enjoyebooks Chapter 103 UHSB
Chapter 103 UHSB
At 10:00 AM, at Oak Creek Golf Club outside Los Angeles, the weather was perfect, the sun was warm, and the fairways were neatly trimmed. Ling Yun stood beside the first tee box, with three guests beside him.
Michael Dell arrived first, dressed in a golf shirt and khaki pants, carrying his golf club bag. Next came Compaq CEO Eckhard Feffer, followed by HP CEO Lou Pratt. All three were dressed in business casual attire, with relaxed expressions on their faces, typical of the first day of the new year.
"Gentlemen, Happy New Year." Ling Yun shook hands with everyone. "Thank you for taking the time to come."
"Ling, you invited the three of us together, it definitely wasn't just for playing golf," Dale said directly, picking up a driver. "What's so important?"
Febreze and Platt also looked at Ling Yun. They were genuinely curious. It was unusual for the founder of a startup to simultaneously meet with the CEOs of the three major PC manufacturers.
"Let's finish the front nine holes first," Ling Yun smiled, taking his driver out of his bag. "Let's warm up first."
The four players teed off in turn. Dale's shot was straight and long, landing in the middle of the fairway. Favor's shot was slightly to the right, landing on the edge of the rough. Pratt hit a solid shot, landing on the left side of the fairway. Lingyun's shot was the longest, but the landing point was a bit off.
As they walked toward the golf cart, Favor spoke up: "Ling, we know your collaboration with Dell has already begun. Now you're contacting us to promote your Star System? If that's the case, I have to be frank—Compaq and Microsoft have a very deep partnership."
"It's not just the operating system." Ling Yun sat in the driver's seat of the ball car. "I have something I want to show you. It could change the entire landscape of PC peripherals."
Pratt raised an eyebrow with interest: "New hardware?"
"The new standard," Ling Yun replied simply.
They punched four holes. The atmosphere gradually relaxed, and they talked about industry trends, memory price fluctuations, and expectations for Windows 97. But all three of them could sense that Ling Yun was laying the groundwork for something.
Next to the fifth hole tee box, there was a spacious rest area with tables, chairs, and parasols. Lingyun stopped here.
"That's about it," he said. "Gentlemen, please have a seat. I'd like to demonstrate something."
He took a black, hard-sided suitcase from the side of his golf bag. The suitcase wasn't large, about the size of a laptop, but it was quite sturdy.
The three sat around a round table. Ling Yun opened his briefcase.
The box contained no complicated equipment, only a few items: a palm-sized circuit board with several chips and interfaces integrated on it; several metal interface samples of different sizes, silver-gray and exquisitely crafted; a stack of technical documents; and a modified IBM ThinkPad laptop with an unfamiliar interface on the side.
"What is this?" Dell picked up an interface sample and examined it closely. The interface was very small, much smaller than a parallel port and even smaller than a serial port. It had a metal casing and an elongated oval opening, inside which a row of fine gold contacts could be seen.
"Universal High-Speed Bus," Ling Yun said. "I'll call it UHSB for now. Universal High-Speed Bus."
Febrez picked up another interface sample and examined it from all angles: "It's a bit like the USB that Intel just released, but smaller. And... this opening shape, can it be plugged in either way?"
"Yes." Ling Yun nodded. "This is the first feature of my design: the foolproof design is not oriented by direction; it can be used either way. Users no longer need to look for the correct orientation of the interface."
Pratt picked up the circuit board: "What about the transfer speed? USB 1.0 is advertised as 1.5Mbps, but it's actually less than 1Mbps. That's too slow."
"The theoretical transmission speed of UHSB is 5Gbps," Ling Yun said calmly.
The air froze for three seconds.
"What did you say?" Febreze was the first to react. "5G? 5 gigabits per second? Are you sure you've got the units right?"
"OK." Ling Yun turned on the modified ThinkPad and started it up. "This is a prototype verification machine. I'll demonstrate it to you."
The computer booted up quickly and was running the Starry Sky system. Lingyun inserted a UHSB external hard drive—which was much smaller, only half the size of a regular hard drive—into the port on the side of the laptop.
With a soft "click," the magnetic design automatically snaps the connector into place. No screws or forceful pressing are required.
A notification immediately popped up in the lower right corner of the screen: "UHSB device connected. Storage device: Test disk. Capacity: 4.3GB."
"Now copy a file." Ling Yun opened a folder containing a video file, labeled as 1.2GB in size. He dragged it onto the removable hard drive icon.
A progress bar appears.
Then it moves forward at a speed visible to the naked eye.
10%...25%...50%...80%...
In less than twenty seconds, the progress bar finished. The transfer was complete.
"1.2GB, transfer time 18 seconds," Ling Yun said. "The average speed is about 66MB per second, which translates to about 530Mbps. This is the actual performance of the prototype; there is still room for optimization."
Dell, Favor, and Platt all stood up and crowded in front of the screen to watch.
“That’s impossible,” Platt shook his head. “SCSI-2’s top speed is only 10MB per second, and the IDE interface is only 16.6MB per second now. You’re showing 66MB per second… that’s six times faster than the fastest SCSI.”
"And it's plug and play?" Dell pointed to the small port. "No need to restart? No need to install drivers?"
"Plug and play." Ling Yun unplugged the external hard drive, and the screen indicated that the device had been safely removed. He replaced it with a UHSB mouse—a completely new design with no scroll ball and an optical sensor on the bottom.
Once inserted, the system immediately recognizes it, and the mouse pointer can be moved.
When I replaced it with a UHSB keyboard, it was recognized immediately as well.
"The protocol stack has been completely redesigned," Ling Yun began, speaking as if describing an ordinary product. "In terms of electrical structure, it adopts differential signal transmission, which has strong anti-interference capabilities. The communication mechanism is bidirectional full-duplex, allowing the host and devices to send and receive data simultaneously. The power supply design supports higher power, providing a maximum of 100 watts of power to peripherals—meaning that many peripherals no longer need independent power supplies."
He picked up the technical documents and turned to the physical interface design diagram: "As you can see, the interface size is 80% smaller than a parallel port and 60% smaller than a serial port. Considering that future mobile devices will become increasingly thinner and lighter, this size is appropriate. Moreover, the interface has been tested for lifespan, reaching 10,000 insertions and removals."
Febvre picked up a sample of the connector and compared its thickness to that of the watch on his wrist. The metal part of the connector was only about 3 millimeters thick.
"And the cost?" Dell asked the crucial question. "How much more expensive is it to manufacture this interface compared to the current serial and parallel ports?"
"With mass production, the cost of a single interface can be controlled to within $1.5," Ling Yun said. "It's even cheaper than the current serial-parallel port combination. The cable is also simple; four-core wire is enough, which is cheaper than the current thick cables. The only extra cost is the shielding layer."
Pratt sat back in his chair, took a deep breath, and said, "Ling, you know perfectly well that Intel just launched the USB 1.0 standard and is trying to garner support from manufacturers. Bringing this out now... are you preparing to wage a standards war against Intel?"
"It's not about war, it's about providing better options." Ling Yun put away his equipment and looked at the three of them. "USB 1.0 is too slow. 1.5Mbps is barely enough for a keyboard and mouse, let alone mobile storage, cameras, and audio devices. Moreover, the interface design is flawed; it has to be either right or wrong, resulting in a poor user experience."
He paused for a moment, letting them think about how they should choose.