Hammer of Technology

"How is this possible? Provide all the source code? We don't intend to directly open source windows."

"Is he crazy? I've never heard of that OEM partner asking us to provide complete source code."

"Design a new operating system? Does he think it is possible to design an operating system that can replace windows? Satya, you should tell that Ning that this is something that MACOS and Linux have always expected but never succeeded. "

……

Everyone's reaction did not exceed Satya's expectations.

Although Microsoft's position in the mobile Internet era is indeed somewhat embarrassing, it is still the out-and-out king in the field of general-purpose PC operating systems. Although WP10 mobile phones are not easy to sell, the installed capacity of win10 in the world has reached the historical peak.

People have become accustomed to the way windows is operated, and subconscious habits have always been the most powerful force that dominates human behavior, just like inertia.This is also the foundation of Microsoft. As long as this habit model remains unchanged, no matter how much Microsoft lags behind in the mobile Internet, as long as PCs are not eliminated, Microsoft will always have a place in the world's technology circles.

This is the real peace of mind when there is food at home.

In particular, the message that Ning Wei took the initiative to call to ask for cooperation has deepened this hint that Microsoft is still invincible in the basic disk of the PC-side operating system.Intel's chips may be replaced in the future, but the operating habits of billions of Microsoft users are not so easily replaced.

"Well, it seems that our opinions are actually the same. Cooperation can be discussed, but Huaxia should show the most basic respect. Including respect for Microsoft and our products. Let's do this first. If Ning Calling or requesting cooperation in other ways will still be the bottom line of our cooperation. This is the end of today's meeting, please move forward to the next stage of work as required."

……

After finishing the meeting and getting everyone's support, after returning to the office, Satya Nadella stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the office, looked out, then took out his mobile phone and dialed Intel's helm Pat Kielsinger's phone call.

In fact, talking about this matter with a group of executives at a meeting is destined to make this call.

Otherwise, the other party may know the news through other channels. This is not a good time for Intel and Microsoft to have conflicts.Satya Nadella even felt that the current situation for Intel is the time when the two companies are most in need of unity.

Although the cooperation between the two giants of Intel and Microsoft allowed them to adopt a series of technical specifications to formulate a series of de facto standards for the PC industry.But the relationship between the two is not always smooth.

For example, in the open source industry, the company that provided the most technical support for Linux was not IBM, but Intel, and even for a long time, Intel flirted with Apple until Apple gave up on Intel...

So for Satya Nadella, this phone call can be understood not only as a daily exchange of information between partners, but also as a warning from Microsoft to important partners: "My dear, don't be too hard-working, if you dare to be a scumbag, you will be fine." Don't blame me for flirting with others..."

Pat quickly connected the phone, at least this attitude satisfied Satya.

"How are you doing, Pat?"

"If you mean my life, then it's not bad."

"Well, the weather in Seattle is also very good today. By the way, Ning from Huaxia called me just now. He is very much looking forward to becoming a strategic partnership with Microsoft, because they need windows to support Huaxia's [-]D technology-led The new chips, according to Ning, they will use a new instruction set, which may not be very good news for Intel, so as a partner, I think it is necessary to inform you... my friend."

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341 Whoever is strong is right

Satya Nadella's tone is still very polite.They were all old foxes, and no one was purer than the other. He believed that Pat could understand him.

Microsoft can choose not to cooperate, and of course it can choose to cooperate.

For a software company with products in every corner of the world, Microsoft has enough capital to cooperate with all hardware manufacturers in the world.So if Intel wants to get [-]% support from Microsoft, of course it should give Microsoft the treatment it deserves.

No matter how close the cooperation between the two companies is, they are two different companies with different interests after all.It's as if Intel once supported Linux and Apple in order to improve its voice.

If another operating system has the same influence as Microsoft, then Intel will have a greater say, and when a compromise is needed, it will be Microsoft rather than Intel.

In fact, from a historical point of view, Intel has made compromises more than once because of Microsoft's opinions.

For example, in the 90s of the last century, in order to promote the global sales of Pentium tm series CPUs, Intel once launched the NSP platform technology standard. This series of technologies was extremely advanced in terms of the technical environment at that time, and it could maximize the use of Pentium tm The capabilities of the series CPU.If Intel could insist on using this set of technical standards at that time, not to mention that there would be no such thing as USB technology, at least the USB technical standard would not be able to develop so fast.

At that time, it was because Microsoft considered that although the performance of the Pentium tm series CPU was indeed very good, the price was too expensive. With the NSP platform technology, it would directly restrict the popularity of personal computers in the world market. It was given to Craig Barrett, who had just started to take the helm of Intel at the time. After some threats, Intel had to give up the professional NSP technology platform and start developing the Celeron 486/586 series that also perfectly supports USB. technical standard.

Speaking of this historical story, there was another detail at that time.When Intel decided to abandon a series of technical standards of the NSP platform and support the USB technical standard, it did not announce it to the public at the first time, but sent a senior vice president to Huaxia with great fanfare, saying that Intel would license Huaxia software for free The developer uses its PentiumTM processor-based main signal processing NSP platform technology standard.

In the 90s, Intel provided the environment and applications developed by its own company to Chinese developers for free, and bypassed the traditional European allies and Japanese island dog legs, and provided them to Chinese developers for free. Ton's goodwill, of course, also harvested Huaxia's goodwill, such as getting many orders from Huaxia Pentium series on very favorable terms.

Only half a year later, Intel announced that it would temporarily abandon its support for the NSP platform technology standard. It is conceivable how much this dealt a blow to those programmers who worked hard to learn the NSP platform technology platform at that time.

You must know that the programmers of that era were in a completely different ecology from the programmers of today.Programmers in that era used C or C++ to solve problems, and they also needed to cooperate with assembly language and hardware description language VHDL to complete basic development.

How should I put it, compared to the current various high-level languages, the Java crash course can make an ordinary person have a certain programming ability in three months, but if it is replaced by C++, let alone three months, can it be three years? There is a question mark for instant success.If it is changed to assembly, it will be even more terrifying. Although assembly is not as difficult as many people think, there are no pointers in assembly language, which means that all variables and functions when learning assembly are composed of stacks or heaps. Replaced by the offset address above...

It is extremely complex and extremely inefficient. Although the execution efficiency can outperform high-level languages ​​such as Java and Python by hundreds of blocks, the speed of typing code can be thousands of blocks away from modern high-level languages.

It is conceivable how hard the programmers were back then. The free environment, after learning for half a year, is gone, and it has been shut down indefinitely, and it may not be supported in the future.This means that there was no Internet in the true sense back then, and learning computer programs was an extremely small group back then. In 90.00, [-]% of ordinary people in China didn't even know what a personal PC was.

So even if they suffer from being dumb, they can only be silently digested by this niche group, and not even a single wave splashes up.To put it bluntly, I still suffered from poor information, but this kind of thing is unlikely to happen in this era.

This is probably why Pat Kelsinger had to go to China to visit Ning Wei.

It's a pity that the glory of the ancestors is really hard to find.

Of course it also includes this time.

……

"Mr. Nadella, thank you for informing me of this news, but we all know that making a CPU is not such a simple matter. Our engineers have tried to use their minimalist EDA. To tell you the truth, at least for now, this The most basic chip design software should not have the ability to design large-scale integrated circuits, and if we use our technology, there is no supporting three-dimensional wiring technology that can be used, so don't you ask Professor Ning if they put Everything is too simple?"

Pat Kelsinger's tone was equally relaxed, seemingly dismissive of what the call entailed.

It is a pity that Satya Nadella is actually very clear that Intel is actually very nervous about the current [-]D chip manufacturing technology.Theoretically, the new technology that can continue Moore's Law is colliding with the old technology that has carried Moore's Law to the extreme, and it is bound to explode with fierce sparks.Philosophically speaking, this is the inevitable situation after the improvement of productivity.

"Very good, Pat, really, I have always been optimistic about your spirit of not being afraid of any competition. Then you will definitely not mind that Microsoft will cooperate with China's semiconductor companies in the future as it cooperates with Intel, and support their new products at the software level. Chip, right?" Satya Nadella said in a slightly teasing tone.

In fact, from his point of view, Pat Kelsinger is not very popular, even this engineer who has worked for Intel for 30 years.To be honest, the two were still competitors at the time, because before Powell retired, Pat Kelsinger was also included in the sight of Microsoft's board of directors. At that time, some people expected to hire Pat, who was still the CEO of VMware at the time. Come take the helm of Microsoft.

But obviously, the directors who held this opinion failed, and in the end Satya Nadella took the throne of Microsoft CEO with the support of Powell.Who would have thought that after many years, Pat would go back to Intel and become the leader of this semiconductor giant.

Satya can only lament the impermanence of the world.

But then again, although Pat Kelsinger gave him a slightly arrogant feeling, he was also more capable than Intel's previous CEO.He really didn't know what Intel's shareholders thought. Why did they push an executive with a financial background to the position of CEO to deal with global competition? Could it be because they were interested in the financial management ability of Brother Bob?

……

"Satya, it's not right to say that. Intel has always regarded Microsoft as its most important partner. Of course, partners must advance and retreat together. Of course, I don't mind Microsoft and Huaxia. But I believe that no matter what agreement Microsoft signs with China, it will definitely will guarantee the closest partnership with Intel, right?"

Apparently Pat Kelsinger is still terrified.

Unlike the previous CEO, Pat was born as an electrical engineer. Since the day he got the complete technical report on the [-]D silicon-through-silicon tube chip, he has understood who will control the future trend of chips.

As soon as he came back from China, he held a meeting of technical executives and told all Intel technical executives that the most optimistic estimate is that in the field of large-scale general-purpose chip design and manufacturing, Intel can at most persist Ten years of absolute advantage.

Ten years later, if Intel's current chip manufacturing technology cannot break through, the future will belong to China's [-]D silicon-through-silicon tube technology.This is definitely the most pessimistic prediction of the helm of Intel in the new century. After all, Intel has been leading the world for nearly half a century.

Of course, it's not that Pat Kelsinger is absolutely certain that Intel will lose in this competition, which is why Satya made the call.Although the Chinese people's technology is indeed very advanced, they do not have a stable ecology.

In modern times where ecological barriers are getting stronger and stronger, this can often choke the lifeblood of competitors. Of course, this requires the support of Microsoft.

Yes, at this moment, Pat Kelsinger found that no matter how he thought about it, he really couldn't get tough in front of Satya Nadella.Or at this juncture, Intel can't stand up in front of Microsoft.

Time seems to have returned to the 90s of the last century, the era when Microsoft was so brilliant that it defined computer operating systems to the world.The only problem is that in that era they hardly felt the competition from the outside world, and now it is because of the competition from the outside world.

"Of course, Pat, Intel has always been Microsoft's most important strategic partner, and I never doubted that. But for a long time, Intel didn't seem to think so. Well, I know, it wasn't really about you at the time , I also believe that Intel will get better and better under your leadership. But now we really need some support."

"You know, Pat, we hope to have ARM-based products. Currently, our ARM-based chips are developed by Jason, the head of the Azure cloud. Maybe I can ask him to connect with some of your engineers to help us solve the problem. Some chip design problems, after all, we believe in your strength in chip design. X86 is a very successful architecture, but you know that the times need to change."

Satya Nadella said not euphemistically.

Of course, these words fell into Pat Kelsinger's ears, making him almost throw the phone out of his hand.

He even regretted that Satya was not by his side at this time, so he had ample reason to punch the Indian in the face.

It was precisely because Microsoft made this decision suddenly without discussing with Intel at all, and the decision was directly exposed, which directly caused Intel's stock price, which was completely unprepared, to crash by 6.7% that day.The flash crash of the stock price is not the point. The point is that Microsoft didn't communicate with them, and it was completely unprepared.

Gu is somewhat suspected of treachery.

But to be honest, this is also the reason why Pat Kelsinger took the position. The financial officer who did not understand technology was kicked from the position of CEO, and he was also ordered in a crisis.

However, Satya Nadella's request is somewhat excessive.

Since the person in charge of the Azure cloud is leading the research and development of Microsoft chips, there is a high probability that they will design new chips for Microsoft servers. Microsoft has been purchasing Intel products in the field of server chips before. In other words, Satya Na Della hopes that Intel's experienced technical staff will contribute to the decision to grab their own business?

For this kind of shameless request...

"Haha, of course, Satya, we are friends. If Microsoft really needs it, we can indeed provide some technical advice."

"Thank you very much, Pat. I think Intel will definitely be able to get out of the trough under your leadership. Microsoft will definitely be Intel's most loyal partner."

"Thank you very much too, Satya, thank you for informing me of this news. Maybe we can meet up soon and talk about deepening cooperation."

"That's what I thought too. Some issues can be cleared up face-to-face. Let me check the schedule. I'm free this Friday afternoon. How about you?"

"I'll ask the secretary to make this time available, Satya, and see you Friday afternoon."

"Okay, looking forward to meeting on Friday."

hang up the phone...

"clowns..."

"FUCK!"

This is the truest and perfect mutual greeting.

……

When the two big brothers hung up the phone, Ning Wei just hung up the phone too.

Every time I share my life with Jiang, it takes about 10 minutes, because the two actually like to slowly relive the feeling of endless meaning.This is probably telling everyone a truth, even if you are passionately in love, don’t hold the phone for too long every time. Generally speaking, how tired two people are when they are sweet, and how disgusting they are when they get along day and night after marriage. Another level of good and evil will eventually be rewarded.

This is also the ending of love fairy tales. They only write how many difficulties the prince and princess have overcome in order to be together, but they usually don’t write about how the prince and princess who were finally able to stay together after all the hardships lived a happy life. reason.

In fact, it can also be analyzed from the perspective of animal psychology. For example, the nature of males is to spread their genes as much as possible, while magnetism is more willing to continuously submit to stronger and better-looking males. Under the leadership of genes, everything is Then go with the flow.

It's like Microsoft and Intel are in love and killing each other...

Although Ning Wei didn't know that his phone call might make Intel and Microsoft closely unite again to keep warm, but it didn't matter.In fact, there are no secrets in this world, especially when everyone's every move is under the spotlight, and there is no way to hide what you want to do, so the only problem is how to do it well.

The only regret is that Ning Wei knows very well that the study and research plans for physics theory must be postponed first.Of course, when you need to rest your brain, you can still continue to study.However, scientific research in physics is a field of slow work and careful work. It is already very difficult to use fragmented time to complete some ideas, but it is really wishful thinking to use fragmented time to complete many confirmatory experiments.

But this is also impossible.

If you really want to discuss it, you have to rise to the level of theory or application, which is more important.For the understanding of this point, the junior high school textbooks actually give the answer.Concrete analysis of specific situations.

As far as the current stage is concerned, looking at this issue from the perspective of the distribution of science and technology industries on the earth, for Huaxia, the demand for applications is extremely urgent. At least compared with theoretical breakthroughs, Huaxia obviously needs applications to keep up.

But for the Western powers, they may need a theoretical breakthrough. After all, from the perspective of application, high-tech companies represented by Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Google, Oracle, etc. are still at the top of the world. After all, there is no way for people to plant trees and future generations to enjoy the shade.

"Hey……"

Ning Wei sighed, and then his eyes fell on the kitten on the screen...

"Hey, I suddenly thought of a question, Sanyue, you should still have enough computing power right now?"

"Meow..." Sanyue raised her head vigilantly and looked at Ningwei.

Ning Wei made a request: "I was thinking, although CERN refused to access the data to our platform before, those scientists can get 10PB of data every month, produce thousands of papers every year, plus the full For the papers issued by various physics laboratories in the world, can you help me synthesize the various data in these papers first, so that there will be no delay. When we complete the instruction set, chip architecture and operating system project, you can seamlessly start verifying these data. And find relevant points from these data to conduct advanced research?"

"Meow..., of course, but my house is not big enough."

The kitten spread its paws on the screen, looking helpless.

Sure enough, the pursuit of computing power by intelligent life is almost endless. Fortunately, at this stage, Ningwei can justly and confidently strive for more computing power for March.

"Big houses are not a problem. We now have enough bargaining chips to help you win more computer rooms, but you must do a good job in this matter. The slightest mistake in the mathematical analysis at the physical level may cover up the truth."

"Meow..., not making mistakes is what I am best at. Of course, the premise is that the citation data of those papers are correct. Even if the data cited by some low-quality papers is wrong, it can be judged by other citation data of the same research direction."

I have to say that March is quite right.

The hardest part for a human happens to be the easiest for a machine.

What is easy for humans is often the hardest for machines.

The two different modes of thinking are indeed very complementary.

"Then it's settled. I'm going to find Brother Liu. This time I need to communicate with everyone. Since we are going to do it, we have to make it beautiful."

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342 Chicken Blood Prince

"Brother Liu, I thought about it carefully just now. I really have to make the instruction set by myself. Of course, it is not enough to make the instruction set by myself. In order for our chips to be designed, there will be market space in the future. Simply put, they can be sold. We also need Simultaneously start designing an operating system. The advantage of this is that after our products start production, there will be a supporting software system available.”

"When designing an operating system, we must consider the software ecological environment. As you know, the operating system needs not only hardware support, but also software support. Now the software products that everyone is familiar with must be able to be used on our operating system. , if it cannot be used, we have to come up with better alternatives, which requires countless developers to complete the ecological construction of the operating system."

"This is what I think. I'm afraid we still have to cooperate with Huawei at the operating system level. The reason is too coincidental. Huawei has just released the Cangjie language. In the future, our operating system can focus on supporting applications written in this language. This is equivalent to that Huawei has now begun to help our future operating system train suitable programmers."

"Besides, I think we need to cooperate with major software providers in China. After all, we need their programs to support our system. Including games and so on. In addition, we will find some ways , such as using an intelligent platform to maximize the optimization of programs originally applicable to other platforms, so that these programs can also be applied to our own operating system."

"That's all I can think of for the time being. You can make some arrangements later. I'll talk to Mr. Chen first. If possible, Mr. Chen is looking for investors. Let's hold a meeting to study this matter. Do both at the same time. Things require a lot of investment, not only financial investment, but also related talents. This is what I think about this. I am mainly responsible for some comprehensive work in the laboratory, and then I will introduce many specific Subdivide the work and set standards, and then pull in as many companies as possible to complete it together.”

"For the time being, that's probably all I've thought about. These things can be done first. The more you know about the preparations, the better we can do in this business. Of course, if our operating system wants to replace the current mainstream The operating system needs to be better than the mainstream operating system at this stage. It is not only reflected in daily use, but also includes the use of some specific tasks, such as the most basic copywriting editing, screen and 3D drawing, programming, etc. It performs better than windows, MACOS, Linux..."

"Only by doing this, can our chips and operating systems have sufficient market prospects in the future, so that customers will be willing to use our products. This requires a huge team, or we must find ways to construct the entire industry chain from now on. ..."