That night, the two brothers who slept in Nie Chuan's nursing room both had trouble falling asleep. Logically speaking, they were both "geniuses" in the eyes of others. Although they were naughty and mischievous since childhood and did all the bad things that boys should do, the two brothers still entered USTC with excellent grades. The elder brother was admitted to graduate school and studied for a doctorate, and later grew into an outstanding scientific researcher.
The younger brother followed closely behind. In terms of academic achievements, one of them has achieved some success, while the other is an elite with unlimited future. Others are naturally envious of them, and even their families are proud of them. However, only they themselves know that their future is not so bright. On the contrary, they know the pain.
To establish a school of thought and to develop one's own opinion is certainly the pursuit of ambitious researchers. However, to reach that stage, the process requires a long period of hard work and experience.
It is important to take the right path, but this is only the first step. There are still bumps to overcome and luck is equally important. After all, this is a game of reaching the top of a pyramid, but you cannot reach the top step by step. It is a maze where every step may lead you astray. Some roads allow you to turn back, while others will make it difficult to return.
And now, Nie Yun was about to walk into a dead end in the maze. In USTC, the boss above him had absolute power over everything. If he disobeyed, not only would he be unable to make a breakthrough, but his brother might also be stuck in a dead end. The reason was simple, because scientific research could not be done by one's own efforts. It required laboratories, resources, and funds, and all of these were in the hands of the "boss" above you. As long as he was biased towards you, no matter how talented you were, you would be powerless.
As for whether they can find another job, for two brothers like them with no background, it is a matter of luck. They have to hope that there is someone better than Chen Yue. Otherwise, after leaving USTC, they will become "outsiders" in the eyes of other places. It will take many years to build trust. If they meet someone unreliable again, it will be worse than being under Chen Yue.
Of course, these are actually secondary. What is really important is that the passion to do something has gradually cooled down.
Therefore, the two brothers of the Nie family felt that it was unreal that night. Considering Cheng Ran's age, what he said, and what he did in reality, they were excited about the hope that their ideal would become reality, but also felt uneasy about the whole thing. In the end, the two brothers both thought that they could not expect such things and should treat it with the mentality that it would never happen. This is how they got through this difficult night that was no less difficult than drinking a draft of beer and a cup of coffee.
…
During the three days that Nie Chuan was in the hospital, something happened that seemed mysterious to them.
After agreeing to Cheng Ran, the brothers Nie Yun and Nie Chuan participated in a meeting in an atmosphere similar to holding one's breath before a storm.
In the conference room, we met not only Professor Hu Zhiwei, a researcher and doctoral supervisor at HKUST's Institute of Technology, but also Academician Li Taihang, who is the chairman of HKUST's Academic Committee but is actually traveling all year round. It is said that he was conducting an inspection in Europe a few days ago. In short, he is probably either in China or abroad. He suddenly returned to China across the ocean and arrived at HKUST.
In the scientific research circle with strict hierarchy and institutional structure where level almost determines the right to speak and correctness, if someone like Li Taihang were to attend an academic seminar based on seniority, Nie Yun would not even be qualified to sit in the outermost corner and take the last seat.
Then Nie Yun and Nie Chuan saw a scene that was difficult for them to evaluate. There was not even the most basic courtesy. Li Taihang, the towering mountain in everyone's eyes, walked in dusty and dusty. He found Cheng Ran, walked straight in front of him, and asked, "How did you get the authorization from that company? What kind of authorization is it?"
Hu Zhiwei, who was following behind him, also widened his eyes and his cheeks flushed.
“Architecture licenses… traded for key technology companies.”
Hu Zhiwei's Adam's apple rose and fell. "Are you saying that you got the authorization for the instruction set?"
Including Li Taihang, Hu Zhiwei, and several core figures from HKUST's Institute of Planning who followed, all stared at Cheng Ran with frightened and indescribable expressions.
With the popularity of mobile phones and various devices in later generations, ARM is probably a company that everyone knows. However, at this moment, even for students in the School of Computer Science, if you ask them about AMD, many people will know about it, but as for ARM, nine out of ten people will shake their heads and say they don’t know.
After all, the company ARM is still little-known and is just hidden in the upstream link of semiconductors, with a low presence.
Of course, Li Taihang and others who have been working hard for the domestic integrated circuit semiconductor field are not unfamiliar with this company.
Compared with various concept technology companies with countless gimmicks, ARM never shows its teeth or tries to show its presence by choking others. In fact, the reason why this company was born and embarked on its own path is simply because it couldn't survive in the field dominated by Intel.
And from the beginning to the end, ARM has followed its own business model of IP licensing. As long as you can afford the money, you can get a license from ARM at a fair price. ARM can even provide people and tools to guide your company to ensure that it can operate and use their licenses. This greatly saves costs, so ARM has always been harmless and irreplaceable.
Of course, there are also extremely sensitive restricted areas within ARM, which is the highest level of architecture authorization.
The number of companies that have obtained architecture licenses is extremely small, with only a dozen or so in total. The most typical of these is Apple. Of course, Apple was one of the earliest shareholders who invested in the establishment of ARM, so it is not surprising that it was able to obtain the ARM architecture license. In addition, most of the licenses that ARM has used to influence 80% of the market are kernel licenses or user-level licenses.
It involves architecture licensing, or something that has a major impact on ARM's future normal development, such as cooperating with the top three companies in the industry to win the market, or exchanging key patents, or extremely important technologies. Otherwise, it can only be an almost impossible crisis related to the survival of ARM, otherwise it will not be easily obtained.
There will probably be no more cases like Cheng Ran, who seized the opportunity of ARM's rapid growth in the mobile field, took the right path, blocked ARM by blocking key technology companies, and obtained high-value returns. ARM will only be more vigilant after being bitten.
Li Taihang sighed, "It must have cost a lot of money."
"It did take some effort." Cheng Ran nodded.
In order to ambush ARM on its way, Cheng Ran had reverse thinking and asked Zhao Qing to buy five companies in related fields, all with the idea of small-scale betting on big. In the end, private design and Allen Software hit the target.
The two Nie brothers saw that Cheng Ran asked Zhao Qing to spread out the notebook and open the technical documents inside. Li Taihang and Hu Zhiwei walked forward to look at the folders containing relevant information, and clicked on the English technical operation guidance directory from ARM, staring intently.
Brothers Nie Chuan and Nie Yun looked at the atmosphere in the conference room and felt that these big shots that day could only be described in two words: fanaticism.
"This is the latest V6 instruction set license, which allows us to arbitrarily take advantage of the ARM architecture and add or remove modules, which means we can recreate and expand it, and even develop our own architecture based on the instruction set. This can be a starting point. We can develop our own microarchitecture based on the instruction set."
"Of course, this is just a concept, but it at least provides this possibility. If we want to take the path of localization, this is a good way to do it now."
Li Taihang, Hu Zhiwei and others nodded.
But there is no doubt that although this is exciting, there will also be many current problems that are like a basin of cold water.
Li Taihang looked at Cheng Ran and said, "This is definitely good. But we will face a big problem right now. You know, we use the ARM architecture. Even though we all know that if we can use the architecture to realize our own micro-architecture, it will be something that truly belongs to us. But it still won't work because it doesn't conform to mainstream thinking and slogans."
No one understands the current situation better than Li Taihang. In fact, after Li Taihang was expelled from the Nanxing Group, the influence behind the Nanxing Group, which represents a faction, has caused Li Taihang to be portrayed as ambitious but incompetent, ignorant of current affairs, and even ignorant of politics in certain contexts.
Yes, the current problem is that since the release of the State Council Document No. 18 and Document No. 51, slogans such as revitalizing national industry and building domestically produced semiconductors have been everywhere. In addition, with the use of such slogans, various so-called "independent research and development to catch up with the world's first-class level" technologies and companies have been launched one after another under the gaze of short-term interests, subsidy funds, and quick success, so there will be the Guoxin incident and the Hongxin incident...
A series of results that sound exciting at first glance, packaged in the media, have led people to mistakenly believe that semiconductor research and development is an easy project that can be caught up with or surpassed through technological explosion.
Only after experiencing the lessons of those incidents will the relevant senior executives, industry levels and the public realize that the technical barriers can actually cause people to suffer heavy losses.
This has never been a simple matter reported in newspapers. It is a systematic, complex, high-tech project with the most sophisticated architecture of the world's information society foundation in which we have shortcomings in every field.
Before learning those lessons, Li Taihang had a very accurate view of this point. There will always be people who say that chips using ARM architecture are not independently developed. In the face of a large number of "high-end projects" of "independent research and development and national pride" led by national policies, the project proposed by Cheng Ran now will definitely not receive any strong support.
It may even be dug out by competitors and used to create public opinion to slander them.
This is not an impossible thing.
Cheng Ran said, "No need to apply for national funding."
"Are you planning to rely on Fulong?" Li Taihang frowned. "Don't forget that I am a consultant to Fulong. I know very well that the Nasdaq bubble has burst, European and American countries are cutting funding for basic telecommunications research and development, and Fulong's overseas market is shrinking. At the same time, Fulong is also working on 3G technology and developing embedded chips. Funds are being used where they matter, and the situation is quite tight. If we have to devote our energy to making ARM-based chips under this situation, even Fulong can't withstand such a multi-line battle."
After experiencing the patent blockade in the United States, Fulun could only rely on greater investment in research and development to turn to other technical directions. After that, Cheng Feiyang introduced the union shareholding system, which was essentially a response to the shock, to improve employee morale and cohesion, and at the same time to reduce Fulun's financial pressure.
"After IPD, Fulong has its own strict system. I don't want this project to be restricted in this way. I hope this project can be completely controlled by us. We need a flexible project that can decide the direction and operation in time."
Li Taihang said in a deep voice, "That also requires a lot of funds."
"Yes, I have summarized several points to overcome. The first is to introduce advanced technology. The second is to seize leading talents. The third is to bear long-term losses. The first point has been achieved, and the second point is being established. Many people present here may become founders. The third point is that if we don't expect national support, we can also get local support."
Cheng Ran smiled and said, "We can only hope to find a few mentors among the high-level officials in Nanzhou. At worst, the more scientific research support from the University of Science and Technology, the better. Even if a mosquito is small, it is still meat. On the other hand, we can also introduce a research and development model of cooperation between enterprises and universities, and the enterprises can invest in it. In short, I will find a way to fund it. Right now, we still need talents, and we need your team."
"Since you are determined, I will risk my reputation to speak up for you and strive for some opportunities. I will take as many as I can." Li Taihang nodded. "I think Hu Zhiwei can be the leader of the project team. He majored in computer system structure and studied under Academician Xia Pei, the first generation of computer experts in my country. Microprocessor design and integrated circuit design are his strengths. I notified him to come here today to test your stuff."
"I have always had a question." Hu Zhiwei looked at Cheng Ran. "When Professor Li told me this, I was skeptical. Now I know that what he said is true. It is even beyond my expectation. You are so young, why do you want to do these things?"
Not only Hu Zhiwei, but also the researchers behind him, the brothers Nie Yun and Nie Chuan, all cast their eyes over.
Yes, this kind of thing, not only the meaning behind it, but also the decision-making, execution, and precision of vision, all represent many things, including a person's intelligence, knowledge structure, social experience and life experience. If this was led by Academician Li Taihang, no one would have any objection, but all this happened to a freshman, and it is more terrifying than surprising.
Everything a person does has a motive, and what Cheng Ran did was indeed of great significance. He couldn't say that he had seen the history and learned the profound lessons in advance, so he didn't want to repeat the same mistakes
Even Li Taihang looked over. It was obvious that he had thought about this matter and was now expecting an answer.
His identity as the son of Cheng Feiyang from Fulong Company is not convincing enough to explain what he did and his motivation for doing such a thing.
Under the gaze of the crowd, Cheng Ran pondered for a moment and said, "Among the researchers I have always admired, Academician Wang Xuan, who invented laser typesetting technology, is one of them. my country was the first country to invent printing and the first country to have movable type printing, but Chinese characters naturally require more movable type than letters. Also, because modern Chinese technology was backward, the advanced technologies that the modern Chinese regime in the 19th century introduced from the West were first guns and cannons, and second printing technology."
"China's modern printing technology has gone through the era of woodblock printing and nearly a hundred years of lead printing as the mainstream technology. Lead printing requires all manual work, and typesetters must have a high level of education and good physical strength to hold dozens of kilograms of lead type. In the 1970s, it took more than ten days to print a pamphlet in a hurry. A lead-printed book of hundreds of pages took most publishers a year to publish. In the mid-to-late 1970s, when China completed the popularization of basic industries and began to catch up with the world's advanced technology, it needed to promote the latest international scientific and technological information more efficiently. Typesetting technology was the shortcoming of China's book publishing industry, and it could also be said to be the bottleneck restricting China's scientific research as a whole."
"At that time, the newspapers in developed European and American countries such as Germany, Britain, and the United States had all adopted electronic typesetting with computer typesetting technology. At the same time, Western companies were also actively updating their technology, developing laser typesetting, and studying Chinese character printing, preparing to occupy the East Asian market. At this time, China launched the '748' project to solve the efficiency of China's publishing industry. However, in the 1970s, China had a huge technical bottleneck, because the basic Chinese character library was much more complex than Western letters, and the data volume was very large, requiring hundreds of GB. China did not know how to manufacture disks at that time, and two magnetic drums could only store 1M of data. Therefore, the country generally opposed digital typesetting and still preferred optical typesetting using paper molds. Wang Xuan joined the 748 project at that time and proposed to use vector descriptions for Chinese character strokes to solve the problem of excessive Chinese character library data and achieve data compression. The idea was ten years ahead of the West at that time."
Li Taihang and the others listened and nodded slightly. Cheng Ran described Wang Xuan's deeds from another perspective, and they were all fascinated by it.
Cheng Ran continued, "But Wang Xuan, who came up with the idea at the time, was considered bragging by most of his peers. Wang Xuan was firm in his opinion. With the support of Xinhua News Agency's 1.4 million yuan investment in equipment and the coordination of the Computer Industry Bureau of the Ministry of Electronics Industry, Wang Xuan formed a team and the Weifang Computer Factory was responsible for assembly. He insisted on developing a domestic laser typesetting system. In 1981, Wang Xuan came up with the Huaguang I model, and in 1983, he came up with the Huaguang II model. However, there was a lack of experience in mass production and there were many BUG problems. At that time, the planned economy era was coming to an end and the market economy era was coming. So in 1984, People's Daily and Xinhua News Agency purchased foreign equipment one after another, ready to kick out the annoying Wang Xuan. At that time, many people laughed at Wang Xuan and said that the autumn of 1984 was the end of Project 748."
"At the end of 1984, IBM came to Xinhua News Agency to introduce its products. People from Xinhua News Agency actively used American software and advised Wang Xuan's project team to give up, saying that others already had ready-made products, so why are you still doing this? In 1985, the People's Daily paid $4.3 million for equipment from HTS, but Wang Xuan's team didn't get a penny."
"At the end of 1985, Xinhua News Agency was short of money. They said that the Asian Games were coming and they had to build a news building. They could no longer subsidize this hopeless domestic project. Project 748 was really at the end of its road. However, at this time, there were still a small number of cadres who knew that it was better to build than to buy. They used the last bit of power in the planned economy era and ordered the Economic Daily directly under the State Council to use Wang Xuan's equipment, which gave Wang Xuan the last bit of funding. But the Economic Daily also issued an ultimatum that if the bug problem of Huaguang III could not be solved, it would rather use lead type printing. Wang Xuan raced against time and finally solved most of the problems in the summer of 1987."
"When the 13th CPC National Congress was held in October, the Economic Daily received the news from Xinhua News Agency and completed the typesetting through computers in 20 minutes. Other newspapers were still using lead type, and the fastest one took three or four hours. After the Economic Daily was published, Wang Xuan and his Huaguang Type III stood out."
"In 1988, Wang Xuan received full support from the Economic Daily and upgraded his equipment to the Huaguang IV model, which can process 110 Chinese characters per second, the best in the world. It used to take a year to typeset a book, but now it only takes three days."
"In 1989, all foreign phototypesetting systems withdrew from the Chinese market."
After a pause, Cheng Ran looked at everyone and said, "The road ahead is long and difficult, but fortunately there are predecessors who are like torches. I am illuminated by the torch, so I also have a lot of intentions to do such things."
Everyone present finally solved the mystery. When people see the torch, they really have the desire to run. Among so many people present, who has not been inspired by this
"I'll take this job." Hu Zhiwei nodded. "So, what's the name of the project?"
Cheng Ran was stunned, "Huh?"
"Wang chose Huaguang. If our team you formed produces something, what will it be called?" Hu Zhiwei looked at him and said, "I think you should decide the name."
Li Taihang looked at him with a smile, and everyone present looked at him with burning eyes.
Under the spotlight, Cheng Ran glanced at the brothers Nie Chuan and Nie Yun, which made them inexplicably nervous. Then he looked up after a little thought, "Tang Zong, Song Zu... Qin Shi Huang and Han Wu."
"It's called... Han Wu."
"Hanwu No. 1."
"Academician Wang Xuan's team created Huaguang, which was born out of nowhere. I hope our Hanwu can be like Huaguang. In the field of chips, we should go all out and not wait for the torch. If there is no torch in the future, we will be the only light."