Li Yixuan replied: "That's the case, Mr. Yu, I recently designed a CPU chip, this is a 16-bit processor, it will be used as the central processing unit of the new generation of Oranges computers, fully compatible with the current Oranges I computer 6502 central processing unit, this processor belongs to the CISC architecture, but it also integrates the characteristics of RISC, this new processor I am a little uncertain, so I will ask you to help me see." ”

"......" Yu Youcheng felt that the visitor was a little interesting, "Mr. Li, why do you have to develop a CPU chip by yourself to develop a computer?

Mr. Yu didn't know that the central processing unit on the Oranges I computer used the 6502 processor developed by the American MOS company, but the 6502 has been around for so many years, and the MOS company has no intention of launching the next generation of processors, but only revised and modified on the basis of the original 6502. As a last resort, we just like MOS to buy and license, and design it ourselves. ”

"That's true, but CPU design is not a simple thing, and being able to design a computer does not necessarily mean that you can design a computer. Yu Youcheng said.

"I know that a CPU and a computer are not the same thing, but I've designed a new product and it's been put to use. After speaking, Li Yixuan took out a small plastic box from his jacket pocket and handed it to Yu Youcheng, "Well, this is my design, this chip is used in the master control chip of our latest 20MB capacity hard disk." ”

Yu Youcheng took it and heard Li Yixuan say: "By the way, the chip in your hand is the world's first RISC processor in the true sense." ”

When Yu Youcheng heard this, his hand shook, and the box almost fell out of his hand. He stupidly glanced at Li Yixuan, who was standing in front of him smiling at him, and felt that this person was really good at letting go, "RISC processor, it's just a legendary thing, you said you designed it, and you don't make drafts if you brag about it." ”

Seeing his expression, Li Yixuan didn't know if the other party didn't believe it, "If Mr. Yu doesn't believe it, you can test it and it's over, it's very simple." ”

Listening to what the other party said, Yu Youcheng already believed that the other party had designed a RISC processor, although he had been away from the United States for some days, but the new hard disk of Oranges was a best-selling company on the market, and he still knew it.

"Since Mr. Li can design it himself, why do you still want to ask me, compared to the problems that Mr. Li encountered, he can solve them by himself. ”

Li Yixuan knew that just by saying this, the other party would definitely not agree, "Mr. Yu, I am the chairman of Oranges Company, and I have to deal with a lot of company affairs every day, so it is impossible to stay in the laboratory all the time, I need someone who can take on this job." In addition, I would like to tell Mr. Yu that Oranges is not a company that specializes in chips. Instead, we made our own chips, initially to meet our own needs. It can be said that in the future, the demand for chips in our company alone may be no less than that of the small half of the microcomputer market!"

Yu Youcheng was a little moved, and thought to himself, maybe joining Oranges would also be a good choice. He's been stumbling for a few years and doesn't want to go on like this.

The reason why Yu Youcheng left Intel was because he heard about China's reform and opening up, and returned to China to realize his dream of serving the country with technology.

Pity...... After going around the country, he found that the domestic market was too immature, whether it was making software, making computers, or supporting hardware, he couldn't see the market.

There is no way, China is extremely backward and poor in all aspects, and high-end gadgets like computers cannot be consumed at all, even if they rely on units to buy, the demand is very small, and they cannot support the huge computer industry chain.

Moreover, it is impossible to provide him with any financial loans in China, but instead expect him to spend money and invest. If you want to say that he has a little bit of technology, but he will be cowardly when he takes the money out, you must know that he has just failed to start a business and lost his blood. In the United States, there is a lot of debt, how can there be money to invest?

After going around the country, Yu Youcheng could only be like an evangelist, taking advantage of the opportunity of academic exchanges to introduce the technological revolution brought about by microcomputers to China. He gave lectures at many universities and research institutes in China, sold some computers, recruited a group of students, and gathered more than 200 people to go to Hong Kong to set up a two-year training course.

Staying in Hong Kong shows that Yu Youcheng still has a trace of illusions, thinking that there may be some opportunities in Hong Kong. However, after he arrived in Hong Kong, apart from the training courses, he had any new business opportunities, and few of the wealthy people in Hong Kong were interested in investing in the computer industry.

After all, Hong Kong's businessmen are already very profitable in real estate, and who will invest in the semiconductor industry with uncertain prospects. Although there is a Huake in Hong Kong, it is more like a product of speculation, and it is difficult to make any achievements in semiconductors in the future.

After going around in China and Hong Kong, but still finding nothing, Yu Youcheng tossed until 81 and reluctantly returned to Intel.

But now it's different, Li Yixuan's visit has rekindled Yu Youcheng's hope.

After chatting with Li Yixuan for more than two hours, Yu Youcheng can be sure that the other party understands semiconductors, especially Li Yixuan's intention to put forward some chip design theories that will only exist in later generations, which makes Yu Youcheng refreshed. As the conversation gradually deepened, he found that the young man in front of him not only used technology, but also understood business, and how to develop a chip with commercial prospects had his own set of views.

"Mr. Li, what do you think of Intel?" Although he didn't agree openly, he was already a hundred willing in his heart, but he still wanted to hear the other party's opinion of the old company he had served.

Li Yixuan didn't know what the other party was doing when he mentioned this company, could it be that the other party still had feelings for Intel? Although he couldn't guess the purpose of Yu Youcheng's question, he still replied: "The environment that Intel is facing now is that if it doesn't transform, it will only die." ”

"How?"

"Intel started as a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) memory, and in 1971 Intel successfully developed an erasable programmable read-only memory EPROM, relying on these two inventions, Intel has achieved great development in the 70s. But you must know that the development of RB's memory chips is also not weak, relying on low prices to seize the market that originally belonged to Intel. In addition, although RB's semiconductor chip technology is a little weaker than that of the United States, their process is more mature and has a high yield rate, exceeding 70 percent, while Intel ......" Li Yixuan shook his head, "If you want to compete with RB company, Intel must improve the yield rate and reduce the cost to lower than RB company, so as to have the ability to compete with RB company." Otherwise, it is better to transform as soon as possible, and the processor is its future. ”

In fact, not only Intel, but the entire American semiconductor chip company can be said to have relied on the memory chip business to start, such as AMD, which has been competing with Intel for many years, and provided memory chips to NASA at the beginning of its establishment.

Before 85 years, memory chips were the largest market in the semiconductor chip industry, and the basic patent for this technology was the "magnetic core memory" known by Chinese scientist Wang An in 48 years.

This technology was the precursor to later game cartridges, computer memory and flash memory, and so on.

Due to racial discrimination in the United States, the Patent Office has consistently refused to approve its patents. Later, due to the solidarity of the academic community, the patent office had to approve Wang's patent, on the condition that the promising technology with a market value of billions of dollars a year be bought out to IBm.

IBm was granted a patent and was forced to license to other companies due to antitrust laws. Indirectly, memory technology has become a technology with a very low threshold, and as long as you pay patent fees to IBm, you can produce memory.

In the 5o~6o years, the memory market has basically become an inexhaustible gold mine for the U.S. semiconductor industry.

However, in the 7o years, with the expiration of a large number of patents in the memory industry, RB people began to enter the memory market and began to fight a price war in the low-end market, which made many old semiconductor companies in the United States bankrupt.

Having lost the patent moat, labor costs in the United States are again more expensive than RB. Therefore, the low-end memory market is constantly being attacked, and after losing the broad market of low-end memory, high-end memory cannot reduce costs. Therefore, since the mid-70s, a large number of American semiconductor companies have collapsed under the dumping of RB cheap products.

From this history, we can find that those so-called high-tech enterprises in the United States actually have nothing to fear, except that they can play monopoly, they have nothing to be competitive, and once they lose the protection of the patent moat, their competitiveness is simply the scum of war.

The early 80s was the weakest period for Intel Corporation, and as the memory market was captured by RB people, Intel's performance became quite difficult, and finally made a choice in 85 to completely abandon the memory market and focus on the desktop CPU market.

At this time, IBM began to enter the personal computer market, which was firmly grasped by Intel, and after IBM opened up the PC standard, the x86 chip became the hand-picked chip in the PC market, and Intel was a blessing in disguise and obtained unexpected profits.

It is undeniable that Intel can become the boss of desktop CPUs in the future, there is an element of luck, if there is no timely rain of PC, the transformation to focus on CPU, may die quickly due to the lack of stable orders.

But we have to look at it from another angle, Intel was not the only company that made CPUs at that time, but why did IBM only choose Intel and not other companies?

The reason is that other CPU manufacturers have not launched 16-bit CPUs, taking MOS companies as an example, they are still immersed in the glory of the 6502 processor, and have never thought of upgrading and launching a 16-bit processor, 6502 has not seen its next generation since its birth in 75 years, until 82 years, but the original basis has been modified and modified.

You know, the architecture of the 6502 is much more promising than the X86 architecture of Intel, and it can be said that it is the world's first processor with 0 multitasking and versatility. In 1985, 80386 was Intel's first multitasking processor.

And the first multi-function processor came out at that time, and in 1996 the Besturn MMX was Intel's first multi-function processor. As early as 75 years, MOS launched a multitasking and multi-functional processor, but MOS did not want to forge ahead, and lost an opportunity, and the most important one.

At that time, there were only three manufacturers in the United States that could produce 16-bit processors, namely Intel, Motorola and Zilog.

Motorola and Zilog's processors are technically much more powerful than Intel's x86 processors, but they have one of their biggest drawbacks, which is that they are not compatible with previous 8-bit processors, which leads to the complete waste of various applications developed by third parties on 8-bit chips, and the user's previous investment is not protected.

What kind of enterprise is IBM? It is an enterprise that cannot survive without a monopoly, and the reason why it has been able to get to where it is today is because of its monopoly. Therefore, he developed a personal computer with great ambitions, and he wanted to exhaust the original personal computer users such as Apple, Commodore, Cowherd, etc., so the compatibility with the CPU was put in the first place by IBM, and the only one that met IBM's requirements was Intel. So Intel was the only lucky one.

Some people may ask, why is IBM not other computer companies, such as Apple?

Although Apple's Apple II computing was a big success in the market, Jobs' real problem was that he was too greedy to hold everything in his hands, which led to the collapse of the Apple III.

The Apple III is the successor model of the Apple II, but it is not mature and the performance is very unstable, so it was rushed out of the market by Jobs, and finally led to a large number of consumer returns. Not only that, but the Apple III is not compatible with the previous Apple II due to the change of CPU, resulting in the previous consumers' application investment on the Apple II is not protected. The price of Apple III is also very expensive, with the lowest configuration being $3,698 and the high configuration being more than $6,000, which has led to consumer disgust.

And that's not all, Jobs continued to go further and further down the road to death, and after the failure of Apple III, Jobs launched the Lisa computer, the world's first personal computer with graphics operations, which can be said to lead an era.

This time Jobs learned the lesson of the Apple III, the Lisa computer is stable and reliable, and it is fully compatible with the Apple II computer, but his high price of more than $9,800 has buried everything for Apple.

If Jobs hadn't made one mistake or another, would there have been anything wrong with IBM? Or would IBm have delayed the launch of PCs for a few years, and at that time, the reduced instruction set chips were also on the market, and IBM might not have chosen the expensive and inferior x86 chips? Intel would still be able to dominate the world later?

It is a pity that history has no ifs, and if it is lost, it will be lost forever.

But for Li Yixuan, this is an opportunity, a rare opportunity, and if used well, his Oranges can soar.

Under the persuasion of Li Yixuan, Yu Youcheng finally agreed to join Oranges a week later. Li Yixuan was overjoyed, you must know that Yu Youcheng is the preferred designer of Intel in the future, and digging Yu Youcheng is equivalent to cutting off one of Intel's arms, and it is unknown whether Intel can become the overlord of CPUs in the future.