Location: The bar at the Drake Hotel, Chicago, Illinois
Date: July 1989
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on Lazare Bonaparte)
Lazare had already taken a few steps towards the exit of the Coq d'Or. Behind him, the pianist began a new piece, sliding over the ivory keys with a hushed melancholy.
At his table, Jerry Sanders stared at the back of the young Frenchman. The CEO of Advanced Micro Devices felt his empire shaking. He had just been insulted, rejected and relegated to the rank of industrial antiquity by a kid who was the age of his Californian interns. The colossal ego of the American, the same one that had allowed him to build a multinational, was screaming at him to let go of this arrogant little European.
But Sanders was not only a man of ego. He was first and foremost a street kid from Chicago's South Side, who became an engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor before founding AMD with nothing but his anger. He was a survivor.
And Jerry Sanders' survival instinct had just lit up like an alarm siren.
If what Lazarus said was true — and the NSA reports leaking through the corridors of the Pentagon proved that it was — then the French chip was not a mere evolution. He was an absolute monster. If Lazare found an Asian foundry to flood the market in two or three years, the x86 architecture on which AMD and Intel were tearing themselves apart would no longer be worth anything. The federal court would be nothing more than a theatre of shadows fighting over the remains of a dead technology.
Sanders had to hang on to this train, no matter the cost.
"Bonaparte!"
The deep, gravelly voice of AMD's CEO slammed into the soft atmosphere of the bar, drowning out the music.
Lazarus stopped. He turned around slowly, his hands still buried in the pockets of his jeans.
Sanders had stood up. He was no longer smiling. The Hollywood showman in the gray silk suit had disappeared. In his place stood the relentless industrialist, the man ready to do anything not to see his life's work crushed by Intel.
"Come back and sit down," Sanders almost ordered, before softening his tone, swallowing his pride. "Please. Two minutes. Give me two minutes, and if you're not interested in my proposal, I'll take my jet back to San Francisco and you'll never hear from me again. »
The sixty-year-old engineer, locked up in the body of a young man of twenty-two, assessed the situation. He respected men who knew when to capitulate in order to bounce back. Slowly, Lazare retraced his steps and let himself slide on the leather bench, facing his glass of water still intact.
"I'm listening, Jerry," Lazarus said matter-of-factly.
Sanders leaned heavily on the table, bringing his face closer to Lazarus's, entering a zone of absolute confidence.
"You said you refused to sell your VESLA processor to end up in plastic cases, running Microsoft's garbage code. You demand that your hardware and operating system be married, because one is worthless without the other. »
"That's my absolute premise, yes."
"Very good. I capitulate on that," Sanders announced, his eyes shining with feverish intensity. "You want to destroy the established model? I'll help you do that. You have a perfect system, but you have no civilian distribution network in the United States. Do you think that manufacturers like Compaq, Acer or Tandy will agree to install VoltaOS on their machines while Microsoft is holding them by the throat? Bill Gates will blackmail them with licenses and they will bend. They'll never buy your chips if they're afraid of Microsoft. »
Lazarus bowed his head very slightly. This was indeed the weak point of his plan to conquer the general public. Distribution.
"What is your solution?" asked Lazarus.
"A Trojan horse," Sanders blurted out, his carnivorous smile galloping back. "Me."
The Californian put his hands flat on the table, detailing his battle plan.
"Intel is holding the industry by the balls because they have a monopoly on power. Manufacturers are fighting to have their processors. If we sign a licensing agreement for me to manufacture your chip, I will produce it in my foundries on a colossal scale. I am selling it at a price that no one will be able to compete with. But I am imposing a condition on the contract of sale. A leonine clause. »
Sanders paused, relishing the effect of his strategy.
"I will personally force AMD's partner manufacturers to use VoltaOS. If they want to equip their computers with the most powerful and cheapest processor in the world, they will have to sign a software exclusivity agreement with you. Strict prohibition to pre-install MS-DOS or Windows on a machine powered by our chip. »
Lazarus remained unmoved, but his mind as an architect was running at full speed. The proposal was of an unprecedented commercial brutality. Jerry Sanders was literally proposing to him to betray the entire American ecosystem.
"Are you telling me, Jerry, that you're ready to go to open war against Microsoft to serve as my exclusive distributor?"
"I'm willing to burn this damn valley to the foundations if it allows me to survive and crush Intel," Sanders spat with disarming sincerity. "Microsoft is not my problem. They are sellers of wind. I sell silicon. I offer you my network, my salespeople, my factories and my blackmail power over PC manufacturers. I will be your ram. I'll break down the doors of the U.S. market for you, and I'll force the industry to swallow your operating system. »
Silence fell on the alcove.
It was the most kamikaze and brilliant offer Lazarus had heard since his second birth. Sanders had just proven that he wasn't a blind dinosaur. He was a general ready to switch allegiance in the middle of battle to find himself on the side of the victor.
Lazarus' cold hostility evaporated, replaced by sharp attention. Volta's young CEO stepped forward in turn, meeting the eyes of the old wolf of Silicon Valley. The real negotiation had just begun.
Location: The bar at the Drake Hotel, Chicago, Illinois
Date: July 1989
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on Lazare Bonaparte)
The atmosphere around the small mahogany table had just become electrified. Lazarus placed his forearms on the table, entering the arena on a level with him.
"If we're going to start with that, Jerry, I have to be sure of your production capabilities," Lazare said, his tone dry and professional. "The VESLA-II architecture is a supercalar RISC processor. The silicon die is large. How many transistors can you etch on a chip with your current lines before you see your yields plummet? »
Sanders didn't blink. The vendor's veneer disappeared to make way for the Fairchild Semiconductor engineer he had once been.
"We've mastered one-micron etching at our Austin plant," Sanders replied bluntly. "We can go below the infrared mark within eighteen months. If your architecture is as clean as you say it is, I can guarantee you a seventy percent yield on six-inch wafers . And I can expand the memory bus of the motherboard to keep up with your chip. »
For the next twenty minutes, the hushed bar of the Drake Hotel was transformed into a technical battlefield.
The two men clashed over bus widths, clock speeds, heat dissipation, and ceramic encapsulation costs. Lazarus pushed Sanders into a corner, looking for loopholes, ignorance or complacency. He found none.
Under the gold Rolex and Italian silk, Jerry Sanders was a visceral fighter. He knew the smell of hydrofluoric acid and the heat of diffusion furnaces. He knew how to push a production line to its breaking point to extract the slightest margin.
For the first time since his reincarnation, Lazarus felt a deep respect for an actor of that time. He was facing a man who was ready to tear up the foundations of his own industry so as not to die. This was exactly the kind of ally the Builder needed to unleash the digital apocalypse.
Lazarus leaned back again, his face becoming impassive again.
"That's a remarkable plan, Jerry," he finally conceded. "AMD as a Trojan horse to impose VoltaOS and nip MS-DOS in the bud. It's bold. And logistically viable. »
Sanders let out a long sigh of relief, reaching for his glass of bourbon. "So, do we have an agreement? I ask my lawyers to write the basics of the license tomorrow morning? »
"No."
The word fell like a cleaver. Sanders' glass stopped halfway to his lips.
"What? But damn it, Lazarus, we've just spent half an hour in... »
"To establish that we could work together, Jerry. Not that we're going to do it tonight. »
Lazarus pointed a calm finger at the American.
"Your strategy is perfect, but your timing is bad. The civil material architecture of Volta is not yet finalized. And above all, VoltaOS in its "Desktop" version is not ready. »
Sanders frowned, puzzled. "Rumors say that your system runs the servers in Kourou without ever crashing!"
"Kourou is managed by astrophysics engineers. Balard by military cryptanalysts," corrected Lazare. "My system's command-line interface is enough for them. But to conquer the American civilian market, I need an absolute graphical user interface. Ergonomics so intuitive that a five-year-old child or a sixty-year-old Texas accountant could use it without reading a single manual. This code is being written at Ivry, but it will take me another year, perhaps eighteen months, to make it infallible and impenetrable. »
Lazarus finally took his glass of iced water and took a small sip.
"And there's a second problem," he added, putting the glass down. "I will never deliver the engraving masks of my processors to you until I have locked all of my global patents with the World Intellectual Property Organization. The case is being put together by my lawyers in Paris. If I give you my technology today, Intel's lawyers will find a flaw and steal it from you tomorrow. »
Sanders understood. The young man in front of him was not only a genius system architect, he was a cold, methodical strategist, who refused to advance the slightest pawn until the board was totally secured.
"One year... eighteen months... The AMD CEO whispered, running a nervous hand through his graying hair. "Lazare, Intel is trying to bleed me white in court. They cut me off. I don't know if I'll last eighteen months without a miracle product to announce to the financial markets. »
"Then it's time to prove that you're the survivor you say you are, Jerry," Lazarus replied, his dark eyes plummeting into the American's.
It was a challenge. Brutal, uncompromising.
"Entrench yourself. Sell your 286 CPU clones. Fight in federal courts. Use every dollar of your cash flow to save time. Survive on your own. »
Lazarus stretched out his hand over the table.
"If you're still up in eighteen months, Jerry... When Volta is ready to surge into the civilian market and burn Silicon Valley, AMD will be the first and only industrial partner I'll call. »
Jerry Sanders looked at the outstretched hand. It wasn't a contract. It wasn't a license that was going to reassure AMD shareholders the next morning when Wall Street opened. It was a simple promise, made in a Chicago bar by a twenty-two-year-old young man.
But looking at Lazare Bonaparte, Sanders knew that this promise was worth more than all the Bank of America's lines of credit.
Sanders squeezed Lazarus' hand tightly.
"I'll be there, Lazarus," the Californian wolf promised, his teeth clenched with determination. "I will keep my foundries afloat. Make your system. And when you're ready, we'll make them bite the dust. »
"Count on me," murmured the sixty-year-old engineer.
The handshake was brief, dry, sealing the non-aggression pact and the most destructive future alliance in the history of computing.
Lazarus stood up, leaving Jerry Sanders alone with his glass of bourbon. The young CEO walked back through the bar and took the elevator back to his suite.
In the silent room, the twins were still sleeping peacefully. Lazarus sat in the darkness, gazing at the lights of the city. The American trip was an absolute triumph. He had just quantified the weaknesses of Apple and Microsoft, and he had just secured, when the time came, the services of one of the most powerful foundries in the world to serve as a Trojan horse.
The American trap was closed. All that remained was to wait for the clock to tick.