Chapter 40 DRAM Modules and CPU Cabinets

That's two chips!

Both chips are packaged in a gray-purple ceramic package, with 9 gold metal feet on each side and a gold metal sheet inlaid on the top.

Gao Zhendong carefully distinguished the words on the metal plates in his mind. The first five characters in the first line of one piece were C5, and the first five characters in the first line of the other piece were C8008.

The owner of this boutique is really talented. I guess this thing is regarded as a treasure or a special product in the store.

You should know that the two chips 8008 and 1103 start with C, but they are high-end products produced in the early stage. The golden color is not painted on, but plated with real gold.

This is incomparable to the later plastic packaging starting with D. By the time Gao Zhendong was in college, the prices of C8008 and C1103, which were good enough to be used as gifts, were not cheap.

It’s a big catch! Gao Zhendong was feeling happier than a fisherman who had caught a big fish. He just wished he couldn’t take the fish and walk around the city with it like the fisherman.

C8008, which Intel began selling in 1972, is widely recognized as the world's first mature and commercially available 8-bit CPU. It has an 18-pin dual in-line package (DIP18), a maximum frequency of 0.8MHz, a maximum number of instructions executed per second of approximately 8, an addressable space of 16KByte, and 3500 transistors.

C1103, which Intel began selling in 1970, is the world's first mature commercially available dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip, which is what we call memory today. It is also an 18-pin dual in-line package (DIP18), just like C8008, which can also save manufacturing costs for Intel. The capacity is 1kbit (bit), which is 128Byte (byte), and each bit is composed of a three-transistor storage unit, and the total number of transistors is also more than 1.

To people in the future, these two things seemed extremely weak in terms of performance and capacity, but in 1959, they were extremely powerful.

For example, on August 1958, 8, the 1 computer, which was copied from the old M-3 electronic tube computer, performed continuous operations for the first time at a speed of 103 times per second. After improvements, it reached 30 times per second. The 3 electronic tube computer, which was successfully copied in 1959, had a speed of 104 times per second.

However, the computing speeds of the computers in the above examples all refer to floating-point computing speeds. If converted into the number of instructions, there will be a significant increase. Moreover, the above computers all have a word length of more than 30 bits, which is much better than 8008.

Although domestic computers at that time had their own advantages over 8008 in terms of speed and word length, these computers were huge machines that would fill an entire room, not to mention the power consumption. With thousands of vacuum tubes, I wonder if you would be afraid of that.

The cost was even more outrageous. It was said that the cost of each 104 machine was 200 million RMB, which was 1959 million in 200.

How difficult are these computers to make? Let's look at the production volume. The total production volume of 103 computers is 38 units. This is the total production volume.

After talking about 8008, let's look back at 1103. Compared with the magnetic core memory that was successfully copied domestically in 59, this thing has three advantages: fast, small and cheap.

Just look at the 103's magnetic core memory and you'll know that with a capacity of 1024 bytes, you'll need several cabinets to house it, which are probably the size of a modern 42U cabinet.

Gao Zhendong felt these two things in his consciousness, and his heart was burning with excitement. Although he didn't know what these things would become after being extracted and modified for localization and age compliance, even if they could not be used, he would have made a fortune just by using a 8008 general-purpose CPU architecture.

Unable to contain himself, Gao Zhendong immediately rushed to Chief Engineer Chen's office and asked for leave from Old Chen. Seeing his red face, Old Chen thought he was sick and expressed his concern for him.

After taking the leave, Gao Zhendong rode his bike, moving his legs like flying, wishing he could pedal the bike into the ground. He quickly returned home, locked all the doors and windows, and drew all the curtains tightly. Gao Zhendong came to the south room where nothing was temporarily placed, ready to pick up the two treasures.

After all, after the system transformation, God knows what kind of weird thing will appear. Maybe it can fill the entire room like 103.

Gao Zhendong stood outside the door of the south room and started the extraction. He was afraid that he would be crushed to death if he stood in the room.

There were two things that appeared in the south room, and there were two paper materials next to them.

One thing is made of four 4cm square circuit boards stacked one on top of the other, separated by copper pillars in the middle. There are a large number of identical units on the four circuit boards, each of which is composed of three transistors and components such as resistors, capacitors, and inductors. There are some signal lines connecting the two boards, and on the edge of the upper circuit board, there are some circuits composed of transistors and resistors and capacitors, as well as a row of interfaces.

The other thing is a cabinet that is also 50 cm square and about 1 meter high. There are also multiple circuit boards stacked inside. Each circuit board contains different circuits composed of transistors, crystal diodes, and some resistors, capacitors, inductors and other components. The circuits on some of the boards are basically the same. At the bottom of the cabinet is something that looks like a power supply.

Gao Zhendong picked up two paper documents, quickly scanned them, and laughed. The system was really thoughtful.

There is no doubt that the 4-layer stack is the C1103 memory chip, no, it should be said to be a 128-byte DRAM module. And the cabinet, the result of the C8008 transformation, can be called a CPU module cabinet.

As for why two such small chips would become like this, it is because of the system modification.

As products of the 70s, C8008 and C1103 are undoubtedly impossible to extract in their original form in this era. Fortunately, although the technology of both is high, the principle is simple. In fact, even modern CPUs and memory use the same principle.

Simply put, it is to use integrated circuit technology to manufacture a large number of transistors and auxiliary components such as resistors and capacitors in silicon wafers to form various logic gates, and further form various functional modules. The final result is the CPU and memory.

This is also the reason why CPU manufacturers often mentioned the number of transistors when releasing new products, because the number of transistors represents further improvement in manufacturing process, functions and performance.

The system extraction process, on the other hand, does the opposite, disassembling the entire chip in reverse, breaking it down into individual transistors and peripheral components, using transistors and electronic components that already existed in China in 59 to fully implement the CPU and DRAM functions.

In his previous life, Gao Zhendong often saw DIY CPU projects on the Internet by some experts, who used 74 series logic chips and even transistors to build CPUs. He never expected that he would see the real thing now.

The system even prepared some heartwarming explanatory materials, which really made Gao Zhendong cry to death.

It seems that the extraction rules of this system seem to be based on "definition". When extracting a mobile phone, the definition of the item is "communication tool", so after the system modification, only a walkie-talkie, which is also a communication tool, can be obtained, and the chip in the mobile phone cannot be taken out.

To be honest, it's fortunate that these are first-generation products like C8008 and C1103, which only have more than 3000 transistors. If they were packaged with chips like those in mobile phones that have tens of thousands to hundreds of millions of transistors, it would really not be possible.

　There are many different statements about domestic computers in this article, due to historical reasons. I used the one that I think looks more appropriate.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)