"Um----"
After an hour of in-depth testing, I have to admit that Windows 3.0 is indeed very well done.
Excellence in every sense of the word.
Of course, compared to later versions like Win95 or even Windows XP, version 3.0 was still quite rudimentary.
After all, there's still a generational gap of several years.
Low resolution, monotonous colors, and a completely uninspired, flat, engineering-style design.
It is filled with the geek style unique to early PC users.
But compared to its predecessor, Windows 2.0, it represents a revolutionary change.
With a simple click, you can easily launch any writing software, drawing program, office application, calendar, file management system, or media player.
Of course, there's also the native MS-DOS Office suite.
Native 16-color support and TrueType fonts give it a truly modern feel reminiscent of the 90s.
From Lin Lixin's perspective, it was far too primitive.
But one can imagine how terrifying such an operating system would be for users in this era.
Look at Sam's surprised expression.
Even their own family members couldn't help but be amazed by it, let alone ordinary people?
This was combined with the huge market share that Microsoft had secured for IBM-compatible machines, and the ferocious performance of Intel.
It is foreseeable that, apart from companies like Apple that have their own complete ecosystem, other PC manufacturers will find it difficult to survive.
The era of unification is coming.
How long can Commodore and his team survive with C64 and Amiga?
" Microsoft isn't targeting us, but—it will definitely have an impact on us, and a significant one at that."
Lin Lixin stood up, frowning in thought.
At least in Gamenova's main arena, Microsoft will not be a threat for a long time to come.
Rather, it could be an asset to them in certain situations.
The rapid popularization of the PC market is indeed inseparable from the dominance of Wintek.
Only with the widespread adoption of PCs did Gamenova's collection of internet technologies truly gain value.
In a sense, WinteI and Gamenova are even on the same side.
However, having similar interests does not mean that the two sides will not scheme against each other, nor does it mean that there will be no conflict.
"Winning a head-on battle against Intel in the processor arena—it won't be easy."
Lin Lixin analyzed the parameters of the i486 in his mind and came to a result that was not very optimistic.
GAMENOVA's ATHENA and ARM are both very good in their respective fields.
ATHENA is game-specific, and its performance on game consoles is nothing short of perfect.
However, it cannot be used on a PC.
ARM processors offer sufficiently high frequencies, a modern and streamlined architecture, and impressive power efficiency.
But users in this era don't care about power consumption at all.
How many laptops are there in the market?
As for mobile devices, Apple's Newton PDA and Motorola's mobile phones haven't even officially started yet, so there's no need for power consumption.
Users don't care at all whether you use a few more watts of electricity or whether you have a higher voltage than other households.
All they really care about is performance.
Intel has taken this to the extreme.
Technical expertise and experience are things that his talent is hard to catch up with in a short time.
We still need to do a meticulous reverse engineering.
"80486------I'm going to MicroNova."
MicroNova is ultimately a semiconductor factory, and reverse engineering chips is not a difficult task.
By opening the cover and scanning with an electron microscope, the detailed layout of the i486 can be obtained quickly.
The only problem is probably----
The i486 contains approximately 1.2 million 1-micron-sized transistors.
1.2 million!
If you lay all this out on a single image and expect someone to read it, it's basically the same as asking a programmer to read a mountain of uncommented, garbage code they wrote ten years ago.
In particular, the i486 is the pinnacle of CISC technology, with an incredibly complex transistor structure.
Even if they were laid out neatly side by side, millions of transistors would be dazzling enough to dazzle the eye.
Moreover, it's an industrial gem designed by a group of the world's top architects!
So, how about a small opening?
Lin Lixin blinked, and a streak of light flashed past.
Lin Lixin has always possessed a seemingly insignificant yet incredibly valuable skill or advantage.
[ My Power of WAAAGH! ]
A skill I unlocked as soon as I arrived.
From early analysis of arcade machine circuit boards to later inspection of LCD screens, this thing has been constantly evolving.
The Power of the Greenskins is no longer just an auxiliary tool to help him repair boards.
"Lin, based on the official documentation and pin definitions, we can preliminarily determine this part of the scan image you requested—"
Vivian pointed to several photos on the screen and analyzed the situation with him.
Drawing an architecture and reverse engineering an architecture are two completely different things.
There is no programmatic automatic generation of gate circuits, nor is there a flexible wiring procedure.
Everything needs to be analyzed one by one with the naked eye.
Vivian was already overwhelmed just looking at the millions of transistors.
Even if the entire engineering team worked overtime without sleep, with each person taking turns disassembling parts, it would still take a tremendous amount of effort.
But in Lin Lixin's view----
The 1.2 million transistors within an 80 square millimeter area have been automatically categorized after a brief analysis.
He can freely switch between different view modes for analysis, depending on his changing thoughts.
Hierarchical pattern, module identification, logic gate pattern, connection tracing pattern----
By randomly selecting a stitch, you can trace the entire thread and unravel its secrets.
It's like playing Turing Complete game or some kind of automated factory game.
"Address calculation unit—no wonder it's backward compatible with all software from the DOS era—"
The more clearly Lin Lixin understood it, the more amazed he became by the ingenuity of the i486 design.
To stand out in this era of fierce competition and mergers, it would be utterly self-deceptive to say that Intel doesn't possess some unique strengths.
This is not the shit mountain you might imagine; instead, it's a completely redesigned semiconductor masterpiece that can be considered a work of art.
"You understand?"
Vivian blinked, then nodded knowingly.
That's right, that's more like it.
Lin is like that; all he needs to do is use his cheat code, while those who support him have a lot more to consider.
"Almost there—look here."
Lin Lixin nodded, pointed to one area, and gestured to a section of it. " Intel designed a five-stage pipeline, which is the key to their ability to achieve such a high speed this time."
It seems my previous analysis was inaccurate.
The i486 is indeed amazing in terms of frequency, but that's far from all it is.
The five-stage pipeline and a full 8KB L1 cache are the real killer features of the i486.
The CPU can set memory aside and process instructions quickly using the L1 cache, instead of waiting for memory responses every time.
In addition, the multi-instruction execution capability brought by the five-level cache----
The difference between the i486 and its predecessor, the i386, is not simply a matter of increasing the number of transistors.
This is essentially a completely new processor designed from scratch.
"FPU floating-point operations— Intel has finally grasped the trend of 3D technology—"
The design here even looked somewhat familiar to Lin Lixin.
It seems that MicroNova isn't the only one reverse engineering their competitors.
Our own Nova Radeon has already been thoroughly dissected by our competitors.
This floating-point arithmetic unit, with slight modifications, can become a module for processing matrices, triangles, and rasteres.
This is what's known as a graphics card.
After quickly reviewing the entire architecture, Lin Lixin decisively abandoned the idea of running a CISC volume hardware.
It's not very meaningful.
Even if he could actually use his magic touch to create a CPU with powerful enough performance, it would be difficult to grab a sufficient market share in a market where Windows has become dominant.
It would be better to continue focusing on the ARM camp in the Hermes region and ATHENA game console.
Intel has almost pushed the boundaries of architecture.
Rather than saying that the i486 is the pinnacle of CISC, it would be more accurate to describe it as a brilliant design that cleverly combines the advantages of both CISC and RISC.
Numerous modern design features make the i486's internal structure resemble a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) processor.
Externally, it embraces a large number of complex CISC instructions, which are translated and executed internally via microcode.
This approach is somewhat similar to Athena's.
This is what made Intel's golden age so terrifying.
A toothpaste factory that doesn't squeeze toothpaste out of the tube must have an astonishing level of research and development capabilities.
Although Lin Lixin had many well-developed architectural designs in mind, they were either impossible to implement due to differences in manufacturing processes or unsuitable for the current environment.
Intel is a completely independent company; it designs and manufactures its own products.
Whether it's yield rate, process technology, or output, they are among the top in the industry.
"That's interesting----"
Lin Lixin stroked his chin, turned off the analysis chart, and already had a general idea in mind.
Although they can't win head-on, GAMENOVA has its own comfort zone that no one else can catch up to.
Graphics card.
To be precise, it's a GPU with native hardware-accelerated 3D.
In this field, GAMENOVA's technological expertise is unparalleled.
"It's time to give Hermes a major upgrade. Call Old Huang and Old He over, it's time to get to work, let's do something big."
o
High-speed interfaces were already reserved for Hermes laptops when they were designed.
An interface that is directly connected in series with the ARM processor's local bus.
Commonly known as VLB, which stands for VESA-Local-Bus.
What exactly this thing is used for has always been a point of interest for geeks.
Running on a hard drive? Its bandwidth speed of tens, or even occasionally close to 100MB/s, is more than enough.
Running a CD player? The read/write speed of a CD is not even a fraction of its bandwidth; it's practically being dragged along.
The same principle applies to other peripherals.
Sorry I couldn't satisfy VL!
What interface does the Nova Radeon graphics card use?
ISA is the most traditional expansion interface on PCs.
With only 16 bits of bandwidth, the effective bandwidth under extreme conditions is only about 5MB/s.
Even with GAMEN0VA's algorithm optimized to its maximum, a resolution of 640480 bits per second (8-bit) can only reach 30.
Frames around.
What if we change the graphics card interface to VLB?
Hundreds of megabytes of bandwidth are enough to change a lot of things.
While waiting for Vivian to summon the two of them, Lin Lixin took out the platinum pen from his chest and wrote down a few lines of parameters in his notebook.
[Video Memory]: [1MB/2MB/4MB]
[Bandwidth]: [50~100MB/s]
[Triangle performance]: [~50,000 triangles/s]
[Memory Specifications]: [SDRAM Micron High-Speed Chips]
[Memory bus width]:
As he wrote this, Lin Lixin paused, and then a smile curved his lips.
[Memory bus width]: [128-bit]
Such specifications are sufficient to unleash the extremely limited and weak capabilities of the ARM processor, enabling Hermes to run some great works.
Thinking of this, Lin Lixin picked up his pen again and wrote the last line.
[Escort Game]: [ Need for Speed ]