Starting From the Chip in 1991

Chapter 30 Senior Brother Is Awesome

At 1:30 PM sharp, Su Yuanshan woke up.

Yuanxin was currently operating on a nine-to-six schedule, with a two-hour lunch break, making it effectively a seven-hour workday. Since weekends off weren't yet a standard practice, it was naturally a 966 schedule.

Yang Yiwen and Sun Xihui—one a mature beauty, the other a sophisticated woman—were still sleeping soundly on the office sofa, half the towel blanket having fallen off. Judging from their sleeping postures, they really weren't suited for resting in an adult's office—only in the office of a "minor" like Su Yuanshan.

Su Yuanshan got up, washed his face in the bathroom, then returned to his desk and opened a file folder. Inside was a fax from Pan Xiaojun, forwarded from Shenzhen.

At the top of the fax was the name United Microelectronics Corporation—UMC—the legendary semiconductor company founded in Taiwan in 1980, which by now had five fabrication plants.

At this point in time, TSMC, aiming to specialize in pure foundry services, was still a fledgling company compared to UMC. Later, TSMC would surge ahead, while UMC would suffer heavily from a massive fire that destroyed its factories and customer orders, forcing a painful recovery through consolidation.

And not long after recovering, UMC would make another critical misstep—trusting IBM and partnering with Infineon (split from Siemens) to tackle the 0.13-micron process. The alliance failed spectacularly, and TSMC seized the high-end market.

Entering the new millennium, domestic semiconductor pioneer Zhang Rujing would return to Shanghai, building the most advanced wafer fabs in China within just two years and rapidly capturing the low-end market. For a time, even becoming the world's third-largest foundry. UMC, though aggressive, would remain forever overshadowed by TSMC.

Now, right in front of Su Yuanshan was a fax from UMC requesting to purchase Yuanxin EDA and seeking technical support—which implied stationing personnel on-site.

In short, UMC had keenly recognized Yuanxin's value and was first to propose deep cooperation.

For a pure EDA company, this kind of invitation from a semiconductor giant would be cause for celebration.

But Yuanxin wasn't just an EDA company.

And UMC hadn't yet fully transitioned into pure foundry services; it still had its own chip design division.

Given the looming political developments expected next year ("XX Consensus"), vast markets across the strait would soon open. Meaning, UMC would become one of Yuanxin's biggest competitors in the years ahead.

After pondering deeply, Su Yuanshan finally signed the authorization, instructing Pan Xiaojun to arrange a meeting with UMC representatives in Hong Kong. He also told Pan to coordinate with Wang Chaoxin to have Yuanxin's second batch of manufacturing outsourced to UMC.

Huajing's production capacity was insufficient to meet pager chip demands.

With the private pager market about to open next year, user growth was expected to exceed three million—double the cumulative total of the past few years.

If Yuanxin couldn't even sell a million units of its proprietary chip, it might as well shut down.

And if Yuanxin was scared of competing even with a "semi-rival" like UMC, it didn't deserve to be in business.

At that moment, the two ladies on the sofa stirred awake.

Yang Yiwen rubbed her eyes, glanced at the time, and walked over to Su Yuanshan's desk, jotting down a note. "When are you going to hire me some assistants? I have to do everything myself right now."

"We're looking for people fluent in English, familiar with foreign trade and patent law... where do you expect me to find that overnight?" Su Yuanshan shrugged, handing the fax to Sun Xihui to forward to Pan Xiaojun.

"Maybe you should just marry Senior Brother Tang," Su Yuanshan teased. "That way I can lock you into Yuanxin for life."

"Less nonsense—approve the funding," Yang Yiwen said, rolling her eyes.

After signing the paperwork, Su Yuanshan poured himself a glass of water and returned to his desk.

Earlier at lunch, Qin Weimin had mentioned he had a good idea he was organizing. Now, after a full afternoon, Qin had already written it up and sent it over the local network.

It was a concept regarding cache optimization.

At first glance, Su Yuanshan thought it wasn't very meaningful—lately, he'd seen so many architecture ideas that he was a bit numb.

But when he read the final part, he froze—then slapped his desk hard!

"Senior Brother, you're a genius!"

Suppressing his excitement, Su Yuanshan strode toward the workshop.

At that moment, Qin Weimin was busy designing registers and associated instructions using Yuanxin EDA, aiming to circumvent existing patents.

**

"Senior Brother, you're a genius! These instruction combinations are pure brilliance! They can dramatically reduce cache read times," Su Yuanshan said loudly as he approached, shaking Qin Weimin's shoulders.

Qin Weimin turned around, a little confused. "Really?"

"Yes! Once we patent this, no CPU imitating ARM architecture will be able to bypass it!" Su Yuanshan said confidently.

In his previous life, later ARM enhancements had indeed included a patent similar to Intel's infamous 338 cache patent. But because ARM licensed freely and openly, nobody ever collided with that patent.

Now, if Yuanxin patented this first, it could establish a formidable barrier.

"Senior Brother, you're amazing!" Su Yuanshan praised again.

For a moment, he was even tempted to jump in and help Qin Weimin finish the first full CPU architecture within a month or two.

But reason prevailed.

He couldn't rush Qin's development.

Nurturing Qin into a chief architect was far more important than showing off himself.

After Su Yuanshan briefly explained the implications of these new instructions, Qin quickly simulated them against the ARM instruction set—and realized it too.

Completing similar cache operations using ARM's instruction set without these new instructions would be extremely cumbersome.

"Should we file the patent now? International or domestic?" Qin asked excitedly.

"Not yet. You have to finish refining our full instruction set first. Then we file it all together," Su Yuanshan said, taking a deep breath to calm his excitement, though the smile on his face couldn't be hidden.

Building patent barriers was important.

But even more important was that Qin Weimin was finally starting to blossom.

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