. The projector he occupied gave up the big screen, and the staff began to prepare to play a promotional video.
I have to mention that Tang Huan has basically completed the complete solution for the modern office automation system.
In terms of hardware, there are laser printers, dot matrix printers, inkjet printers, scanners, modems, digital fax machines, projectors, etc., and in terms of software, electronic forms, word processing, slides, databases, etc. are all available. Naturally, the financial resources are also rolling in.
Seeing Tang Huan use a mouse and a remote control on the stage to complete a lot of routine operations, it was indescribably chic. The idea of purchasing a set of such office automation equipment. When the time comes to hold a meeting, he must be very handsome.
Soon, as the background music sounded, everyone's messy thoughts were swept away by the majestic and atmospheric melody. The distant sound of the trumpet at the beginning of the chapter seemed to present a historical picture of swallowing mountains and rivers before their eyes.
Under the instruction of Tang Huan, this song Dawn of Heroes was composed by Hu Weili, performed by Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, and chorus of Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. It was then authorized to EA as a heavyweight historical simulation of the Three Kingdoms The background music of the theme strategy game Three Kingdoms.
Compared with the magnificent Dawn of Heroes, although the promotional video of Three Kingdoms is excellent, Tang Huan is not satisfied. He knows that this is due to his own information asymmetry advantage and his vision is too high. Therefore, he did not make things difficult for his subordinates.
The hot screening of Phantom of the Tomb: Wrath of the Dragon Emperor made many people recognize at a glance that the scene of the flames of war in the promotional film is ancient China, and the accompanying introduction made them understand that this is the magnificent Three Kingdoms in Chinese history era.
Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Sun Quan, all heroes rise together; one Lv, two Zhao, three Dianwei, four passes, five horses and six Zhang Fei, the famous generals are like a cloud; coupled with the strategizing of Zhuge Liang and other counselors, it has laid a natural foundation for the game.
After the promotional video was played, Tang Huan said with a smile: EA's latest game Three Kingdoms supports both the second-generation Xiaobawang game console and the third-generation and above Fangyuan personal computer. In the video, the Fangyuan personal computer is running the game. It was realized by the three generations of Fangyuan PCs equipped with graphics cards that support VGS2.5 and 2D acceleration.
It can be seen that the image quality of Three Kingdoms is very good, which is due to hardware acceleration. The CPU with a reduced burden can execute more interesting game AI, so the playability of Three Kingdoms is also very high.
COMDEX, Three Kingdoms and 2D accelerated graphics cards will be officially launched in a few days. If you are interested, you can personally experience the phased new technology achievements of these four generations of Fangyuan personal computers. (To be continued.)
This book comes from 品\u0026书#网
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