Rebirth of the Tech Madman

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While the bosses are looking forward to the macro layout, the younger brothers are down-to-earth and fighting for the market share in front of them.

For example, there are new developments in the field of the operating system, the platform closest to the hardware in terms of technical architecture.

Although Zheru is a towering tree with dense branches and leaves, other trees can also win the sunlight and nutrients necessary for survival and growth in the gaps, relying on their abilities including low-price competition in marketing, technical support for multiple hardware platforms, etc. Wait.

It is in such an environment that Microsoft and Novell began to have more and more grievances because of the network operating system since the mid-1980s.

Microsoft's ms-dos is a crappy product, not to mention the network function, which gave Novell's netware an opportunity. At its peak, it claimed to occupy 90% of the ibm-pc platform market share.

Microsoft, who is jealous but can't compete, simply fiddled with ms-dos to achieve the goal of not stepping on my shoulders and grabbing food from me.

Novell has long been prepared to replace ms-dos with another disk operating system, Gary Kildare's dr-dos, to provide the boot function for netware, and to waive the authorization fee for this link for users.

This is simply adding hatred to hatred, and hatred to hatred.

Gein, when Big Blue was looking for an operating system for ibm-pc, first found Gary Kildall, and then Gates took advantage of it. What is right and wrong here, it is estimated that the parties involved can't tell clearly now, only heart disease is left.

It's a pity that compared to Microsoft's prosperity, the owner of dr-dos, Digital Research, is getting worse and worse, so Novell simply acquired it in 1991, and since then it has its own GM operating system.

In addition to ibm-pc, netware can also run on hardware platforms such as apple computers and unix computers.

However, Novell was not satisfied. This year, it acquired unix_system_laboratories-unix system laboratory or usl.

When it was first established, it was part of Bell Labs until 1990, when it was merged into another department of Bell Labs - unix_software_, and thus became an independent subsidiary company with organizational, ownership and management rights. Bell Labs' parent company, AT\u0026T.

Unix System Lab is mainly responsible for the development of Unix and the release of licenses, but in fact there is nothing that can be achieved. The most famous time of tossing was in 1992, when it sued Berkeley Software Design for Unix-related intellectual property rights. The company and the UC Regents settled out of court this year.

It is estimated that AT\u0026T felt that it could not squeeze any oil from Unix, so it simply sold the Unix system laboratory.

Through this transaction, Novell obtained all Unix assets including all copyrights, trademarks, and licensing rights, further filling the territory of the general-purpose operating system, and it can be said that the threat to Microsoft is getting bigger and bigger.

Under such a favorable situation, Novell began to introduce the latest version of Netware, the fourth edition of its flagship product this year. The powerful and practical directory service function has attracted widespread attention.

Faced with Novell's pressing step by step from network operating system to general-purpose operating system, Microsoft counterattacked on the latest operating system with built-in network functions-windows_nt_3.1, and officially announced it at this year's comdex spring exhibition in Atlanta, Georgia .

windows_nt_3.1 and windows_3.1 are completely different products, the former is a brand new operating system,

The target application group is servers and workstations, and it is the first product in this series. The reason why it is called 3.1 is entirely because the latter is quite successful in business, so it is a marketing game on the version number. tricky.

In addition, the R\u0026D team of windows_nt_3.1 is also very different. It is composed of a group of developers from dec company, and many specific implementations reflect dec's early successful experience on vms, which makes Microsoft stand on the shoulders of giants. superior.

In addition to the built-in network function and native support in windows_nt_3.1, Microsoft did not give Novell's netware a living environment, but also made great efforts on hardware support.

By adopting hardware_—the hardware abstraction layer hal in the design, windows_nt_3.1 hides various cpu instruction set structures and the differences of various hardware platforms in each structure into the kernel to achieve platform independence .

Therefore, in addition to supporting Intel's x86 series microprocessors like ms-dos and windows, windows_nt_3.1 also supports risc microprocessors, such as mips' r4000 and dec's alpha-the latter is especially noteworthy.

Although the research and development process of dec's alpha is relatively bumpy, and the launch time is relatively behind, once it comes out, the smoke of the risc microprocessor war will spread to the 64-bit cpu battle.

Because the industry has been wrestling with 32-bit risc microprocessors for more than ten years, the alpha of dec has made the competition more intense.

At this stage, at least four risc microprocessors have transitioned to or are transitioning to 64-bit - in addition to dec's alpha, there are also Sun Microsystems' ninth-generation sparc, Zheru's fourth-generation holder, and ibm The third generation of power, as for mips, another pioneer in the risc field, is obviously behind.

Among these competitors, the strength of Sun Microsystems is undoubtedly the weakest. Therefore, in order to expand its market share, it adopted the most lenient licensing system, and granted sparc specifications to Fujitsu, Panasonic, Philips, Texas Instruments, and Arkansas. Large and small companies such as Mdell, icl, American Merchant, Ross Technology, etc.

Now, although the specifications of the ninth generation SPARC have come out, Sun Microsystems will have to wait for a while to come up with the finished product, and may even lag behind the authorized compatible manufacturers of RB.

The strength of ibm naturally far exceeds that of Sun Microsystems, but because it is ambitious to enter the desktop computer market with power, and then formed a power_pc alliance with Apple and Motorola, it will inevitably share some of the power resources, the third-generation power is still some distance away from the finished product.

The strength of Dec, an established manufacturer, is neither high nor low—it is not so strong that it is too ambitious to control the situation, nor is it so weak that it cannot be undertaken by itself from design, to manufacturing, and even to marketing.

In this case, the alpha microprocessor can be described as a blockbuster. The evaluation software score of its first mass-produced model, alpha21064, directly surpassed IBM's power and Zheru's holder.

Of course, this result is in terms of single-chip cpu.

In fact, ibm's power and Zheru's holder all support multi-cpu connections, coupled with the optimization of supporting chipsets, operating systems, databases, etc., from the perspective of the overall system of servers and workstations, it does not mean that dec's Alpha, can brainlessly crush everything in the market.

But it is undeniable that the alpha, which is manufactured with a 0.75 micron process and can easily exceed 200mhz, has the gimmick of the fastest cpu, which is really cool and easy to make a fuss about - Tang Huan attaches great importance to it.

In the eyes of the richest man, the background can be traced back to power in the 1970s, which is the most threatening technology. Unfortunately, ibm has dispersed its forces to develop power_pc, and it is still a so-called alliance with Apple and Motorola. After all, the three parties are not one, they are simply Blindfolded by the lard of ambition.

Sun Microsystems' sparc is open to customers without hesitation, and it is difficult to create a truly large-scale structure.

On the contrary, the alpha of dec may be able to come to a counterattack by relying on 64-bit and the fastest trick.

However, just like in the original time and space a few years later, amd took the lead in launching a 64-bit x86 architecture-compatible microprocessor. Just like kicking down and stepping over it easily, Zheru's holder will be able to officially launch the fourth generation soon, so that Dec's alpha will lose its halo.

You must know that under the layout of the richest man, Zheru's holder has advantages that competitors are extremely jealous of but cannot match in terms of technology, capital, market, third-party manufacturer support, etc.

ibm is trying to develop power_pc, wanting to send power into the desktop computer market. Fortunately, the field of personal computers, which has been hated, has recovered, but the latest Fangyuan fifth-generation personal computer has already begun to try to introduce the product branch of holder, directly in the risc personal computer In terms of computer products, it has thrown off Apple.

In the support and optimization of the operating system and database, the holder has the inherent advantage of being a family.

The reason why dec's alpha took the lead in 64-bit is not because of poor philosophy, but because in addition to new instructions, processing units, cache, superscalar and other features, the holder also needs to consider maximum compatibility with 32-bit architecture In the era, a considerable number of applications have been accumulated.

This is an extremely precious resource, but sometimes it often becomes a heavy burden on technological innovation-and Dec's alpha is a brand new product, so there are not so many concerns.

For this painful and happy technical problem, Tang IT's solution is to add a special design to the instruction architecture of the virtual machine - the fourth generation holder, Zheru's high-end operating system - Vientiane, and then in the application program interface optimize accordingly. After all, the prices of memory and hard drives are not as high as they used to be. This ancient technology has the youthful capital of old wine in new bottles.

When Tang Huan inspected the progress of the holder's development, he saw that the engineers under his command were about to destroy the test system.

On a server with 8 holder microprocessors connected in parallel, the host operating system—Vientiane, runs five client virtual machines at the same time, two of which are virtual workstations that also use the Vientiane operating system, and the other three virtual machines use the operating system and Freedos Fangyuan PC.

Anders Hellsberg introduced with glowing eyes: Teacher, this is simply opening up a brand new application model.

You see, the guest virtual machines a and b of the two virtual Fangyuan workstations act as the database server, the World Wide Web, and the email server respectively, and the guest virtual machines c, d, and e of the three virtual Fangyuan PCs act as the old server respectively. The fourth-generation Fangyuan personal computer, the fourth-generation Fangyuan personal computer mmx, and the latest fifth-generation Fangyuan personal computer—completely use software technology to simulate a network composed of five hardware computers in reality. In contrast, solving compatibility is simply a matter of It’s just for convenience.”

Don't try to use this as a selling point, it's too advanced. Tang Huan casually typed in a command, launched a network attack, and completely collapsed this gorgeous, almost exaggerated demonstration system.

The actual application environment is far more complex than the laboratory. Tang Huan said leisurely: Besides, our customers can afford to buy a few more computers. What they want is absolute stability and compatibility.

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At the beginning of August, on the occasion of Tang IT's birthday, the fourth-generation holder of the 64 architecture was officially released.

Among them, the purchase price of entry-level CPUs used only for the fifth-generation Fangyuan personal computer holder branch product line is US$3,750 per 100 units; US$1,875 per 1,000 units; and US$1,575 for higher quantities.

As a result, the production capacity of Tangit's fabs all over the world suddenly became tense, which affected the previous chips, so various chip foundries moved on hearing the news, almost breaking the threshold of Cupertino in Silicon Valley.