14 seconds! Chinese people's own CPU+operating system, achieving a leap forward

Tech 2023-06-19 11:59:40 Source: Network

1 second, 2 seconds, 3 seconds.

1 second, 2 seconds, 3 seconds... Several "code farmers" from Beijing's information and innovation companies sat in front of a laptop, holding their breath, fully focused, as if their hearts were beating at the same frequency as the second hand.

At the 14th second, the computer desktop lit up smoothly, and the laboratory was filled with joy.

In the rapid iteration of technology, the startup time of domestic operating systems is gradually shortened,Finally achieved a 14 second leap in 2022.

In March 2022, Tongfang laptops equipped with the Longxin 3A50004 core processor, Tongxin UOS operating system, and Kunlun BIOS firmware achieved a breakthrough in 14 seconds of boot time, representing the "Chinese Core" and "Chinese Soul" of computers moving from "usable" to "user-friendly", expanding their position among Chinese people in the information technology industry that Intel and Microsoft have occupied for many years.

In every line of code that leaps towards' 14 seconds', there are hidden the creativity and ambition of several generations of 'Beijing Code Farmers'.Representing Beijing's "soft power", some are white-haired gentlemen who have been fighting for decades, and some are just young and elegant young people who have just entered the industry. They are facing various difficulties in the innovation chain of information technology application and are making critical breakthroughs in their joint efforts.

Loongson CPU Goes Out of the "Dark Moment"

The startup speed is the first impression that computer performance leaves on users. 10 years ago, it took 10 minutes or even longer to open a computer equipped with domestic hardware and software.

The CPU (central processing unit) is the heart of a computer, and if you want to speed up a computer, you must first pass this level. Do Chinese people have their own CPUs?

have On the early morning of August 10, 2002, the computer installed with the "Dragon Core 1" CPU successfully started, ending the history of Chinese people relying solely on imported CPUs to manufacture computers. In 2010, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beijing jointly funded the establishment of Longxin Zhongke Company, hoping to accelerate the industrialization of research and development achievements.

However, just over two years later, Longxin Zhongke fell into a "dark moment".

The academic team of Longxin has always focused on improving CPU performance and has not yet come up with a universal CPU that meets the mainstream market demand. The high investment in research and development has made the company's funds tight, and even unable to pay salaries for a while, leading to talent loss.

This crisis has forced us to recognize the reality, "founder Hu Weiwu realized that the R&D personnel of Longxin, who started their business at" Xiahai ", have abandoned the establishment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but have forgotten to pay attention to the real needs of the market. That is to say, although there has been a transformation in the organization, the concept has not yet kept up.

Hu Weiwu, Chief Engineer of the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chief Designer of Longxin

At that time, the mainstream CPU design in the market was multi-core, with Intel focusing on dual core and quad core designs, while Longxin developed an eight core design to improve its skills. Hu Weiwu candidly stated that the premise of "having more people and greater strength" is that everyone must be strong,Although Longxin has eight cores, the performance of each core is not as good as that of humans.The CPU of Longxin was not accepted by the market at that time for a simple reason - it was not easy to use.

After several years of detours, Longxin finally put down its "stature" and turned its attention to the field of industrial control CPU, and later successfully applied it in the field of information technology. Through continuous trial and error and iteration, Longxin achieved its first break even in 2015 with revenue exceeding 100 million yuan.

From 2015 to 2020, the performance of Longxin increased by 10 times, which gave it the possibility of supporting 14 second startup. The same party computer with a boot time shortened to 14 seconds is equipped with the Loongson 3A5000 series CPU, and its performance has approached the mainstream level of open market CPUs.

Initial growth of domestic operating systems

For computer users, the classic icons of the Windows operating system are deeply engraved in their memory. The CPU is the heart of a computer, while the operating system is the soul. If Loongson is benchmarking against Intel, who can benchmark against Microsoft?

In 2011, while Hu Weiwu was struggling for a higher level of CPU, Liu Wenhuan, the general manager of Tongxin Software Company, decided to start a new business from scratch and build a domestic operating system.

"If the chip technology is compared to climbing the Himalayas, the solution to the domestic operating system is to explore the Mariana Trench." Before that, he had worked in an information security enterprise for more than ten years, and increasingly felt that if the operating system bottleneck could not be solved, information security could only be on paper.

At the same time, a number of software companies with the same ideals were born in China. But with ideal fullness and realistic realism, the first wave of newcomers found that computers equipped with domestic operating systems were not only slow, but also unable to chat, work, and play games normally like Windows. Although domestic new systems continue to be launched, these software companies have fallen one after another in the face of technological gaps and cruel market choices.

Overcoming difficulties cannot be solved alone. To solve the user pain points of slow startup and short battery life, it is necessary to jointly tackle key issues in industries such as CPU and operating system.

In 2019, Tongxin Software Technology Co., Ltd., jointly established by multiple operating system manufacturers in China, was headquartered in Xinchuang Park, Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone. Technical support institutions, research and development centers, and general software and hardware adaptation centers were also established in multiple cities such as Wuhan, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

From fighting on their own, to clenching their fingers and forming a fist, Tongxin collaborates with upstream and downstream enterprises in the industry to promote the research and development of domestic operating systems.In the rapid iteration of technology, the startup time of domestic operating systems is gradually shortened,Finally achieved a 14 second leap in 2022.

The gap between domestic operating systems and products from top international manufacturers has narrowed from 10 years or even longer to 3 to 5 years, "Liu Wenhuan said.

Nowadays, the unified information operating system has been implemented in multiple key industries such as banks and telecommunications operators, and the latest home version was also unveiled at the beginning of this year. However, the emerging domestic operating system still faces the risk of "supply interruption" in the upstream open-source community, which in turn affects the sustainable development of the industry.

The reason for this is that the root community based on Linux open-source systems in China is located abroad, "Liu Wenhuan said. The root community can help operating system manufacturers break free from the constraints of upstream open-source communities and obtain better protection in terms of information security. Visually speaking, even the 'supply chain' needs to be secure.

Two months after starting up in 14 seconds, based on the three major independent open-source communities around the world, Tongxin has released China's first desktop operating system root community, the "deep community". Starting from the "root", it has mastered the development rights and upstream community leadership of open-source operating systems, attracting global enthusiasts to contribute code and creativity to domestic operating systems.

'Nourishing' comes from the main industrial chain

In 2014, the Windows XP system, which was highly sought after by Chinese people, stopped serving, and for a while, a large number of enterprises and individual users were in chaos. Although most functions can still be used normally after the server is stopped, Microsoft vulnerability patches and system upgrade support are not available, making it easy to be attacked by viruses and hackers.

Six years later, Windows 10 stopped service, and the same situation occurred. This has further stimulated the driving force for Beijing to build an independent information and innovation industry system.

The calendar turns back to 30 years ago, Hu Weiwu, a doctoral student of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, needed to use a high-performance computer just introduced from abroad because of his experiment, but the password of this computer was in the hands of foreigners, and when using it, he needed to be monitored in a glass house.

Hu Weiwu, Chief Engineer of the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chief Designer of Longxin

This picture was deeply engraved in his heart. So, when Longxin was just starting, any well-known company that could come to mind would come to talk to Hu Weiwu about technology licensing cooperation. I understand these behaviors as' surrender the gun without killing '! "He saw that behind the technology authorization, Longxin gave up its ability to innovate and research, so he decisively refused.

30 years later, the boy in red at that time became Mr. White haired, and Hu Weiwu launched another more thorough and difficult "entrepreneurship".

The global information industry is mainly built on two ecosystems based on instruction sets and chip design, Wintel (Microsoft Intel Alliance) and AA (Android ARM). To produce CPUs that match them, one must first obtain the instruction set "authorization".

To be a fully independent and innovative CPU, it is necessary to also achieve autonomy at the underlying technical level of the instruction setIn 2021, LongArch, the independent instruction system architecture of Longxin, was officially released by Longxin Zhongke, achieving a significant technological breakthrough in its ecological construction. This marks a shift from following development to fully independent development in terms of independent information technology system and industrial ecological construction.

The Loongson 3A5000, which supports a boot time of 14 seconds, adopts the LoongArch autonomous instruction system architecture and no longer requires foreign authorization.

One innovative breakthrough after another is refining the Beijing information and innovation industry chain: a batch of global benchmark products such as ZTE Database, Guoke Tianxun Avionics Bus Protocol Chip, and Qingteng Cloud Security have been born, and a domestic information technology system has been preliminarily formed. The National Information and Innovation Park by Tongming Lake in Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone has gathered more than 90% of the country's top information technology enterprises, forming a coverage of high-performance chips, operating systems, databases, complete machine terminals, and system integration The information and innovation industry ecology of the whole industry chain, such as Network Security Services.

Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone National Information Innovation Park Tongxin Software Technology Co., Ltd. "Ecological Adaptation Dispatch Center"

Some products are like raising pigs, which can be sold for meat in one year; some products are like raising cows, which can be plowed and worked in three years; and our products are like raising children, which need to be raised for twenty years to become matureHu Weiwu compared technological breakthroughs to "raising children", vividly condensing the difficult process of information technology breakthroughs, and also indicating that the autonomy of the information and innovation industry still has a long way to go.

The "Beijing farmers" who have worked hard for many years still need to make greater efforts to innovate and make breakthroughs in order to benchmark the world's top class and build a solid "base" for China's economic Digital transformation and industrial chain upgrading.

Disclaimer: The content of this article is sourced from the internet. The copyright of the text, images, and other materials belongs to the original author. The platform reprints the materials for the purpose of conveying more information. The content of the article is for reference and learning only, and should not be used for commercial purposes. If it infringes on your legitimate rights and interests, please contact us promptly and we will handle it as soon as possible! We respect copyright and are committed to protecting it. Thank you for sharing.(Email:[email protected])

Mobile advertising space rental

Tag: seconds Chinese people own CPU+operating system achieving leap forward