Chapter 97 8-bit chip? This is practically dancing on a needle!

Voices of doubt rose one after another.

Everyone present was an expert; who didn't know that CNC systems were resource-hungry?

Foreign companies like Fanuc and Siemens used dedicated industrial chips and had already moved on to 16-bit systems.

Using this pile of junk for high-precision work?

Isn't this just a joke?

"I'd love to use something good, even an Intel 8086,"

Lin Xi leaned forward with his hands on the table, his gaze cold.

"But the COCOM embargo list is crystal clear."

"High-performance chips above 16-bit, whether for civilian or military use, are strictly forbidden from entering China."

"We can't get them."

"Even if we could, they'd be at astronomical black market prices, making mass production impossible."

The meeting room fell silent, save for the sound of sighs.

"So, we have to change our approach."

Lin Xi turned around and drew a circle on the blackboard.

"Western CNC systems are as bloated as pigs."

Lin Xi grabbed the eraser and fiercely wiped away everything around the circle, leaving only a single point in the center.

"What we're going to build is a 'microkernel'."

"We'll cut out all redundant interrupt requests and modules."

"This Z80—I won't let it do anything else."

"I'll only let it do two things: position feedback and error correction."

"It's like concentrating all your force onto the very tip of a needle."

Lin Xi's voice echoed through the room:

"We're going to squeeze every last drop of performance out of this 8-bit chip!"

The engineers looked at one another.

While they felt Lin Xi had a point,

a technical chasm cannot be filled by passion alone.

"Manager Lin, it's theoretically feasible,"

the expert from before said, pushing up his glasses with a bitter smile,

"but there's one fatal flaw—floating-point arithmetic."

"CNC machine tools need to move in arcs, which involves a massive amount of trigonometric functions and square root calculations."

"The Z80 doesn't have a floating-point coprocessor."

"As soon as it hits a decimal point, it'll lock up."

"It's like asking an elementary schooler to calculate Pi in their head; they just can't do it."

This was a deadlock.

Unless they changed the chip, this was an insurmountable physical barrier.

The meeting room fell into silence once more.

Jiang Jun and Zhao Qiang also frowned; this was a fundamental weakness that couldn't be bypassed.

Just then.

*Crunch.*

The crisp sound of someone chewing milk candy was particularly jarring in the quiet corner.

Everyone's eyes swiveled toward the source.

They saw Liu Xiaodong chewing on a White Rabbit candy, holding up a piece of scratch paper covered in scribbles.

"Um..."

The boy blinked, looking completely innocent.

"Why run floating-point? Can't we just... not run floating-point?"

The expert was half-amused and half-exasperated:

"Kid, if we don't run floating-point, how do we calculate coordinates? How do we move in an arc?"

"Lookup tables."

Liu Xiaodong said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

He hopped down from his chair and walked slowly to the blackboard.

*Screech—*

The chalk made a tooth-grinding sound against the board.

As he wrote, Liu Xiaodong mumbled indistinctly:

"First, we pre-process all arc paths into twenty thousand coordinate points."

"Then we store all those points in the memory."

"When the machine tool needs to move, the CPU doesn't need to calculate sine and cosine; it just goes to the memory to 'look it up in the dictionary'."

*Scribble, scribble, scribble!*

Lines of bitwise operation formulas, streamlined to the absolute limit, appeared on the blackboard.

"This turns complex multiplication and division into simple addition, subtraction, and bit-shifting operations."

"The Z80 can't handle multiplication well, but it's great at bit-shifting."

Finally, Liu Xiaodong drew a period at the end of the formula.

He patted the chalk dust off his hands and turned to look at the stunned crowd.

"It's called... trading space for time."

The expert stared unblinkingly at the algorithm on the blackboard, his eyes nearly popping out of his head.

What kind of divine inspiration was this?

Everyone there was an expert; they only needed one look to see—

this method actually freaking worked!

Not only did it work, but it bypassed all complex mathematical calculations.

It directly lowered the difficulty to a range the Z80 could handle!

"A genius..."

The expert's lips trembled as he looked at the kid who was already unwrapping a second candy.

"He's a literal genius..."

Jiang Jun and Zhao Qiang exchanged a look, both seeing the shock in each other's eyes.

Where on earth did Lin Xi dig up such a monster?

Is that brain even human?

Lin Xi watched the scene, the corners of his mouth curling up slightly.

This was a standard operating procedure for future embedded development.

But in 1981, it was a god-tier technique that felt like a strike from a higher dimension!

Those few lines of code on the blackboard were outrageously concise.

They stunned everyone present.

The Z80 chip, the lookup table method, trading space for time.

The logic was simply beautiful.

Jiang Jun stared intently at the blackboard, fire practically spitting from his eyes.

As a former backbone of the Institute of Optics and Mechanics, he knew exactly what this meant.

It meant Red Star Technology had bypassed the Western blockade on high-performance chips.

Using cheap civilian chips, they could still achieve industrial-grade control precision!

"Manager Lin!"

Jiang Jun turned around abruptly, his voice trembling with excitement.

"The hardware and software logic are both sound."

"Is our next step to start on the five-axis linkage system immediately?"

"That's a true pillar of the nation!"

"Give me some time."

"Even if I, Jiang Jun, have to put my life on the line,"

"I will make those high-precision grating scales!"

Zhao Qiang also cracked his knuckles, a look of fanaticism on his face.

"Yeah, Manager Lin."

"That kind of high-end stuff—I used to dream of just touching it."

"Now we have the people, the money, and the conditions. Let's do it!"

The air in the meeting room seemed to ignite.

Everyone's eyes flickered with a longing for the crown jewel of industry.

This was the endearing part of these technical fanatics.

As long as you gave them a path, they'd dare to charge through any wall.

However.

*Tap, tap.*

Lin Xi lightly tapped the table with his knuckles.

The crisp sound interrupted the crowd's fervor.

He didn't follow their lead.

Instead, he turned, picked up the eraser, and wiped a corner of the blackboard.

Then he forcefully wrote a new code name:

【Red Star · M1 CNC Retrofit Kit】

"five-axis linkage?"

"That's a trump card for foreigners to see later, not our meal ticket for now."

Lin Xi tossed the chalk aside and patted the dust off his hands.

He walked to the window and pointed at the few dark green machines sitting idle in the workshop outside.

"Our first task isn't to build new machine tools."

"It's to modify those—"

"Those C620 ordinary lathes."

Huh?

The air instantly froze.

In the meeting room, the fanaticism on Jiang Jun's face cooled rapidly.

It was replaced by a look of utter bewilderment.

"Manager Lin, you're not joking, are you?"

Jiang Jun stood up and pointed out the window.

"Those are C620s!"

"They're fully manual; precision depends entirely on the worker's feel and experience."

"That's 1950s technology!"

"We have the world's most advanced servo motors and a genius algorithm in our hands right now."

"And you want us to be... repairmen?"

Several engineers poached from large state-owned factories couldn't help themselves and began whispering.

"This is like using an anti-aircraft gun to swat a mosquito."

"Yeah, we're getting such good pay and eating braised pork just to do this?"

"This is so lacking in ambition..."

This sentiment was normal.

Who in tech wouldn't want to work on the most cutting-edge projects?

Who would want to roll around in grease and mess with those nearly scrapped old machines?

Only the 'steward' He Zhenhua, who had been sitting in the corner, remained silent.

His remaining right hand lightly stroked his chin.

His gaze moved back and forth between the old machine tools and Lin Xi.

He seemed to have grasped something, but he wasn't quite sure.