Reinventing the Millennium.

How much is a chip company based in Austin, Texas worth?
Fang Zhuo is very familiar with Texas, to be precise, he is very familiar with Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio in Texas.

He's heard cheers from teams in arenas in all three cities.

But Austin...

I have never been here, I am not familiar with it, and I have no impression.

Unfortunately, this city is the capital of Texas.

Fang Zhuo had an urgent understanding of the city and the company on the way on the Qingzi.

As a result, Austin-based Intrinsity is in some ways a replica of PA Semi.

Intrinsity was established as early as 1993. At that time, the name was still called Exponential. It specially created a PowerPC architecture chip X704 for a large customer. However, this large customer did not choose this one.

Therefore, Exponential went bankrupt and reorganized.

In 97, the remaining employees of the company regrouped and founded EVSX, which was renamed Intrinsity in 2000.

That former big customer was Apple!

The reason why Intrinsity is in Austin is because the cost of housing and the cost of living here are much lower than in Silicon Valley.

For the same reason, Austin has gathered a number of semiconductor and computer companies, and many well-known companies have chosen to set up branches here.

This situation gave Austin a nickname - Silicon Hill (Silicon Hill).

Proper downgrade consumption!
Without PA Semi in Silicon Valley, Intrinsity in Silicon Hills was found.

Fang Zhuo landed in Austin with an inexplicably funny mood.

The main body of Yike's current chip department comes from the acquisition, which is derived from the mobile chip department sold by Intel. Now it has changed its direction and is studying the ARM architecture that is more in line with the low power consumption requirements of mobile phones.

Everyone regrets that they failed to acquire PA Semi this time, because several people in this company are well-known in the industry and belong to the kind that can carry the company's core competitiveness. It is even more kind to continue to fly to Austin with President Fang ...

Does an unknown small chip company still need to mobilize everyone like this?
However, when we got in touch, things changed.

First, the asking price is not cheap. The pre-sale of Mars in October could not stop, and the other party quoted a price of 2 million US dollars.

Second, Intrinsity has demonstrated a high level of technology. The latest project they are currently cooperating with Samsung is based on the Cortex-A8 core processor design, aiming to create an industry-leading single-core chip - Cortex-A8 only supports single core.

Intrinsity named the technology involved in this collaborative project Hummingbird.

Fang Zhuo was originally immersed in his team's praise for this chip company, but he didn't react when he heard "Hummingbird", and he hesitated after translating it into his native language in his heart.

Hummingbird, hummingbird.

Is this the hummingbird from Samsung?

Hummingbird is from Intrinsity, not Samsung's self-developed?
Or, cooperate with each other to absorb nutrition?
If you remember correctly, the pioneering work of Samsung's world-renowned Galaxy S series is a hummingbird processor.

Fang Zhuo once used a Samsung mobile phone translated as "Galaxy" in China. The Hummingbird processor and the A4 chip of the iPhone 4 are suspected to be twin sisters in media reports. It is said that Apple has absorbed a lot of nutrition from Samsung, a partner.

Of course, the reverse is also the same. The patent lingering between these two companies can be called the battle of the century, and it is often a claim of 5 million or 10 billion US dollars.

While listening to his team's judgment, Fang Zhuo was extremely suspicious that the one pushed in front of him by Schmidt was the true master or one of the true masters.

As for why Samsung didn't directly take Intrinsity into the bag, maybe Intrinsity's capabilities have not been fully verified, or it is confident that its own team can fully digest and innovate.

Fang Zhuo simply stroked the logic of Samsung, a mobile phone manufacturer that has evolved from feature phones to smartphones. The internals are already good enough, and the outside world just needs to maintain cooperation.

He refrained himself from getting too fixated on the price and posed the question to Intrinsity.

"If it is acquired, how will the cooperation with Samsung be handled?"

Intrinsity CEO Adrian replied: "Our cooperation with Samsung has been very good. There is no need for Yike to break the contract. The development of the Cortex-A8 core is a very interesting thing. Yike mobile phones can refer to and absorb experience. "

He felt that Mr. Fang might be here because of his cooperation with Samsung, trying to prove his status: "There is no need to worry about this at all. Samsung is only worried about the progress of this project. This research and development is definitely beneficial to Yike."

Fang Zhuo thought he didn't need to worry.

And Samsung did exactly what Adrian said, when Intrinsity notified the other party of possible changes in the cooperation, Fang Zhuo received a contact from Samsung here.

Even though Hummingbird has not yet produced results, based on its past cooperation with Intrinsity and its optimism for the Cortex-A8 core, Samsung attaches great importance to Intrinsity, and then pays close attention to the acquisition of Yike.

Samsung hopes that if Yike succeeds in the acquisition, it can continue to cooperate in accordance with the contract.

Fang Zhuo did not hesitate, and gave Yi Ke the most effective guarantee that the cooperation between the two would not be hindered in any way, and Yi Ke would give him great support.

An excellent processor has no reason to give up the experience of an excellent manufacturer. This can be used as a record for Qualcomm chips, and you can even learn from Samsung's approach. Europe and the United States use Qualcomm chips, and their own countries use their own chips.

Intrinsity's past cooperation has been guaranteed, and this time the acquisition has not been hindered by the administration.

Fang Zhuo was afraid that nights would be long and dreamy, so he didn't make too much counter-offer for the price. He gave stock + cash in the acquisition. Compared with the other party's offer of 2 million US dollars, he paid back 2000 million US dollars, and made up an offer price of 1.8 million. .

He knows that if he grinds it again, the price will definitely go down, and the company team also recommends not to rush for a while.

However, due to DoD's previous intervention + Samsung's endorsement in disguise + Hummingbird's confidence, the speed of this premium acquisition is unprecedented.

In just four days, in the unnoticed secondary Silicon Valley, the two parties signed the contract in a low-key manner, and made a brief information disclosure to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in accordance with regulations.

On the second day after signing the contract, Fang Zhuo received a call from Jobs.

"We've acquired PA Semi."

Fang Zhuo was very surprised, and somewhat broke his impression of Mr. Qiao, and said in surprise, "Because of the successful acquisition, did you make a special trip to inform me of this news?"

"Because of Yike, Apple had to pay a premium. I think someone should be responsible for the premium of nearly 1 million US dollars." Jobs was in a good mood, "The price of this phone call is very high."

Fang Zhuo thought to himself, you pay a premium, and I pay a premium, both are about the same.

Since Jobs made this call, he also wanted to talk about the recent mobile phone market, and asked, "How is the pre-sale effect of Yike Mars?"

Fang Zhuo threatened calmly: "One million units have been sold."

Jobs asked companies and operators to evaluate competitors, saying: "This number is impossible, I don't believe it."

"Yeah, I lied to you." Fang Zhuo was very frank.

Jobs suddenly felt that the conversation between the two parties was likely to be naive, so he terminated the phone call with the competitor in time, and only said: "I will see the actual Mars machine next month."

"Okay, I will give you the millionth mobile phone." Fang Zhuo was very generous.

Jobs ended the call reminiscing about his emotions about the iPhone million.

However, he soon received a notice from the supplier Samsung that there was an important change in the partner involved in the research and development of an approved chip, and one of the chip designers provided by Samsung and Apple had traces of Yike.

Only in the evening, Jobs called Fang Zhuo for the second time.

"Eco suddenly acquired Samsung's partner company?" Jobs asked, "PA Semi is not your real goal?"

Fang Zhuo felt wronged, and said openly: "No, I want both. This company is actually a small company with only 22 employees, unlike PA Semi which has 140 employees. The fair way is out of the PA Semi table, and you are the beneficiary."

He asked: "Apple has been strengthening the chip department recently, why didn't you take a fancy to Intrinsity?"

It's not that Jobs didn't like it, but he really didn't know the external partners of Samsung's chips. The chip contract between Apple and Samsung included the supply plan for the next three years, and did not specify such details.

Now there are only three choices in the market, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, and Samsung.

"Apple will not target collaborators of partners." Jobs gave an answer.

"It makes sense. Fortunately, Yike is not a partner of Samsung, so you can do it." Fang Zhuo said with a smile, "Oh, from now on, Yike will be regarded as a partner of Samsung."

Yike's chip department provides part of the design support for Samsung. Apple takes core chips from Samsung, an industry rival, and Samsung selectively polishes and learns from experience.

The competition is the competition, the cooperation is the cooperation.

As for how to sum up experience and bring forth new ideas after such cooperation, that is another matter.

Fang Zhuo is very grateful to Schmidt, the CEO of Google and the director of Yikezhen, for judging and promoting Intrinsity, a small chip company with real talents, from his channel.

He would like to seal Schmidt as the head of the Iron Triangle!

Now, Yike's chip department is composed of the backbone of Intel's original mobile device department + the Intrinsity Hummingbird team, which can be regarded as a wave of version enhancements for the ARM architecture.

This enhancement belongs to the future competitiveness. To what extent it can be achieved requires investment in research and development and careful planning. It also needs to hold the list and carefully screen it in times of financial turmoil.

However, just as it was getting closer and closer to the release of Mars, there was another bad news in China, and the tape-out of Morningstar Semiconductor failed again.

Fang Zhuo has high expectations for Morningstar Semiconductor. Now, he also expects whether Yike's chip department can be transformed into the original three parts of Intel + Hummingbird + Morningstar.

It's time to get down to business helping Morningstar improve.