"You ladies ready?" asked Aaron as he stood backstage with Kristen, Shizuku and the rest of 7-Star Crossed.

Kristen nodded, and Shizuku gave a thumbs up.

"All right. Now, we've got a few interlopers from the big five - Intel, AMD, Nvidia, TSMC and Samsung - looking into what we've got here. Our stance is we don't give them the time of day. Stick to our presentation notes, and don't get baited into any arguments. Got it?" he said.

"Got it, Master Zakhrov," said Kristen, and Shizuku in unison.

"All right, good luck out there," said Aaron, as James queued up the opening music.

Heavy metal music blasted out of the speakers, reverberating through the hall.

Smoke machines pumped out clouds of smoke, and the stage lights flashed in time to the music.

The smoke cleared to reveal Shizuku and the rest of 7-Star Crossed, gyrating to the music, as the screens behind them flashed with the Sirius Software logo.

"Welcome to the first Sirius Software Computex presentation!" said Shizuku through a microphone, as the music faded out, and the rest of 7-Star Crossed struck a pose on stage.

The audience erupted into applause and cheers.

"For those of you who don't know. Sirius Software started out as a small indie game developer five years ago. Today, they mark their first debut into computer hardware and silicon fabrication. To announce their first new line of computing products, please welcome technical liaison Ms. Kristen Ford!" said Shizuku, as the lights cut out and a heavy guitar riff played.

The lights came back on, to reveal Kristen standing center stage, holding a microphone.

"Thank you, Shizuku-san. Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Kristen Ford, technical liaison for Sirius Software. Today, I'm proud to present to you the first products from Sirius Software's new silicon fabrication division. First up, the Sirius Software HellBlade CPU," she said, gesturing to the screen behind her.

The lights dimmed, and a video started playing on the screen.

The video opened with a CGI animation of lighting bolts striking a barren desert landscape. A heavy metal music score pulsed through the stage speakers, as the sand under the lightning bolts began glowing and sparking into straight traces of light.

From the bright white traces of light, a massive black and silver CPU package emerged, with the Sirius Software logo etched onto its heat spreader.

The lights came back on, and Kristen continued.

"The HellBlade CPU is our first foray into general purpose computing. This is a clean-room engineered x86-64 design, built on Sirius Software's own fabrication process. And here is the real deal," said Kristen, as a 7-Star Crossed member walked over to her, and handed her a HellBlade CPU that had the heat spreader removed.

The audience gasped and muttered, one voice even asked: "What the hell is that?"

The CPU package was a massive 8 cm by 8 cm square, it had large die in the center, that was surrounded by 4 smaller dies which were in turn surrounded by 4 rectangular DRAM chips.

Unlike the typical green substrate, the CPU had a glossy black substrate.

Kristen turned the CPU over in her hand, to reveal a dense array of silver LGA pads on the bottom.

"This is the HellBlade 16. It has 16 cores with 4-way simultaneous multi-threading, for a total of 64 threads, has 4 GB of on-package Level-4 cache, and supports up to 1 TB of DDR3 ECC RAM. Each chiplet is a quad-core die with 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes that route through the central I/O hub," she explained, turning it around for the cameras to catch every angle.

"The HellBlade CPU can be used in single or multi-socket configurations. It will be available for purchase in Q4 of this year," she said, handing the CPU back.

She then turned back to the audience.

"Of course, a CPU is nothing without a platform to run it on. So next, I present to you, the Sirius Software HellStation platform," she said, as the screen behind her lit up again.

The lights dimmed, and another video started playing on the screen.

Another heavy metal music score played, as the video showed a similar CGI animation of a motherboard being forged by the same lightning bolts in the desert.

However, the video didn't reveal much of the motherboard, only showing glimpses of the massive CPU socket, a couple of PCIe slots, the rear I/O ports, and a few M.2 slots that were covered by metal heat spreaders.

The lights came back on, and the screen went dark, as four members of 7-Star Crossed wheeled out a massive display case showing the motherboards.

The audience murmured and whispered among themselves at the sight of the motherboards.

The motherboards were again in blacked out PCBs, with sleek black metal armor plating covering most of it.

The CPU socket was massive, with a dense array of LGA pads, and a large metal retention bracket.

What was immediately noticeable was the sheer size of them. The single-socket motherboard was 60 cm tall and 30 cm wide, while the dual-socket motherboard was a massive 60 cm square.

The quad-socket motherboard was even larger, being 90 cm tall and 60 cm wide.

Kristen walked over to the display case, and pointed to the single-socket motherboard.

"This is the Sirius Software HellStation 1 motherboard. It supports a single HellBlade CPU, up to 1 Terabyte of RAM, and is built to support 8 full x16 PCIe slots and 32 M.2 slots. No more worrying about your graphics card blocking your other PCIe slots," she explained.

She then pointed to the dual-socket, and quad socket motherboards.

"These are the Sirius Software HellStation 2, and HellStation 4 motherboards. They support two and four HellBlade CPUs respectively, the memory scales but the I/O doesn't because the CPUs use the PCIe lanes as inter-socket Sirius Interconnect channels instead. All of these will be available in Q4 of this year," she said, as the audience gave a smattering of applause, still trying to process the massive size of the motherboards.

She turned back to the audience.

"Now, if you thought that we skipped the GPU, think again," she said, as the screen behind her lit up again.

The lights dimmed, and another video started playing on the screen.

A heavy metal music score played again, but this time, the video didn't show the desert sand sequence. Instead, it opened with a shot of raging flames, and a gigantic black and silver graphics card emerging from the flames like a tall building, the Sirius Software logo etched onto the three fan hubs.

The lights came back on, to reveal Shizuku standing next to Kristen, holding the massive HellFire 64 graphics card.

It was three slots wide, and 30 cm long, covered in a sleek black metal shroud and backplate.

Close up shots from the cameras showed the 4 PCIe 8-pin power connectors on the side, and the glinting display outputs on the rear I/O bracket.

Towards the back of the card, a pair of silver connectors glinted under the stage lights.

"I believe it's time to see the platform in action," said Kristen, as 7-Star Crossed wheeled out a massive test rig on stage.

A gasp went through the audience at the sight of the test rig.

The test rig was built into a massive open frame case, and housed a HellStation 1 motherboard with a HellBlade CPU under a massive vapor chamber cooler, and four HellFire 64 GPUs in the PCIe slots. Sleek silver rigid connectors linked the GPUs together.

The stage staff hooked up the power cables, and connected the display output to the massive screen behind them.

Kristen walked over to the test rig, and pressed the power button.

The system sprang to life, the microphone picking up the muted whirring of the fans as they spun up.

The EFI screen flashed up on the massive screen behind them, and then the Linux boot screen loaded up.

Kristen logged into the system, and immediately, the SiriusOS Noir desktop environment loaded up, showing a sleek black glassy interface with silver accents.

"This is SiriusOS, a custom Linux distribution that is already freely available for download on our website. It has a custom desktop environment, SiriusOS Noir,"

said Kristen as she launched Steam from the launch menu.

She then launched the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark.

The audience watched mesmerized as the system ran a shader compilation pass, and then started the benchmark, at 4K native resolution, with all settings cranked to maximum.

The frame counter in the corner of the screen showed a steady 90 frames per second.

Kristen herself fought down her surprise at how much better the performance was compared to their test rig back at the lab.

"This, ladies and gentlemen, is the magic of our Sirius Software Extensible Architecture. It can scale the entire graphics pipeline across multiple GPUs, allowing us to run a full ray-traced game at native 4K resolution, at 90 frames per second. And this is just the beginning," she said, as the benchmark completed.

The audience erupted into applause and cheers.

Kristen smiled, and turned back to the audience.

"All of these components will be available for purchase in Q4 of this year, as both individual DIY components, and as pre-built systems. Introducing, the Sirius Software StarFort workstation series," she said, as the screen behind her lit up with a slide showing a sleek black tower workstation with the Sirius Software logo on the front panel.

"The StarFort series will be available in single, dual, and quad socket configurations, with up to 4 TB of RAM for the quad socket model, and up to 4 HellFire 64 GPUs that you see here today. In addition to the StarFort series, we will also be launching the Sirius Software StarFighter laptop series, designed for gamers and content creators who need high performance on the go." she said, as Shizuku came on stage holding a massive black laptop with the Sirius Software logo on the lid.

"The StarFighter laptop will be available in Q1 of next year, and will feature one HellBlade 16 CPU and 2 HellFire 64 GPUs. It will also feature a 70 cm HDR ultra wide display with a 144 Hz refresh rate, a full-size mechanical keyboard, and what's more, it will be fully upgradeable and repairable thanks to our Sirius Software Extensible Architecture. That concludes our presentation. Thank you everyone for coming here," she concluded.

The audience were still processing what they had just seen, as Kristen and Shizuku took a bow, and walked off-stage.

The stage staff quickly swooped in, and cleared away the test rig, and display case, prepping the stage for the next presentation.

----

"That was so cool!" exclaimed Kristen, as she and Shizuku hugged each other backstage.

"Those suckers were all dazzled speechless! Ha!" said Shizuku, punching the air.

Kristen calmed herself down with deep breaths.

"Now comes the hard part. Answering questions from the press," she said, as Aaron walked up to them.

"Great job out there, Kristen. You really nailed it. Unfortunately, you now need to man our main booth. Don't worry, I've got Natasha running security," he said.

"Thanks, Master Zakhrov. I'll see you later then, Shizuku-chan," said Kristen, as Shizuku waved goodbye, and walked off to her own booth.

"All right, let's get to it," said Kristen, as she walked over to the Sirius Software booth.

A line of reporters and tech bloggers were already waiting to ask questions.

She took a deep breath, and stepped up to the booth.

"Hello, I'm Kristen Ford, technical liaison for Sirius Software. My team will be happy to answer any questions you may have. Please follow the lines, and don't shout questions, everyone will have 15 minutes with our representatives," she said, putting on her best professional smile.

The media formed a set of four lines, matching Kristen, Ivan, James and Harry.

The first reporter in line stepped up to Kristen.

"Ms. Ford, impressive presentation. Can you tell us more about the HellBlade CPU architecture?" asked the reporter.

"Certainly. The HellBlade CPU is a clean-room engineered x86-64 design, built on Sirius Software's own 40 nm Silicon On Insulator fabrication process. It supports 4-way simultaneous multi-threading, and is compatible with AMD's virtualization extensions." she replied.

"Wait, you guys reverse engineered the architecture? You didn't license it?" asked the reporter.

"Correct. We built it from the ground up, using publicly available documentation, and our own research and development. We did not license any technology from AMD or Intel," she said.

The reporter nodded, and wrote down notes.

The next reporter stepped up.

"Ms. Ford, can you comment on the allegations that Sirius Software is infringing on patents, and is engaged in human rights violations?" asked the reporter.

"I cannot comment on that, I'm here to answer technical questions about our products. Other queries can be directed to our legal and public relations teams," she said firmly.

However, the reporter pressed on.

"Can you confirm that Sirius Software carried out an unprovoked and malicious missile strike on the Boston Police Department?"

Olga stepped in.

"I believe Ms. Ford was clear that she is not here to answer such questions. Continue to press her, and I'll remove you from the premises," she said sternly.

The reporter took one look at Olga's imposing figure, and quickly stepped back.

The next reporter stepped up.

"Ms. Ford, can you tell us why Sirius Software chose to build its own fabs and push outdated technology that has been simply dressed up?" asked the reporter.

"Simple. TSMC and other fabs refused to work with us, so we decided to build our own fabs. As for the technology, it was the best we could do with our process node and our access to publicly available information," she said.

The reporter nodded, and wrote down notes.

The next reporter stepped up.

"Ms. Ford, can you tell us more about the HellFire GPU architecture?" asked the reporter.

"Certainly. The HellFire GPU is a VLIW4 design with a 64 wide SIMD unit that can do both a single wave64 or 2 simultaneous wave32 executions. It fully supports the Vulkan API, and can offer OpenGL support through Zink," she replied.

"Why did you choose a VLIW architecture? Isn't that outdated?" asked the reporter.

"Not at all. VLIW architectures are still very efficient for graphics workloads, and our architecture is designed to scale across multiple GPUs. This allows us to run a full ray-traced game at native 4K resolution, at 90 frames per second, as you saw in our presentation," she said.

The reporter nodded, and wrote down notes.

The next reporter stepped up.

"Ms. Ford, your hardware looks like a Frankenstein's monster of the worst parts of the last decade, and your presentation was deeply problematic! You should be ashamed of yourselves! There's a reason why you didn't show temperature or power consumption figures. You're sucking down kilowatts of power and you're poisoning the planet! How dare you!" screamed the reporter, startling everyone around her.

Olga acted quickly, and seized the crazed reporter by the arm.

"That's enough! You're out of here!" she said, dragging the reporter away.

The reporter struggled, but Olga was too strong for her.

"Let go of me! I have a right to ask questions!" she screamed.

"Not anymore after that outburst," said Olga, dragging her away.

"Unhand me you cheap whore! You filthy booth babe!" screamed the reporter, trying to draw as much attention to herself as possible.

"You idiots are everywhere," sighed Olga, flinging the screaming woman to the floor, and stepping on her throat.

"I'll say this only once. Shut the hell up, and don't ever come near our booth again. Or I will crush that screaming throat of yours," she snarled, as the woman whimpered underneath her boot.

With a final kick to the ribs, Olga left the sobbing activist, and returned to the booth.

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