Chapter 180 A Name for the Ages
Because of his deep impression of Rise (Huaju), Su Yuanshan already knew their ultimate fate.
They once used exaggerated advertisements and comedic performances to promote their "five years to sharpen one sword" Rise MP6 CPU. This chip, according to their boasts, outperformed the then-popular Pentium II in every benchmark and was supposedly perfect for laptops, capable of crushing Intel.
Impressive, right?
Then... they sold the technology to SIS.
And that was the end of that story—supposedly, they shifted focus to embedded systems afterward.
In the long, arduous history of challengers to Intel's dominance of the X86 architecture, countless companies had risen and fallen. Compared to tragic heroes like Transmeta, Rise wasn't even a ripple—just a funny little footnote.
Oh, and by the way, most of Rise's employees, including its co-founder David Lin (Lin Tinglong), came from Taiwan.
As for why David Lin himself didn't come to sign the licensing deal with Yuanxin and instead sent Lawrence, a venture capital representative—no one really knew.
Maybe they felt a little awkward about buying an architecture license from a mainland Chinese company.
...
In Xinghai's CTO office in Silicon Valley.
Despite having been the official CTO for a year, Chen Haoming still treated himself like a front-line software engineer.
His office was a complete mess, lacking the tidy, "coldly efficient" atmosphere it had back when Xi Xiaoding had occupied it.
Journals and magazines were scattered everywhere.
A small blackboard on the wall listed tasks and deadlines, so Chen could glance up and see his to-do list at any time.
A jacket was draped over the couch, and two fast food boxes sat on the coffee table.
The ashtray on his desk was piled high with cigarette butts, and coffee stains dotted the surface.
"You don't even let your secretary clean up?" Su Yuanshan asked, wrinkling his nose as he pushed open the door. Aside from the heavy smell of smoke, it wasn't too bad.
Chen Haoming looked up, rubbed his eyes, dumped the ashtray into the trash, and tossed the food boxes out.
"My secretary's camping out with Claude," he said, laughing. "And anyway, what do techies need a secretary for?"
Su Yuanshan shrugged. "Fair enough.
Besides, you wouldn't dare hire a female secretary."
Chen Haoming burst out laughing. "With a tigress at home? No way."
Su Yuanshan pulled over a chair and sat down, waving off Chen's offer to make tea.
"How's the framework coming along?"
After setting the goal to directly challenge Sun's Oak language (which would later evolve into Java), Xinghai had thrown itself into building the Star development environment.
At the same time, they were preparing to release an open-source CC language framework under the same name.
In operational terms, Xinghai planned to establish an open-source foundation, launching a new organization called Sea, expanding from the current EDA-centered open-source community.
Sea would also offer a free, open-source HTTP server called Ser.
A Star and a Sea—
corresponding to Java's future weapons, Spring and Apache.
Plus, they would eventually have their own version of Eclipse.
"We're working on it," Chen Haoming said. "But about the open-source community... I think it would be better to separate it from Xinghai."
He frowned. "Especially the new organization.
If it's too closely tied to us, it won't feel pure enough."
Su Yuanshan asked, "And your suggestion?"
"I'm thinking, if we're doing this, let's do it properly.
Since it's open source, there's no need for us alone to run it.
We should invite other companies to pool funds and create a truly independent open-source lab, governed by leaders from the open-source community itself."
"Agreed," Su Yuanshan said immediately. "You know I've always supported open source."
Chen Haoming grinned. "No wonder even Linus praises you."
"Oh? You know Linus?"
"Back in school, I contributed a few patches to Linux," Chen said modestly. "Too bad I failed to recruit him to Xinghai..."
"If we build a true open-source lab," Su Yuanshan laughed, "maybe we can."
Linus Torvalds valued freedom and rebellion more than anything.
The only commercial company he ever worked for was Transmeta—because it was born to challenge Intel.
He stayed at the open-source lab afterward.
Such a man could never be trapped by a corporation like Xinghai.
...
After leaving Xinghai, Su Yuanshan grabbed a takeout meal from Burger King and returned to the villa.
Inside, only Tang Wenjie was around—Qin Si and Yang Yiwen were out.
Su Yuanshan laid the food out on the coffee table, and the two of them, sprinkling chili powder that Yang had brought from home, dug into their burgers.
After eating, Tang Wenjie lugged a heavy ThinkPad 750C onto the table.
"I've been working on this all year. Take a look," he said, glancing nervously toward the door.
Su Yuanshan laughed. "What are you, a thief?"
"You told me to be careful!"
"You're being too cautious," Su Yuanshan said, guiding the IBM TrackPoint to open a WPS document.
At the top, it read:
"A Method for Optimizing Field Effect Transistor Structures."
Su Yuanshan's expression immediately turned serious.
Tang Wenjie watched his face, growing increasingly anxious.
Everyone knew by now that Su Yuanshan's skills in integrated circuit design were freakishly high.
Tang Wenjie firmly believed that Su could judge his work.
Though it sounded ridiculous, he didn't doubt it for a second.
As the minutes ticked by, Su Yuanshan frowned deeper and deeper, and Tang Wenjie clenched his fists tighter and tighter.
Finally, Su Yuanshan looked up.
"Senior Brother, where's your solution for short-channel effects and leakage?"
"I'm still working on it," Tang Wenjie admitted. "The experiments haven't been done yet. This is just a preliminary idea.
Whether it works or not, I can't say."
Seeing Su Yuanshan's serious expression, he held his breath.
Over a year of work—he was terrified that Su Yuanshan might dismiss it.
Su Yuanshan slowly nodded, his eyes flickering with thought.
He closed his eyes for a moment, recalling everything he knew about FinFET structures.
After a while, he nodded again.
He couldn't say with 100% certainty that Tang Wenjie's idea was correct—he hadn't specialized in this field in his past life.
But he also couldn't discourage it.
This was Tang Wenjie's painstaking work, starting back at Yuanxin and continuing even after coming to Silicon Valley.
If Su Yuanshan told him it was wrong, it could crush him.
Tang Wenjie took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
"I'm not completely sure," Su Yuanshan said carefully. "But the general direction looks right.
There's no way to verify it yet—it would require creating an entirely new manufacturing process, costing tens of millions of dollars."
"I can get you the money," Su Yuanshan added.
"But right now, we don't have the fabrication lines."
Tang Wenjie nodded. "Of course.
This idea is meant for ultra-large-scale circuits—hundreds of billions of transistors.
Gate lengths below 10 nanometers."
"Based on projections," he added, "current MOSFET structures should hold up until about 20 nanometers."
"Exactly," Su Yuanshan said.
"But better to prepare ahead.
That's been our philosophy all along."
He smiled. "Keep refining your concept.
As long as you stay focused on integrated circuit structures, Senior Brother, you'll go down in history."
"Heh, I'm not chasing fame," Tang Wenjie said, pushing up his glasses with a grin.
"I just want a warm home, a loving wife, and kids."
Su Yuanshan paused, then sighed softly.
"Honestly... isn't that what we all want?"
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