If you worked abroad for a year, equivalent to 70 years at home, would you give up your high salary and return home?
1, he let foreigners invent a computer can understand "Chinese"
In 1961, Ni Guangnan, who graduated from university, was assigned to the Institute of Computer Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to engage in computer research, and soon after joining the work, he participated in the development of the first self-designed tube computer in the mainland, the 119 machine, and successively served as the chief of the commissioning unit and the plug-in team leader.
At that time, the 119 machine was composed of a tube that now seems quite primitive, because the tube is very easy to damage and needs to be replaced frequently, which requires the plug-in team leader to be very familiar with the various circuits in the computer, this work experience, so that Ni Guangnan benefited a lot, laid the foundation for his later research and development of Lenovo Hanka and Lenovo microcomputer.
In 1964, under the collective efforts of the researchers of the Institute of Computing, the 119 machine was successfully developed, and the operation speed reached 50,000 times per second, which was almost the limit speed of the electron tube computer, and Chinese finally had the strength to independently develop the computer.
In 1981, the American IBM company launched the world's first commercial computer: IBM-PC, and the electronic computer began to go out of the science laboratory and into the lives of enterprises, families and ordinary people.
When the computer came to China, we found a big problem: the computer to face a completely different language environment from English, English with 26 letters can be combined into any word, but there are more than 6,000 commonly used Chinese characters, if you do not solve the computer in English and Chinese characters conversion problem, the promotion of computers in China will be difficult to move, no computer China will soon lag behind the world. At that time, it was even said that in the computer age, Chinese would disappear completely and be replaced by English.
When he was a child, Ni Guangnan, who was forced to flee with his parents due to the invasion of invaders, had long regarded the rejuvenation of the country through science and technology as a lifelong dream, of course, he could not hope that such a thing would appear, how to use software and hardware technology to solve the problem of Chinese character information processing, became the focus of his research, but at that time, China did not have the ability to mass-produce integrated circuits, and his research once encountered bottlenecks.
At this time, a perfect opportunity came, the National Research Institute of Canada saw Ni Guangnan's research on graphic processing Chinese characters, was very interested in it, invited him to the National Research Institute of Canada as a visiting scholar, and gave him a salary of 43,000 Canadian dollars, which was 70 times his salary in China at that time.
During his time as a visiting scholar in Canada, Ni Guangnan continued his research on Chinese character information processing, because he was exposed to advanced computer technology abroad, his research progressed rapidly, such a high salary, such a good scientific research condition, if replaced by others, there may be one more Canadian Chinese computer expert, what kind of choice will Ni Guangnan make?
2. Give up the high salary to return to China, and develop Lenovo Hanka to become famous in one fell swoop
In 1984, the Institute of Computer Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences established a company called the Institute of Computer Technology Development of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the leader of this company was Liu Chuanzhi, who was later known as the "godfather of entrepreneurship".
However, at that time, it was not easy to start a business, a group of science and technology bigwigs did not know what to sell, in order to maintain the company's operation, upside down the color TV, sold sweatpants, the Chinese Academy of Sciences allocated 800,000 funds, but also been cheated away 500,000, seeing that the company can not continue to operate, what to do? Liu Chuanzhi, Wang Shuhe, and Zhang Zuxiang stayed together to discuss countermeasures, agreed to write the answer on the paper, and opened it to see that they were all the same person's name: Ni Guangnan.
They looked at ni Guangnan's soon-to-develop successful Chinese character processing technology, if this thing is produced and plugged into the computer, it will become the standard of Chinese computers, and the market space is huge.
After receiving the invitation, Ni Guangnan, who was far away in Canada, did not hesitate to give up the job with an annual salary of 70 times, bought a ticket back to China, and paid for his own money to bring back all kinds of equipment and parts needed for research.
In 1983, Ni Guangnan returned to China, in 1984, LX-80 (Lenovo 80) successfully developed, which is the first Lenovo Chinese character graphics microcomputer independently developed by the mainland, when a Chinese character is typed on this microcomputer, it will show the Chinese characters related to it in a lenovo way, and our current Lenovo input method is almost the same, more than 30 years ago, this is a groundbreaking invention, the Chinese character processing efficiency of this microcomputer is dozens of times higher than the Chinese character processing software of the same period in China.
However, the sales of this microcomputer in the market are not ideal, Ni Guangnan also found the problem, although the Chinese character processing speed is very fast, but the lack of application software support, can not meet people's daily work needs.
At this time, IBM-PC has occupied the global market and become the standard for computers, so he made a bold decision: he ported the technology of Lenovo 80 to the PC, so Lenovo 80 became Lenovo Hanka.
In order to make Lenovo Hanka come out as soon as possible, Ni Guangnan led the technical team to work overtime, all year round, he said in his recollection: At 10:00 a.m. on the first day of the New Year in 1985, the research and development team put into work, and half a year later, Lenovo Hanka was officially introduced to the market, became a hit, became the standard for buying computers at that time, and also solved the problem that has been hanging in people's minds: In the computer age, Chinese characters can also be used normally, and there is no need to worry about being eliminated.
Good products also brought high yields, at that time Lenovo Hanka, each price of up to 3,000 yuan, in the entire life cycle of Lenovo Hanka, a total of 160,000 sets of sales, for the company brought hundreds of millions of yuan of profits. As a result, the company was renamed "Lenovo Group".
According to Moore's Law, the computing power of the computer will double every 18 months, so after a few years, the hardware resources of the PC itself can complete the Chinese character processing work, and Lenovo Hanka is also slowly being eliminated by the market.
3. The chief engineer was forced out
In Lenovo Hanka just gained a foothold in the market, Ni Guangnan began the research and development of the next generation of microcomputers, in 1988, Ni Guangnan began to develop independent computers, at that time, the hardware of the computer has been modularized, most of the computer companies are from abroad to buy accessories, their own assembly, but Ni Guangnan to do is to independently develop computer boards, the production of the real sense of chinese computers.
In 1989, Lenovo 286 microcomputer was launched, which was the first generation of 16-bit computers in the mainland, the calculation speed was 1.6 times faster than the domestic assembly machine, Ni Guangnan brought it to the Hanover exhibition, got countless praise, was snapped up, orders from britain, France, Italy and other more than twenty countries. Success did not stop Ni Guangnan, he led the team to continue to set off, and continuously developed Lenovo 386, 486, 586 microcomputers, which made great contributions to the popularization of computers in mainland China.
Ni Guangnan also won the first prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award twice for Lenovo Hanka and Lenovo Microcomputer. In 1994, Ni Guangnan, dressed in honors, was selected as one of the first academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Lenovo became the first brand of computers in China from an ordinary company in Zhongguancun.
Lenovo's success is both a commercial success and a success of core technology, if there is no success of Hanka and Lenovo Microcomputer, I don't know that there is no Lenovo today, who can say it clearly.
What is the core technology? Ni Guangnan realized that it was a chip, he not only had to independently develop computer chips, but also develop communication equipment chips, changing the status quo of the "seven countries and eight systems" in the Chinese communications market at that time, but the research and development of chips required huge investment, and Lenovo at that time, bent on how to make money, so between the CEO and the chief engineer, there was a dispute between the "trade industry technology" or "technology industry and trade" route.
At that time, the Chinese who had just made a little money, the desire for wealth was extremely strong, after all, everyone was poor and afraid, no one was willing to take the money that had not yet been hot to engage in technology, lenovo's development should listen to who in the end, when the CEO and the chief engineer had their own opinions, one of them became a good choice, so a note negated all ni Guangnan's efforts and contributions in Lenovo, dismissed his position as the chief engineer of Lenovo, when the company was struggling, he was taken as a life-saving straw. And when the Lenovo Group is growing stronger, this hero has been kicked away? What a thing is this doing?
In 1995, Ni Guangnan's departure also cooled the hearts of many people, most of the technical backbones have also left, since then, Lenovo from a company with independent research and development capabilities, to a marketing company, the core competitiveness from independent research and development to the world to acquire other non-performing assets to deal with.
Also in this year, in the south of Shenzhen, a company with less than a quarter of Lenovo's sales, but insisted on taking out most of the profits every year to invest in technology research and development, accumulated a large number of core technologies, and eventually grew into a representative of China's technology companies, this company is called Huawei. Let's assume that if Lenovo had invested in chips in the direction of Ni Guangnan and occupied the computer and communication markets, would Huawei still have a chance?
Ni Guangnan, who left Lenovo, is like a parent, who was robbed of his child who had provided for half his life, and his heart was hollowed out, but he was not knocked down, or continued to develop domestic chips and operating systems, just like Professor Zheng Qiang said: Real scientists have a sense of mission.
After leaving Lenovo, countless technology companies extended an olive branch to Ni Guangnan, but he was not moved, because he was waiting for a reliable person, a person who had confidence in domestic chips. Did he wait for such a person?
4, for the sake of domestic chips, into the big pit of businessmen
In 2000, a man named Li Delei entered ni Guangnan's sight, they were ni Guangnan when he was a visiting scholar in Canada, Li Delei's company in Canada is a partner of Hitachi Semiconductor, has been undertaking the outsourcing work of Hitachi Semiconductor, and then Hitachi suddenly withdrew the outsourcing business, which made Li Delei lose the source of business.
Li Delei was not willing to give up, so he returned to China and established Beijing SMIC on the basis of the original company, which was later renamed "Ark Technology". Because in the long-term cooperation with Hitachi, Li Delei's company has a very mature chip development team, which makes Ni Guangnan surprised and happy, and full of confidence in the future of Chinese chips.
As long as it is good for the development of domestic chips, Ni Guangnan can go all out, he does not want wages, do not share shares, free for SMIC micro work, SMIC's R & D team is also very hard, in 2001, the first "Ark One" 32-bit RISC architecture embedded CPU product launched, which is China's real independent research and development of the first CPU chip, was temporarily praised on the altar, after a year, "Ark II" was officially released, Beijing SMIC also officially renamed "Ark Technology".
Ni Guangnan's fame and the title of "domestic first core" have brought a large number of orders to Ark Technology, and I can't imagine that Li Delei ignores the market orders and only supplies them to ZF institutions, however, Ark chips soon encountered trouble, and many times are incompatible with software, and this problem, relying solely on Ark Technology, a company can not solve, Li Delei also does not bother to deal with these broken things, his purpose is only to make money.
Slowly, the Ark chip was ignored, and it continued to cause trouble, and when many people took Li Delei helplessly, they aimed the spearhead at Ni Guangnan and scolded him as an "old film" and "D flickering". In the face of all kinds of accusations, Ni Guangnan was confused, not only did not get any benefits, but also caused a body of infamy, for China's chips, is it worth it? Is it time to give up?
5, Ni Guangnan's predictions have all come true, and domestic chips have been valued again
Will Ni Guangnan give up? Of course not, this is the cause he wants to fight for all his life, how can he easily give up, but after the Ark thing, he also realized that the chip to achieve localization, not which company can do success, but the need for the participation of the whole industry, so he became a domestic chip popularizer, flag bearer.
He said that the technology is mastered by others, people can control it remotely, and even stop all functions at any time. Many people listened and thought he was being alarmist.
However, after a series of events, it proves that Ni Guangnan is not wrong at all, in 2013, in the Prism Gate incident, Snowden broke out, the M country intelligence department can obtain Microsoft, Google, Apple and other Internet companies at any time user data analysis, through the Cisco device gateway can listen to any computer in the world.
In 2018, China's second-ranked communications company ZTE, sanctioned by country M, overnight, the communication giant faced life and death, 76-year-old founder Hou Xigui personally went to the United States to negotiate, pulling a suitcase to board the plane photo full of sadness, but there is no core technology in exchange for only the alliance under the city, ZTE incident ended with more than 7 billion US dollars in fines to M country, this huge amount is equivalent to the sum of ZTE's 6 years of profits.
In 2019, Huawei, which has become the world's largest communications company, is also sanctioned by the M country, all chip companies are not allowed to sell chips to Huawei, nor are they allowed to do OEM work for chips designed by Huawei, Huawei, which has been completely cut off from the source of chips, the mobile phone business has fallen to the bottom, from the world's first to the famous Sun Mountain, it only took half a year, with a loss of hundreds of billions.
At this time, everyone understood the importance of independent chips, and also remembered Ni Guangnan, who has always insisted on independent research and development of chips, and the people who scolded him at the beginning began to admire his foresight at that time, and on this day, 28 years have passed since Ni Guangnan left Lenovo, how many 28 years does a person have, how many 28 years can a GJ develop, and how many 28 years can he miss?
In our nation, there are always a few people in every era, for the sake of the interests of the nation, for the future of the country, they do not care about personal gains and losses, even if they face great pressure and misunderstanding, they will use their life's energy to insist on doing one thing, in real life, they will be regarded as "fools", because they will not seek advantages and avoid harm; in difficult times, they will be remembered and regarded as heroes. They themselves have long put these personal fame and fortune aside, and they have moved forward with a national mission in mind, and they are the backbone of our nation!
Thank you for watching, if you want to know a more detailed Ni Guangnan, it is recommended to read the book "Ni Guangnan Great Craftsman "Core"", I read it with tears.
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