Chapter 663 The Last Board
have! have! have!
So interesting!

The small topic mentioned by Professor Gao may become a big one in their hands, at least not smaller than this one.

"Yes! Professor Gao, if there is anything we can participate in, please arrange it."

There is no need to report back to the unit. The comrades who are working on the compression software should put their words on hold first.

If you miss this opportunity, you may never find this store again.

As for whether the company would blame him for making a decision on his own, I think the company leaders should have a healthy mind.

Chief Engineer Chi of the Computing Institute had envy in his eyes. Professor Gao's work, no matter how small, was definitely groundbreaking.

Repairing the existing things? I guess people don't have the time to know.

However, he could also guess that Gao Zhendong's topic was most likely related to algorithms. In this regard, the Institute of Computing was indeed no match for comrades in the applied mathematics major.

Seeing that the comrades were so enthusiastic, Gao Zhendong did not keep them in suspense.

"Let me tell you about it first, so you can make relevant preparations early. My idea is to develop a set of lossy compression algorithms for images and supporting software modules."

This is what Gao Zhendong wanted to do, multimedia applications. Computers today cannot support this yet, so he did not mention sound compression for the time being. After all, that thing requires real-time decompression and real-time playback, and computers these days really can't support it.

But pictures are different. They are in the file and are really useful.

At the same time, for official documents, papers and other files, a very high resolution is not required. A 320*240 256-color or 256-grayscale image is very useful. If this image is compressed properly, the size is only 20k~30k, which is still affordable for the disks under development, not to mention tapes.

In terms of vector graphics and vector fonts, the comrades who were cooperating with Delta Aircraft Corporation on industrial software were already working on it together with Gallicus, so Gao Zhendong didn't have to worry about it anymore.

There is no bitmap yet. Now that there are comrades who are engaged in compression software, we might as well work on it together.

A compressed bitmap is still a bitmap in essence, and it has nothing to do with whether the suffix is ​​bmp or jpg.

Bitmaps and vector maps each have their own uses. At least in Gao Zhendong's previous life, no one wanted to convert images such as photos into vector formats for application. It would make people crazy, but the computers would go crazy first.

A common example is that the maps in navigation software are all vector graphics, but their satellite maps are all bitmaps.

Gao Zhendong's words stunned all the comrades present.

Loss? If there is loss, then why bother?

The main reason is that I have never dealt with this kind of thing before, and I have no exposure or concept at all. Some things are unimaginable.

The comrade who worked on the compression algorithm first raised a question: "Professor Gao, is it lossless?"

Unexpectedly, Gao Zhendong shook his head and said, "It is lossy. Pictures are for people to see. The human eye has limited capabilities. In fact, the loss of some details is not very noticeable, or it can be called acceptable."

Seeing that everyone was still skeptical, Gao Zhendong gave an example.

"If there is a person, whether he is darker or whiter, or whether the pits on his face are bigger or smaller, will it affect your ability to recognize him?"

All the comrades shook their heads. Some of them could be recognized even if they turned into ashes.

"That's right, the same goes for images. And the core of lossy compression algorithms is to figure out which information can be lost without affecting the effect too much."

The reason why the compression rate of lossy image compression algorithm is amazing is that it is "lossy".

The compression rate of a bmp file of several MB can be as high as 90% when compressed into a jpg. This is the reason why lossless compression does not have such a high compression rate, unless the colors and lines are extremely simple.

Seeing Gao Zhendong's confident expression, the comrades who were working on compression algorithms felt relieved. After thinking about it carefully, they felt that what Professor Gao said actually made a lot of sense.

Gao Zhendong's next words made them feel completely relieved, but also a little unsatisfied.

"In fact, I have almost finished this algorithm, but I don't have time to perfect it or implement it through programming, so I want to hand this job over to you. You have experience with compression software, so I think you should be able to produce results quickly."

Actually, it is not quite accurate to say that it is imperfect. After all, how can the JPEG compression algorithm be perfect or imperfect? ​​It is what it is, and it is definitely usable and the effect is definitely good. But I still have to say this to leave some space and leeway for the comrades who participated, so that others will not think that they have not made any great contribution.

Chief Engineer Chi, who was standing by, sighed inwardly that it was indeed the case. Professor Gao's project, also known as "feeding", had the most difficult parts solved by him, and the rest could probably be classified as manual labor.

"Okay, Professor Gao, we will come to you to learn relevant knowledge as soon as possible. But why not just make it into a software, but just make it into a software module?"

They still understand the difference between software and software modules.

"Because there may be a lot of software that will be used to display images, we made it into a module for their convenience. Don't think that your work will be easy just because the algorithm has been studied. In fact, what you have to complete is a complete system for image display on the computer, such as the most basic one - color representation."

Gao Zhendong said this, firstly to remind them not to take it lightly, and secondly to speak for them. Even though their algorithm part is just being perfected, the difficulty and workload of the work are actually not small.

Gao Zhendong's words shocked some comrades who "underestimated the enemy" and realized that they were too shallow and should not be careless.

"We'll pay attention, Professor Gao."

After arranging this matter, the computer's media display capabilities have basically reached their limit for the time being. Gao Zhendong does not plan to do more, as it is too extravagant.

In fact, until the 80s, "multimedia" was a luxury on computers. In the 90s, our computer advertisements still used multimedia as a selling point. In those days, even the sound card was a separate expansion card.

With text and pictures, it is basically enough for scientific research, office work and other work. If you really want to listen to the sound, MIDI will do. This thing is essentially a music score file that directly synthesizes the frequency, and the computer can barely process it.

All parties involved in the review meeting were very satisfied with it.

The comrades who were working on compression software got new topics, Gao Zhendong completed the last piece of the basic computer skills, and other comrades saw a new possibility for computers. Everyone got what they needed.
-

Among the towering mountains and steep cliffs in the hinterland of the southwest, on the construction route of an important railway, thousands of railway troops are scattered across various construction sites, working hard to build this road.

The conditions at the scene were extremely difficult. Although there was no shortage of food, the steep cliffs, deep canyons, dense woods, flying insects... all of these still brought endless trouble to the soldiers.

But the soldiers didn't care much about these. They still worked hard with full enthusiasm, shedding sweat and even blood. A long line meandered in both directions at each construction site, closing one by one.

On a construction site somewhere, the commander was looking at the cliff in front of him with a worried look on his face.

"Captain, we must send construction machinery up here, otherwise the soldiers will never be able to complete the mission if they just rely on piecemeal work."

"Well, it takes an hour to climb up and another half an hour to come down. The soldiers don't complain about the hard work of hammering and chiseling, but they are worried that the progress is too slow. In addition, the flood season has not yet passed. Once it rains, the construction difficulty will increase sharply and the construction conditions will deteriorate sharply. In this place, 'there is no sunny day for three days during the flood season', which is really no joke."

The battalion commander listened to the words of several company commanders and local comrades, frowned, and thought: "Can we not come down every day? We should take the lead, eat up there! Live up there! Try to make use of all the time and complete the task as soon as possible?"

The local comrades shook their heads distressedly: "Comrade Battalion Commander, it won't work. The rocks up there are very sharp. There aren't many places to live at once. It's easy for water to accumulate. If you do that, you will probably get rheumatism, which will do great harm to your bodies. We have experience with this matter. We can't do it this way."

If we specially set up a place to live, it will delay the construction period even more.

A company commander also shook his head: "That's one thing, but it's still hard to complete the mission. Although the limestone here is not as hard as granite, it's still very slow to move with manpower. And it's not suitable to rest on it. You have no defense when you rest. Before the project is completed and the slope protection is formed, the rockfall above is very serious. It's dangerous even if you are awake, let alone sleep."

Another company commander suggested: "Then we can use geotechnical blasting to speed up the process."

This suggestion was rejected by the battalion commander: "No, I'm afraid it will collapse accidentally and completely destroy the roadbed conditions. Once the roadbed conditions are destroyed, we must change the route. This section is the best choice. The loss of changing the route will be very great!"

After discussing for a long time, we still had to find a way to send the machine up.

Looking at this newly produced excavator, I heard that it was developed after the 11th Ministry of Machine Building received new materials. It is very easy to use, but no matter how easy it is to use, it has to reach the working surface. If it can't even reach the working surface, everything else is useless.

But this is easier said than done, otherwise they wouldn't have to hold the Zhuge Liang meeting here.

The construction machinery weighs 6 to 7 tons, and it was impossible to lift it up as a whole. I don’t know how many wooden hangers were broken and how many steel beams were bent. I just couldn’t go up, and I almost got hurt.

In fact, an excavator weighing several tons will at most be considered a small brother in the future, but these days, it is an absolute large-scale construction machinery.

It is not realistic to disassemble it because construction machinery has a large number of hydraulic structures, which the conditions here do not support. Moreover, it can only be disassembled partially, and it is still unknown whether it can be lifted up.

(End of this chapter)