1991 Starting from the core

Su Yuanshan glanced at Yin Zilin who was sitting next to Gao Xiaodi.

Yin Zilin is in his early thirties this year. In terms of relationship, he and Su Yuanshan have a close relationship - he has a master's degree from Stanford and is also a fellow student of Tang Wenjie's doctoral supervisor. In 1988, he was a government-sponsored international student at T University. He originally planned to return to China after graduating with a master's degree in two years. But... after that incident happened... he simply stayed and studied for a Ph.D., and then joined Cyrix in 1994.

After working at CYrix for nearly three years, due to the rapid changes in the country and Tang Wenjie's relationship... Yin Zilin chose to return to China after thinking for a long time.

He had been responsible for the processor's bus protocol at Cyrix before. Not long after he came back, Yuanxin launched the dual-core project, so he naturally took on the actual responsibility for the inter-core communication protocol/architecture in the multi-core architecture. people.

Seeing Su Yuanshan looking at him, Yin Zilin smiled helplessly: "Mr. Shan, this job is indeed a bit difficult. I talked with Wenjie, and Cyrix actually had the idea of ​​​​multi-core at the beginning, but in the end it was found that it was difficult to achieve inter-core communication. It’s not that big.”

"Um."

Su Yuanshan nodded calmly, and looked at Gao Xiaodi quietly for several seconds before repeating the question: "Apart from inter-core communication, what about other technologies?"

"..." Gao Xiaodi was a little frightened by Su Yuanshan's stare. After squirming for a moment, he spread his hands and said, "I have been playing with chips for more than ten years."

"That's good." Su Yuanshan breathed a sigh of relief and smiled.

The turning point of Yuanxin processors has never been in the instruction set, nor in the manufacturing process, nor in the single-core capability - even Su Yuanshan knew that he could not shake the two established chip manufacturers Intel and AMD in single-core capabilities. In terms of capability status, especially in the next few years, Thunderbirds, Tualatin, Beimu, Barton... If Yuanxin wants to bite the bullet and compete with the AI ​​giants for single-core capabilities... it is a bit too much to say that they are looking for teeth. But it will be painful at least.

If Yuanxin wants to make a comeback, it can only lock in X64 and multi-core architecture in advance.

Fortunately, in this world, no one knows better than him where multi-core should be developed and what kind of technology should be adopted - Noble like Intel, but also because it wants to compete with AMD for dual-core releases, it has developed two The high-end operation of single-core chips packaged together is called "glue dual-core".

In multi-core architecture, inter-core communication is the basic and most important technology, and the basis of inter-core communication is the communication bus protocol.

…

"In this way, Senior Brother Yin, let's refer to it together. After all, I am also involved in the design of the multi-core architecture." Su Yuanshan looked at Yin Zilin with a smile: "Sometimes it can be done with more people and more ideas."

"That would be great."

Yin Zilin said this from the bottom of his heart.

Before joining Cyrix, he had already heard Tang Wenjie bragging about his "genius junior brother" and his ears were getting calloused. Frankly speaking, at that time, he had no idea about Su Yuanshan - he knew very well that three people can make a tiger.

But as he entered Cyrix and caught up with the cooperation between Yuan Xin and Cyrix, more and more deeds and magic about Su Yuanshan were told to him by countless people as legends... Only then did he realize that maybe this Su Yuanshan is really the kind of person who has a great reputation.

To be honest, seeing what the legendary mountains look like is one of the motivations for him and many of the semiconductor returnees who joined Yuanxin to come back.

And after coming back... that goes without saying.

Therefore, Yin Zilin is really happy that Su Yuanshan can join his team. Compared with the illusory achievements, he is more concerned about when the bus protocol that is currently at a loss can be solved. In fact, just half a year ago, Gao Xiao He has already started to bring people to cooperate with his team.

"Well, you can take over this stall so that I can focus on Following." Gao Xiaodi breathed a sigh of relief obviously, but his smile was still a little forced: "This month, the CIA has gone crazy. Structure after structure… I’m really afraid of them.”

In February 1999, AMD took the lead and announced the K6-3 series of processors ahead of several peers. Immediately afterwards, the much-anticipated Pentium 3 made its debut. Less than a week later, Cyrix also launched an "upgraded" version based on the Sol core, the Odin core C3 processor.

The new processors launched by these three companies are dazzling and dizzying. It is not yet known who will win, but Yuan Xin suffered a bit when the three gods of them fought...

This month, the topic of Yuanxin has been almost zero.

This also illustrates how big the gap is between domestic and foreign counterparts in the field of traditional X86-based desktop processors.

Gao Xiaodi can be sure that if it weren't for the big tree of Yuanxin that can endure losses, it is really unknown whether his department can sustain it-the best outcome may be to retain the R\u0026D team and at the same time It will be fully led by the state and become a “domestic light”.

"What are you afraid of? Let's just go step by step." Su Yuanshan smiled and looked at everyone: "Don't panic, as long as we firmly believe that we are on the right path, then the difficulties in the middle are just to see if we can get through it. - Believe me, as long as Yuan Xin is here, we will get through it, and we will be able to feel proud and have the last laugh."

Su Yuanshan's words made everyone laugh and nod.

In fact, when they learned that Su Yuanshan was coming to take charge of the processor department personally, the morale of the entire design department was lifted.

Everyone knows that Mr. Shan is the real genius in processor design.

To say he is a genius does not mean how many people he can defeat alone or how many teams he can appoint, but that his strong technical intuition and acumen can prevent the design team from falling into unnecessary pits.

"Okay, let's do this for now." Su Yuanshan glanced at his watch: "Get ready to get off work. In the afternoon, you will accompany me to walk the team. After that, we will have a meeting with the leaders in the evening. It will officially start tomorrow - you should know that Science Is the committee launching a rectification campaign?"

Hearing the Science and Technology Committee meeting, Gao Xiaodi's eyes darkened slightly, and he hummed softly: "Does our department still need to be reorganized? Li Mingliu is like Zhou Papi who crows in the middle of the night. He comes over for a walk when he has nothing to do. Who Can you still be lazy?"

"Necessary." Su Yuanshan naturally wanted to establish authority for Li Yinan who was not present, but he also had to take care of the emotions of the people in front of him. He smiled and said: "At the very least, the strings in our minds must be tightened."

Gao Xiaodi opened his mouth, and finally sighed: "You are here, our string... is obviously tight."

After he said this, everyone else present smiled and fell silent.

Mr. Shan came over, which was naturally exciting. But Mr. Shan has come over, so naturally... the development of the processor department in the past two years is indeed unsatisfactory, and he needs to take charge personally.

Seeing this, Su Yuanshan smiled slightly: "Okay, let's eat! Then just roll up your sleeves and do it!"