Rebirth of the Tech Madman

...

Mr. Richest Man is really busy with official duties. He just finished explaining some secret things to Trip Hawkins, a confidant, when Intel CEO Andy Grove came over as if smell .

Tang Huan couldn't help being happy seeing the other party's anxious look. Gein roughly guessed why this Silicon Valley star CEO came, and he also remembered the Wintel alliance that controlled the personal computer architecture in the original time and space, and the version 3.0 satirical jokes compiled by the outside world in terms of products , that is, each generation of products has to go through a trilogy process of tinkering before it can be considered perfect.

Taking Microsoft, which provides the operating system, the most representative example is windows_xp—the first version is not flattering; the service_pack_1 version is better; the service_pack_2 version has almost changed into a brand new operating system, which is popular To such an extent, it even made the next generation of windows_xp-windows_vista a dismal end.

Intel, which provides CPUs, is not much better. Almost every new generation of products has some unsatisfactory places. Soft can't be switched back. Up to the recent generation of Pentium, the floating-point error bugs that occurred, it is estimated that only the philosophy software that has to deal with the underlying details in order to develop the operating system can have a deep understanding of how much there is in it. Cheating.

In the second half of this year, Intel officially released a new generation of microprocessors - pentium_pro.

At the beginning, Tang Huan criticized it for not supporting Pentium, the current flagship product, the mmx instruction set specially designed for multimedia applications.

Now it seems that the problem is more than that.

Sure enough, Andy Grove quickly turned to the topic and said: The laboratory of Zheru R\u0026D Center gave us a feedback, that is, when pentium_pro was processing 16-bit old-fashioned programs, the performance dropped significantly. Phenomenon—I don’t know Zheru software, can it be compensated at the operating system level?”

The inertia of compatibility in the field of computer applications is so strong—although the personal computer industry led by Tang Huan has entered the 32-bit era, it has been about ten years, but there are still a large number of 16-bit software running. Hurry up and upgrade, people are willing to spend extra money to upgrade all products that are working well.

This phenomenon is particularly prominent in the enterprise market-compared to individual users who like to try early adopters, and even format the hard disk in two or three days to reinstall all software, enterprises value stability-if the system runs well , so don't toss around in arrears, lest you waste money and miss work and time.

Therefore, Intel has to pay attention to its own CPU, and the problem of poor support for 16-bit programs that was suddenly exposed. The cost of product recalls is as high as hundreds of millions of dollars, which is really heart-wrenching.

Tang Huan frowned and said, Why don't you go directly to Brad Swahlberg, the CEO of Zheru Software, for this specific question?

Andy Grove showed embarrassment on his face, I looked for it, and he said that this is an obvious product defect, Zheru Software Company is not worth wasting resources on a transitional CPU that does not support the mmx instruction set.

Tang Huan joked: He is urging Intel to launch a new product that integrates great achievements as soon as possible.

Andy Grove smiled bitterly: The product cycle is not something that can be crossed by leaps and bounds-Intel needs to adjust the time.

Brad Swahlberg is a Grand Frontier Official, and he is very busy, how could he be called over casually for such a trivial matter.

Tang Huan thought about it, and felt that in some cases, he only listened to Andy Grove's one-sided words, and he still didn't quite understand it.

Alas, it's not easy for Intel's largest individual shareholder—Tang Huan, who secretly complained, picked up the phone and called Charles Simeone from Zheru Group.

After these two fellow Hungarians got together, they were straight to the point.

I think there is nothing wrong with Zheru Software's decision. Charles Simeone said bluntly: pentium_pro's poor support for 16-bit applications is a product defect. Even Zheru Software struggled to find compensation at the operating system level. It is not easy to evaluate the actual effect of the plan. In particular, in two years, Intel will definitely avoid such mistakes in the new generation of products. The greatest significance of Zheru software’s busy work is to provide cover for Intel.”

Having said that, Charles Simeone mercilessly pointed at the core of the problem and said: Andy, Intel's product route this time is incomprehensible. Why did it suddenly diverge?

You know, for a long time, the most difficult thing for users to let go of Intel microprocessors is the compatibility of the new generation of products with the previous generation.

Perhaps, Intel's intention is to let pentium_pro enter the enterprise market, but users, according to the thinking inertia they have developed, firstly regard pentium_pro as the next-generation successor of pentium. In this case, problems arise. That is, although pentium_pro has a p6 core that is more advanced than pentium's p5 core, it does not support the mmx instruction set—even professional technicians like us are puzzled, how will ordinary users react?

Andy Grove defended weakly: The pentium_pro is a newly designed cpu, which is completely different from the pentium architecture. It can be said that the research and development of the two are not on the same route; as for the mmx function, it is in the pentium. The addition of the new stepping kernel has increasingly formed a situation of being separated from each other-and after comprehensive consideration of factors such as research and development progress, reliability, cost, etc., the pentium_pro does not include the mmx instruction set. Anyway, the pentium_pro is oriented to The enterprise market is also not sensitive to multimedia performance.

You have made a strategic mistake - multimedia functions will only become standard configurations, not dispensable according to market differences! Take the spreadsheet software cgrid for example, it can use mmx to perform floating-point calculations enhancements to improve execution efficiency. Charles Simeone judged in a positive tone: I believe that no matter how hard Intel advertises, pentium_pro will soon be regarded by the public as a product with reduced functions. This is not a simple performance. Improvement can make up for it - of course, there is no need for everyone to waste precious time for a transitional product that is doomed to commercial failure!

Andy Grove retorted unconvinced: But you have overlooked that the performance of pentium_pro even surpasses some risc microprocessors in integer operations. It also supports multi-processor architectures, at least in the field of workstations. It can even be used as a processor for supercomputers - Caltech is doing research in this area.

Seeing that the debate between the two was getting more and more intense, Tang Huan interrupted: Charles, what is the result of the performance test of the pentium_pro in the laboratory?

The data is quite good. Charles Simeone replied in a slow tone: Compared with pentium, when executing 32-bit programs, the performance of pentium_pro has increased by 25% to 35%.

Andy Grove took the conversation proudly: This is consistent with our data-while the p6 core performs so well, the energy consumption is also significantly reduced.

But... Charles Simeone continued: When executing 16-bit programs, the performance improvement of pentium_pro is only 5%; in addition, pentium_pro is 10% slower than pentium when writing to video memory, so As a result, there will be frame skipping when running the game-such shortcomings make the pentium_pro unable to match its high purchase price of nearly $300 per thousand.

In addition, the floating-point unit of pentium_pro has a small bug when converting floating-point numbers to integers—fortunately, this impact can indeed be regarded as minor.

Tang Huan pondered: In this way, pentium_pro and consumer-grade personal computers are destined to miss out; they can only be used in the enterprise market.

It has to be said that Intel has put a lot of thought into the process of cisc against risc. Charles Simeone praised: pentium_pro has added three instructions that can convert the cisc form of x86 family microprocessors into 118-bit fixed-length instructions. risc-style micro-operation decoder - one of the decoders can convert complex cisc instructions into four risc-style micro-operations; the other two decoders can convert a relatively simple cisc instruction into into a risc-style micro-operation, forming an efficient '4+1+1' 3-way decoding pattern.

The instruction pipeline of pentium_pro has been increased from pentium's 5th order to 14th order - this may cause the instruction queue to perform poorly when executing 16-bit programs.

On the package of the processor, the pentium_pro integrates a secondary buffer that runs at the same frequency as the processor. As far as the current technological level is concerned, it is not easy to manufacture. The high price of the pentium_pro must be closely related to this.

As soon as Charles Simeone mentioned that the pentium_pro integrated a secondary buffer running at full speed, Tang Huan remembered it—isn’t it? In the Pentium 2 era, one of the main motivations for Intel to launch the Celeron was to deal with it at a low price. Those Pentium 2s that failed the L2 buffer chip test.

Seeing Tang Huan's gaze turned to him, Andy Grove shrugged. Charles Simeone poured out all the key points in one go. When it was first launched, it required a process of adjustment and optimization, and the pentium_pro will be fine soon-now, it is poor that Zheru software provides buffering at the operating system level.

Tang Huan nodded slightly, he had roughly sorted out the clues inside.

Because the current Fangyuan personal computer is not completely controlled by Intel's x86 family of microprocessors in terms of cpu, so when the pentium_pro performed poorly, these executives under Tang Huan had the confidence to beat each other up.

However, regardless of benefits, Intel's position is still extremely important, and it cannot be dealt with too harshly.

Tang Huan thought for a while, and then said: Since pentium_pro is more suitable for running enterprise programs, let's try to optimize it in this field. Charles, you are in charge of coordination.

Then, Tang Huan solemnly said to Andy Grove: This is just a stopgap measure. I suggest that Intel integrate all the advantages of pentium_pro and pentium as soon as possible, and launch pentium_2, and don't be too obsessed with pentium_pro.

Andy Grove and Charles Simeone nodded at the same time—the best result is that they both took a step back and compromised when the matter got to the boss's desk.

...

After the meeting, Tang Huan began to prepare for comdex Las Vegas Autumn Exhibition.

As the most important stop of comdex's annual activities, the reason why the comdex Las Vegas Autumn Fair this year is postponed is mainly because its schedule is too full and it is a bit busy. From the beginning of the year to the present, It has traveled almost all over the world - the United States, Canada, Brazil, Europe, Australia, Yiben, India... and even landed in China soon.

In Tang Huan's view, comdex is the most glorious stage before it reaches its peak and declines.

The competition in the field of international conventions and exhibitions is also very fierce, and many of them have official backgrounds, such as the case of CEBIT in Germany-only having a fixed and spacious exhibition hall is incomparable to comdex driven by purely commercial forces .

Fortunately, Softbank bought comdex earlier, but it is worth the fare—let’s squeeze out the remaining value now!

As always, compared to technology and product demonstrations, industry forums attended by many well-known figures in the industry are more eye-catching. Coupled with the rapid development of the Internet this year, the atmosphere can only be described as boiling.

For example, Robert Metcalf, who invented the Ethernet, pessimistically predicted: According to the current trend of crazy expansion, the Internet will collapse next year.

Having said that, he pointed to the speech draft and said emphatically: If the prediction is wrong, then I will eat this draft to take back what I said.