Chapter 174 - 170 Challenge_1

As for Abe’s excellent aerospace performance this year, as well as the acts of using the space station to cultivate allies nearby and engage in benefit swaps, NACA did not have much of a reaction.

In other words, they did not know how to react.

Because this year was quite special, Ao Xiaohei had already fantasized in media interviews about how he would enjoy his retirement, completely neglecting his duties.

In Xiaohei’s 8 years, from the start, he slashed Little Bush’s "Constellation" major space program a lot, inflicting so much pain on NACA that it was forced to make many cuts.

However, since last year’s launch of the Artemis program, even if Xiaohei did not want to, he had no choice but to continuously increase investment in the space sector, and NACA began to see Xiaohei in a more favorable light.

They did not dare to hope for the next BOSS to approve more—they would be content if the current level was maintained.

It’s not even July yet, and the Old Witch appears to have a great chance of winning; NACA feels this is par for the course and should not have much impact on the Artemis program.

As for that blonde old man, it’s probably that his faction didn’t plan to run for the election, so they casually pushed out a real estate developer turned elderly idol, not worth additional attention.

...

A strange piece of news appeared recently in the domestic semiconductor field: Ternary chips had been commercialized and were even stronger than binary chips.

Those outside the industry did not know what to make of it, and even insiders were perplexed and scoffed at the idea.

Only a tiny group at the cutting edge truly sensed something amiss.

The story begins in April.

At the end of April, Xin’an’s two new car models, a 300,000-class family SUV and a 150,000-class family sedan, became available for pre-orders.

Both models were equipped with the new generation (castrated version) of the XW161 smart driving system, boasting endurance and performance slightly superior to competitors.

However, what’s more eye-catching was an announcement: after reaching a cumulative sales of 300,000 units for the two models, 20 lucky car owners would be randomly drawn to win spacecraft tickets.

This kind of brazen scenario, made possible by relying on aerospace companies, elicited disdain from other major automakers as they had no means to counter it.

Only Modu City Volkswagen announced it would tally this year’s sales for three car models, offering 4 slots to be drawn once the cumulative sales reached 300,000 units.

Where did those 4 slots come from? Naturally, they bought seats from New Yuan Aeronautics.

Although the number was small and the seats were on the confirmed flights, requiring the winners to share the ride with others, a little bit is better than nothing—it was a good start.

If every automaker wanted to compete for it, in the end, New Yuan would be the winner.

It would be a win-win situation.

But this was not the main point; the main point was what Baidu discovered.

Last year Baidu began to follow Google’s footsteps in working on smart driving, and upon seeing how powerful XW151 was, they quickly bought one to disassemble and investigate the secret behind this fully commercialized advanced smart driving system.

But their engineers, faced with the wall that was the Ternary System, banged their heads bloody without being able to decipher the secret of the XW151. They had to change course and resort to the crude method of deciphering the hardware.

Upon opening the mainboard, the first thing they saw was the very familiar hard drive.

Micron enterprise-level solid-state drive, a quality product, removed it.

Then, while tracing through the mainboard, Baidu’s engineers discovered an astonishing issue:

The interface protocols on the mainboard were completely unheard of, all were unfamiliar wiring harnesses!

But looking at the dense labeling on the mainboard, it was clear this wasn’t some small-time company’s makeshift approach but rather one with its own systematic framework.

They found a way to make an adapter and continue the decryption, and after more than half a month of self-doubt, they finally confirmed that at least the chips and external components on this motherboard were not available on the market and must be custom-made.

Even more frightening was the fact that the XW151 system was ternary!

The conclusion was so shocking that they couldn’t believe it and had to verify it many times before accepting it as true.

Ternary, they didn’t even know how to copy that, not to mention they didn’t know in what language ternary code was written!

In the end, Baidu and Modu City’s Jiaotong University’s Microelectronics Laboratory collaborated to dissect and analyze the X32115 chip.

That is, they used lasers to erase the chip’s packaging layer by layer to reveal the inner circuit parts, which were then observed under an electron microscope.

During this process, they first identified from the packaging technology that these chips were contracted to SinoCore International, with a core part using a 28nm process, interspersed with 45nm and 55nm processes, and then they discovered an unusual Field-Effect Transistor (FET) structure.

That is, two transistors simulate the principle of a ternary base element. This was simple, yet the laboratory was still incredibly astounded by the discovery.

Over 800 million FETs represented that behind this ternary chip was a mature EDA design, the result of countless semiconductor researchers’ efforts over more than a decade!

But on Earth, where was there an organization that conducted long-term research on ternary elements and systems?

If it hadn’t been for the fact that the packaging indicated that the chips were manufactured by SinoCore International using a 28nm process, they would have doubted whether the product was of extraterrestrial origin.

Subsequently, they sought confirmation from SinoCore International, who revealed just a little information about these ternary chips, then remained silent.

The X32115 chip had iterated again, this year’s production was the X32116, which kept the same process but underwent many optimizations, enhancing specialized performance without increasing power consumption.

Moreover, the cost had also come down, the average price of the X32115 was about three thousand Yuan, while the average price of the X32116 was only two thousand five, much cheaper.

Together with its matching chips and storage components, SinoCore International made a fortune, but at the behest of their major investors, they kept quiet, so by the time it was given attention, it was already too late.

Therefore, the Science and Technology Committee only now learned from the shocked teams at Baidu and Modu City’s Jiaotong University, and the reluctant SinoCore International, that New Yuan has a mature ternary software and hardware development system, which may have already surpassed the current mainstream level.

The world’s mainstream chip processes are still 14nm and 16nm, while 28nm is already outdated.

Yet a ternary chip with a 28nm process impressively outperformed the binary chips with more advanced processes?

The Science and Technology Committee dismantled several X32115 and X32116 chips for analysis and then performed a detailed evaluation of the XW151 system.

The leader of the Loongson team, Fu Weiwu, was among those responsible for the analysis task.

Loongson’s recently released 3B2000 is believed by outsiders to be on par with the Core i3 550 released in 2010, which at least... speaks to a promising future.

Fu Weiwu was very surprised when he got his hands on the X32116; he knew about New Yuan’s autonomous driving technology, which was related to the GPU, and he had thought that Xin’an must have purchased professional cards from Nvidia or AMD.

Then someone told him that the X32116 he was holding was actually a mature ternary domestic processor and that its performance crushed that of mainstream deep learning cards? And there was an accompanying ternary system?

With an attitude of questioning life itself, Loongson and several experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences came together to conduct an intensive analysis of the X32116 and XW151 over the course of a month.

Finally, when the Science and Technology Committee asked them whether they were sure, Fu Weiwu nodded;

When asked if the performance was strong, Fu Weiwu nodded;

When asked if the ternary design was well developed, Fu Weiwu nodded;

They finally asked Fu Weiwu why he was silent, and he finally spoke up:

"This chip has challenged my life’s values. In my understanding, neither the X32116 nor the XW151 should exist on Earth, at least not appearing so silently and without fanfare."