Chapter 437 Mr. Moore and the Sudden "Huaxia Core CPU" Shortcut
"Mr. Sanders, two years ago, your main customer IBM and the Great Wall Group in mainland China jointly established Great Wall International Information Products (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., focusing on the manufacturing of PC computers. Last year, the company took the lead in The establishment of a research center in China is the first research center established by IBM in a developing country, which shows that IBM highly recognizes the research quality and technology of our talents in mainland China..."
Academician Ni is also very curious about Li Xiaofan's question.
When Academician Ni introduced IBM, Li Xiaofan thought of another successful working queen: Wu Shihong, the current general manager of IBM China's South China region.
Wu Shihong, who like him only had a technical secondary school education, started working as a nurse at the front desk of IBM, and then worked as the channel general manager of IBM China. Next year, he will switch to the general manager of Microsoft China and become the general manager of Microsoft China. The pinnacle of the white-collar workplace!
In his previous life, Li Xiaofan also bought the inspirational legend "Flying Against the Wind" written by her...
"Mainland China, well, the market with a population of 1.2 billion does have huge potential in the future. However, I heard that mainland China is still relatively backward, and it may not be the best time to invest now..."
Sanders replied casually, seemingly distracted.
Li Xiaofan asked: "Mr. Sanders, have you ever been to mainland China for inspection?"
"Not yet..."
Sanders' answer reminded Li Xiaofan of the strange questions asked by Singaporean and Malaysian workers at the Westwood Electronics Factory when he first came to Singapore to work:
"Afan, do you still use horse-drawn carriages when traveling on the mainland?"
"Afan, are there any trains in your mainland?"
…
None of them had ever been to the mainland. Many of their knowledge of the mainland came from some very old movies or deliberately distorted some reports on the mainland. They thought that Li Xiaofan and the others lived in an old era of dire straits.
"Mr. Sanders, I think you should take some precious time to go to mainland China to see for yourself and feel the new look of China after reform and opening up! Director Li and I hope to receive your visit in Beijing or Shanghai..." Academician Ni invited solemnly.
"Oh, great idea, thank you, Academician Ni! I may not be able to spare time at the moment. If I am free, it may not be until the fourth quarter. When I go to AMD factories in Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand to inspect , see if you can spare some time to go to mainland China to investigate..."
After the meeting, Sanders sent a VP in charge of public relations to accompany Academician Ni and Li Xiaofan to inspect AMD.
Through communication with the vice president, Li Xiaofan and Academician Ni realized that Sanders was not lying. He was too busy now!
Although 1D Company miraculously won the legal case against Intel four years ago and officially obtained the qualification to produce 386 processors.
But then the next year, Company 1 changed its previous product naming method and registered an independent trademark for the product that people thought should be named 586: Pentium, which is called Pentium in Chinese.
The fifth generation Pentium processor is fully compatible with previous Intel processors and has new content. It is worth mentioning that there are two data pipelines in the Pentium processor, which can execute two instructions at the same time. Intel calls this ability to execute two instructions at the same time superscalar technology. This technology allows Pentium processors to work faster at a rate of two instructions per cycle.
Intel's move made Sanders and AMD realize that their previous "copycat" road has come to an end, and the time has come to take a new path!
Last year, Sanders spent a large sum of money to acquire Nextgen, a chip design company in the United States that specializes in designing x86 series-compatible processors.
AMD started developing its own CPU!
The vice president told Li Xiaofan and Academician Ni that in March this year, AMD released its own K5 processor, which truly competes with Intel's Pentium processor. This is also AMD's first independently designed processor product.
Compared with Intel's Pentium processor, K5 is more technically advanced, but it also has many shortcomings. What's particularly attractive about it is that it uses a RISC internal architecture that decodes x86 instructions into microinstructions before executing them. Therefore, it is difficult for K5 to achieve high clock speed, and its FPU is also a weakness. However, in general use, K5's performance is slightly better than Pentium.
The performance of the K5 processor is very average. Its integer computing capability is not as strong as Cyrix's 6x8ium Pentium processor, and its floating point computing capability is far inferior to Pentium, but slightly stronger than Cyrix products. Cyrix was founded in 1988. It initially manufactured 80387-compatible coprocessors, and later began to manufacture 486-compatible CPU central processors. It is a company that supplies cheap CPU processors.
Taken together, K5 is a product with relatively average strength. The low price of K5 is obviously more attractive to consumers than its performance. Low price is the biggest selling point of this CPU.
K5 is AMD's first independently produced x86-class CPU. Due to the problems encountered in the development of K5, its launch time was much later than Intel's Pentium. In addition, due to the imperfect performance, this unsuccessful product caused AMD to lose a large amount of CPU market share.
So, Sanders is very anxious!
Although the Silicon Valley old boy seemed to be chatting and laughing when he received Li Xiaofan and Academician Ni today, Li Xiaofan always felt that Sanders was a little absent-minded today.
After listening to the introduction of the accompanying vice president, Li Xiaofan was relieved.
At the moment, the anxious Sanders was watching the AMD R&D team to speed up the development of the new generation of K6 processors.
In the previous life, AMD successfully launched the best, most timely and most strategic product ever released by KD in April 1997 of the second year.
When the AMD K7 Athlon processor came out, it finally succeeded in surpassing Intel!
After the visit, when he came out of AMD, Academician Ni sighed: "It would be great if there was a CPU company like AMD in mainland China!"
"Academician Ni, this may be a big ecological problem. Our foundation cannot be compared with Silicon Valley in the United States..."
"Well, this is a systemic problem. It may take several generations of efforts for our technology level to catch up with Silicon Valley!"
At Intel, Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel, received Li Xiaofan and Academician Ni.
Moore has now retired from the position of chairman of Intel, but he is still a director of Intel and the honorary chairman of the company.
Although he has faded out of daily management affairs, he still appears in the building of Intel headquarters several days a week. He has retired but not his heart.
There is a myth in the IT industry. This myth is that a law brings a company to the pinnacle of success. This law is "Moore's Law", and it was this old man Gordon Moore who invented this law, one of the "Fairchild Eight Rebels"!
Don Valentine's phone call was still very face-saving, allowing the retired and unemployed old man Gordon Moore to personally receive Academician Ni and his party.
When Gordon Moore was still in office, he asked Intel to set up its first representative office in Beijing in the 1980s.
Two years ago, in January 1994, Intel's first architecture development laboratory in China, IADL, was established. In November of the same year, Intel's chip testing and packaging factory in Shanghai broke ground...
So when Intel's "Honorary Chairman" Gordon Moore received a call from Don Valentine, he was very happy to take on the reception task.
When Academician Ni personally met Gordon Moore, the inventor of "Moore's Law" and the founder of Intel, the world's number one CPU manufacturer, he was still very excited.
Gordon Moore, who was already unemployed, was also very happy to share his previous entrepreneurial history and experience with Academician Ni and Li Xiaofan.
1 Moore and Noyce withdrew from Fairchild and founded Intel. Intel was initially committed to the development of data storage, and in the 1970s developed the company's first important product, the Intel 1103 storage chip.
In the early 1970s, the personal computer industry represented by PCs sprouted and developed rapidly. With his keen vision, Gordon Moore accurately predicted the success of PCs. He made a decisive decision, and Intel shifted its focus and began to specialize in the core components of microcomputers: CPU processors.
Gordon Moore was the main promoter of this major change and progress, which made Intel the pinnacle of the semiconductor industry!
Although Academician Ni and Li Xiaofan had heard the story of Gordon Moore and Noyce creating Intel before, it was still exciting to hear the parties tell many unknown details of the year face to face...
...
After visiting Mr. Gordon Moore in Silicon Valley, Tang Xinyi drove Academician Ni and his party back to the hotel to rest.
Li Xiaofan then came to Tang Xinyi's sister Tang Zixin's apartment where she was temporarily living, and after using her computer to surf the Internet, he checked some relevant information.
At night at Tangyuan Chinese Restaurant, when Li Xiaofan met Academician Ni again, he said:
"Academician Ni, I suddenly thought of a shortcut to develop our "Huaxia Core"!"
"What shortcut?" Academician Ni asked curiously.
"We can acquire a CPU manufacturer!"
Li Xiaofan's idea shocked Academician Ni: "How, which one?"