King of Technology: A Fresh Start in 1983

Su Wanqing's laboratory is located in a quiet corner on the far west side of the main building of the research institute.

It is a Soviet-style building that is completely independent of the other project groups.

There wasn't even a nameplate at the entrance, just a handwritten house number.

The next afternoon, Chen Jianghe stood five minutes early at the door, took a deep breath, and pushed open the door to Su Wanqing's laboratory…

A more complex and intense odor, mixed with the metallic coolness of precision instruments, wafted towards me!

There were no neatly arranged desks.

There is only one huge, heavy steel experimental table.

It was covered with a dark blue rubber pad, covered with tool scratches.

Above the lab bench are dense hanging racks.

Countless wires, coaxial cables, temperature probes, etc., were suspended from the ceiling, secured with tape and wooden clips.

The exhaust fan in the corner hummed softly.

The most eye-catching thing on the experimental table is a disassembled black computer.

The outer casing was removed and set aside, revealing the crowded circuit boards inside.

Chen Jianghe immediately recognized the key chip on it:

Motorola 68000!

This is a microprocessor with a 32-bit complex instruction set computer architecture!

Primarily used in Apple's Macintosh series computers, professional workstations and embedded systems, including Sega's game consoles.

It was a whole era ahead of the 16-bit 8086 we played with in the computer lab!

Various high-speed chips were scattered around...

High-density dual in-line memory, high-precision crystal oscillator, cache controller…

There was also a Winchester hard drive that had been disassembled down to its skeleton.

And several 5.25-inch floppy disk drives.

An invisible pressure permeated the air.

Unlike a computer lab, this place doesn't have the heavy feeling of learning by trial and error.

It's more like they're on a special mission, at the forefront of exploring unknown territory!

Every solder joint and every flying wire exudes a fierce determination to seize every second and overcome all obstacles.

Su Wanqing, wearing a white lab coat, was leaning over one side of the lab table.

Holding a solid microscope, he stared at a tiny ceramic-encapsulated chip on the table, secured with precision clamps.

With utmost concentration, he used an extremely fine metal probe to touch a specific point on the surface of the wafer.

Next to it was a heavy Soviet-made oscilloscope, on which a more complex signal pattern, closer to a square wave, was displayed.

"You're here?"

Su Wanqing didn't even raise her head; her voice was cold and direct.

"Close the door."

"The machine we're disassembling today is the 'seed' for providing the graphics processing core for a key national project."

"The spark?" Chen Jianghe's heart skipped a beat.

"Hmm," Su Wanqing finally straightened up and pointed to a pile of scattered circuit boards.

"The new thing the US has come up with is called a graphics workstation. It works very well, but it's in the top ten of the embargo list."

"We acquired several critical processing boards, codenamed 'Spark'."

The task is to understand its core image compression engine algorithm...

"Then we'll find a way to copy it, or... replace it!"

Her tone was calm, yet it carried an immense weight.

"Three days later, people from Department D will come to hear the preliminary report."

"Right now, we haven't even fully figured out the timing logic of this core processing chip."

"Not to mention the firmware logic inside."

Su Wanqing turned her gaze to the dismantled 68000 platform.

"We're encountering difficulties debugging the platform..."

He then pointed to the small crystal under the microscope.

"When this coprocessor is connected to the bus for intensive data exchange, the entire system frequently experiences inexplicable deadlocks."

"The problem must be solved before we can proceed with the next step of reverse analysis."

Chen Jianghe then understood what Su Wanqing meant by "more hardcore" yesterday.

This is not just about dissecting a machine.

It's more like an attempt to dissect an atomic bomb of core Western information technology!

The difficulty level has increased by several orders of magnitude!

"These are the existing clues..."

Su Wanqing tossed a few sheets of paper to Chen Jianghe.

These are overlay images of several key signal waveforms captured by an oscilloscope.

She also wrote down in a programming language the observation records of the states of several key CPU registers at the moment of deadlock.

These observation tools were extremely rudimentary and primitive; the diagrams on the paper were chaotic and disordered, and the register states were a jumble of random characters.

This shows that when a deadlock occurs, bus control is completely disrupted.

"We speculate that the coprocessor has special requirements for the timing of its response to bus signals... or there is a conflict in the bus arbitration logic."

"But no matter how we adjust the configuration of the wait state generator or optimize the fan-out capability of the driver chip, deadlocks still occur randomly."

Su Wanqing frowned slightly, clearly this problem had been troubling her for a long time.

What do you think?

She threw the difficult question at Chen Jianghe, clearly testing him.

This isn't a computer lab where you can break through a problem with a chance observation.

This requires truly solid theoretical foundations, meticulous analysis, and a deep understanding of the underlying hardware interactions.

Chen Jianghe took the papers, and his heart started racing again!

But this time it wasn't because of nervousness.

It's not the excitement of facing a real challenge!

He immediately sat down in front of an empty chair and took the few pieces of paper that Su Wanqing had thrown to him.

My eyes were focused on the jumbled signal graphics and numbers.

He did not rush to conclusions.

Instead, it captures several waveforms from the oscilloscope, including the signal names…

Motorola 68000's address strobe signals, data strobe signals, bus request, bus authorization, etc...

The marked time and voltage fluctuations are listed one by one…

Combined with the register states recorded by Su Wanqing... although chaotic, the specific combinations of chaos were recorded...

Redraw it as clearly as possible.

The official bus timing standard parameters for the Motorola 68000 processor are also listed.

Chen Jianghe's brain was working at high speed.

Meanwhile, those seemingly meaningless gibberish and chaotic waveforms...

In his view, it is about decomposing, reconstructing, and searching for the intrinsic connections.

Time passed second by second.

The only sounds in the lab were the low hum of the exhaust fan and the sizzling of soldering irons...

The occasional subtle sounds of Su Wanqing operating the precision probe.

Su Wanqing was carefully examining the physical packaging of the coprocessor chip under a microscope…

After half an hour.

Fine beads of sweat appeared on Chen Jianghe's forehead.

He had already filled the paper with various arrows, logical symbols, and time difference markings.

A completely different line of thought from Su Wanqing's was becoming increasingly clear in his deductions!

He suddenly raised his head, his eyes gleaming with confidence.

"Engineer Su! It's not an external signal timing issue!"

"It's an abnormal state machine jump in the bus arbitration logic!"

"Oh?" Su Wanqing put down the microscope and looked over in surprise.

Chen Jianghe immediately pointed to the time sequence logic diagram he had drawn, speaking very quickly but clearly.

Look at these pictures!

"At the moment of deadlock... all critical bus control signals were set to invalid or high impedance!"

This doesn't conform to any typical error pattern!