Chapter 106: Little Watson's Worries

  "What about our large-scale machine plan, when will it be implemented?" Sanders suddenly asked again.

  Catherine was taken aback.

  "Mainframe? Supercomputer?"

  Sanders nodded.

  "Without a supercomputer, we would never be able to enter the mainstream...the configuration of personal computers is just too weak."

  Catherine nodded in agreement.

  "Hey, what if we were to dig up Seymour Cray?"

  Sanders was taken aback, and the question seemed somewhat inappropriate to him. Seymour Cray had more prestige and social standing than Sanders, and he really didn't know how to respond.

  However, after some thought, he said: "No problem, but now is not the best time. I can see that Seymour Kravitz has a crazy passion for supercomputers, and as long as we give him enough permission, I believe there will be no problem. It's just that if we want to dig him up, it would probably be better to wait until the end of the year or next year. His contradictions with his own company are getting more and more intense, and we only need to wait for the water to flow into the canal."

  Catherine nodded in satisfaction.

  "Sanders, how about this... you first come up with a plan for a large-scale machine, uh... definitely not like IBM's, the large-scale machine must be able to run smoothly, especially when compiling, this is the most important thing."

  She thought for a moment, then said: "As for the operating system, perhaps we can also work on it on the mainframe... Of course, this is not the most important thing, Seymour Cray may have some suggestions on this aspect. This matter will be temporarily handed over to you."

  Seymour Cray was great, but only in the supercomputer area. Katherine originally wanted to make him CEO of Apple, but she knew that the future trend was personal computers, and vector machines were a dead end, although they eventually came back around, Katherine thought that personal computers could not be abandoned.

  Especially since it's very likely that in the future you'll still have to develop personal system terminals for American soldiers.

  "Ah..."

  Back inside the house, Catherine let out a sigh of relief.

  Then she picked up a copy of Peter Drucker's "The Effective Executive" which had just been published last year, and began to flip through it.

  Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, was called "the master of masters", "the prophet of capitalism". Bill Gates and other outstanding rich men were deeply influenced by him.

  At this time, Peter Drucker was a consultant for General Electric, but within a few years he would be teaching at Claremont University.

  Catherine was considering whether she could invite him over to give her subordinates a few lessons, or hire him as a high-paying consultant.

  The current ARK Group is expanding rapidly as a whole, and in terms of management, it's just what's needed to make up for it. If the other party can really make up for the shortcomings of ARK Company in terms of management?

  It's just a pity that the other side is fixated on education. If only they could be poached to become the CEO, that would be perfect.

  Catherine thought for a moment and then opened her notebook, writing "Peter Drucker" under the Phoenix operating system.

  "That's it."

  In the following days, Katherine personally took charge and stationed herself at Apple's headquarters day and night to start developing this Phoenix operating system similar to DOS.

  As Catherine was immersed in writing the operating system, at IBM headquarters, Thomas John Watson Jr. was looking at a report about Intel Corporation in his hand, frowning and seemingly having a headache.

  His father was Thomas J. Watson Sr., the founder of IBM.

  In 1961, IBM's annual revenues reached $2 billion. The stock had quadrupled in value over the past five years. There were now 6,000 computers installed in the United States, and IBM accounted for 4,000 of them. People began to refer to the company as "Big Blue."

  Watson Jr. spent a whopping $5 billion, three times the company's annual revenue, to develop the 360 series of mainframe computers. Using the latest integrated circuit technology, Watson was confident that he could establish IBM as the dominant force in mainframes.

  Man proposes, God disposes.

  Seymour Cray's vector machine burst onto the scene, beating the 360 to market and at a cost of $7 million would also outdo IBM's behemoth.

  $5 billion vs $70 million, the huge gap made Little Watson somewhat disheartened. But he was indeed the leader of IBM, and soon he regained his composure.

  At this time, IBM found that Seymour Cray was having conflicts with the company. Although a new generation of machines was being developed, the invisible pressure on IBM had decreased significantly.

  At this time, Little Watson suddenly found that another company rising like a comet had become his opponent.

  ——Intel。

  To be precise, it should be ARK Group, that is, Catherine's Ark Corporation, whether Intel or Apple, are its subsidiaries.

  During its rapid expansion, ARK's vitality was strong, and various products emerged one after another, which is really admirable.

  The most important thing is that Little Watson got the news that the other side had already planned to advance into large-scale machines.

  It's hard to imagine what their entry will bring to the entire mainframe market.

  Moreover, and more importantly, according to the information he received, the concept of the opponent's large machine has clearly avoided many of the drawbacks that exist now, which IBM had not even considered before!

  But as soon as Catherine had stated these questions, little Watson realized that things were serious and seriously bad.

  Even IBM's future plans may have to be cancelled!

  Just like IBM's latest concept machine.

  This host runs all programs on the host itself, with terminals having only a display and keyboard.

  Such a machine does not limit the number of users, can dynamically allocate time according to the number of users, but each user's allocated "time slice" is relatively large. If only one person uses it, you won't feel anything.

  When the number of people is large, you can feel a noticeable pause every now and then, such as when compiling programs. An old-fashioned compiler is used, which prints a dot on the screen for each line scanned as feedback. If there are too many people, it will be found that after printing ten or twenty lines of dots, it will stop moving, at this time, other users' processes are executed. After a while, all other users have taken turns, continue to print dots, and print ten or twenty lines again, and then stop moving... This cycle continues until the compilation is complete.

  But Catherine restricted users on one hand and prepared to adopt a separate operating system for the sake of maintaining the smoothness of the system.

  IBM also had a DOS (not the later DOS) operating system but it was far too removed from the concept of the "Phoenix" operating system.

  As a result, IBM was completely left behind by its opponent!

  Little Watson fell into deep worry...