Chapter 206 - 200 Breakthrough_1

"Impossible, absolutely impossible? This is utterly unscientific!"

Gordon Moore incredulously held the X32115 in his hands, which had been polished to reveal the wafer inside.

Just moments ago, under the electron microscope, Moore had clearly seen that the design of the 32115 was fundamentally different from any mainstream chip, starting from its base layer.

Born in 1929, Gordon Moore was most famous for what came to be known as "Moore’s Law," which posited that chip performance would double every 18 months while the price would stay the same.

Now, at the age of 87, Moore simply couldn’t believe that he, who was in his twenties when Bell Labs invented the transistor in the 1950s, had witnessed the evolution of computing from relays and vacuum tubes to transistors and then integrated circuits.

It could be said that he knew everything about the rise of computers since their invention, and was intimately familiar with the developmental laws of chips.

But it was precisely for this reason that he understood what the X32115 in his hand represented; this damned thing shouldn’t even exist on Earth!

"Pat, Pat!"

Gordon Moore called over Pat Gelsinger, who would be the CEO of Intel in the future.

"Pat, are you really telling me that this was taken off a car and not pried from an alien spacecraft by the military?

You know, unless the Temporal Displacement Alliance is still alive, how could such an advanced ternary chip possibly exist? Look at these encapsulation areas... This would take at least 5 to 10 years to mature."

Pat: "But it’s not just made by humans; it’s also produced in China. The piece you have in your hand was manufactured by SinoCore International during the 50th week of 2015, they have imprinted this information on the packaging."

"Damn!"

China? That mysterious country?

Old Moore thought about the former alliance relationship between China and the Union. Could it be that after the dissolution of the Union, this technology took root in China, was gradually advanced by secret laboratories, and was now suddenly challenging the binary system?

What a complete mess!

Pat: "Mr. Moore, perhaps what we need to do is not to seek out the roots of the technology but to first understand what a ternary system is like. To some extent, this is also an opportunity for us and perhaps even for all of humanity."

By now, Gordon Moore had also come to his senses; the nature of a business elite immediately made him realize the significance of China’s emergence with ternary technology.

"Right, we need to hold the patents for ternary technology, whether or not this path is feasible."

...

As Xinyuan continued to sell customized car machines to the outside world, more and more people discovered the secret of the X321/322 series chips.

A long time ago, when the XC4 was released, it caused a huge stir in the field of artificial intelligence, especially since the XW151 car machine used domestic Chinese chips, which was even more perplexing.

However, many relaxed their vigilance after discovering that only parts of the X32115 chip were built on the 28nm process, believing the smartness of the XC4 was due to advanced algorithms rather than the power of the chip itself.

They had tried to find some clues from public papers for over half a year but found none.

As a well-known aerospace enterprise, Xinyuan would certainly publish papers and apply for patents; however, any technology that was beyond its time or took a different technological path was kept strictly confidential by Xinyuan Company.

Moreover, as the company controlled more and more advanced technologies, many were not patented but simply had a basic exchange site established on Xinyuan’s internal ternary company network, where engineers could communicate with each other.

Everything about ternary was absent from the external world.

But the secret wouldn’t last forever. With the three semiconductor manufacturers in China producing so many chips, the news that Xinyuan had mastered a mature ternary computing system naturally started to circulate.

When this information reached overseas, companies like Intel, AMD, and Nvidia were initially incredulous; how could it be possible?

An aerospace enterprise, switching to chip production? A ternary system, no less. Could the X86 architecture be so easily overturned?

This arrogance lasted until they began to analyze the X321 series chips. Nvidia was the first to realize the potential, as artificial intelligence AI deep learning has always been related to GPUs.

When the chip was polished, Jensen Huang discovered that something was amiss and, upon closer inspection, it was indeed a ternary architecture!

It was also at this time that the world’s patent library gradually began to fill with patents for ternary technology, including basic IC design, functional architecture, software and hardware support, and so forth. Upon checking, the patent holder was none other than Xinyuan Company.

So... were the rumors true?

Of course, they were.

On the back-end of the national patent office website, in the computer and chip section, each refresh revealed major patents.

This was the result of the bustling work of both Xinyuan and several patent offices.

Lin Ju had long been prepared, so when Xinyuan’s engineers came to register patents, each was armed with a thick stack of documents, keeping the staff of the various patent offices busy.

For the most foundational aspects of the ternary chip’s design, over 1900 patents were applied for. While not a high number, it was enough to firmly grasp the hegemony of the ternary chip.

At the same time, reviewed and revised papers began to be sent out to internationally renowned professional journals, and Xinyuan gradually disclosed more about the ternary system to the outside world.

The ACM, Association for Computing Machinery, founded since the world’s first computer ENIAC was born in 1947, is the absolute authority in the field of computer technology.

On July 8th in a single day, they received more than 20 papers, all with the same address but different signatures.

Chief Editor Viktor initially thought it was a prank and someone was trying to flood the inbox, but after seeing the affiliation as New Yuan Aerospace Power Microelectronics Department, he decided to take a closer look, and from then on, he was hooked.

Because these twenty-plus papers summarized a mature ternary system, explained its features, and aimed to give an accurate understanding of ternary. Although they didn’t contain a lot of professional content, they entirely presented a new field, which was eye-opening.

You should know, some industry insiders had come to believe that binary might be reaching its end and that the next generation of computers for humanity should be quantum computers, with traditional computers being phased out.

Quantum computers come in several varieties, and according to these papers, ternary computers actually had potential for quantum computing?!

Viktor quickly forwarded these papers to other editors and wrote a very long reply, inviting the authors to hold further discussions at the society, and awarded the twenty-plus papers with the highest manuscript fees as a reward.

Besides, he also had a hunch that these papers were just the tip of the iceberg and that Xinyuan might have already made deep breakthroughs in ternary.