Development of productivity started in 1981

Chapter 194: Reactions from Europe, America, Japan and South Korea and the Trojan Horse Plan (asking for monthly tickets)
"Andy, we are in big trouble." IBM President Opel shouted to Intel President Andy Grove on the phone.

Andy Grove was born in Budapest, Hungary, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. He was the CEO and chairman of Intel Corporation, the third employee and the first COO of Intel. He had handled too many major events, so he was not so nervous about the panicky and incoherent shouting of the Intel president.

"Opel, what happened to make you so panicked? Is it because the Texans' technology is better than yours?" Andy Grove asked back with a relaxed look.

"Andy, it's not those damn rednecks. It's the University of East China across the sea that built a supercomputer with a computing speed of 21 billion times per second. The worst thing is that they didn't use our chips."

"Isn't it the 80286 CPU produced by your company? Is it the outdated CPU used to find out what happened? There's nothing to worry about."

"Not really. It's a CPU produced by a Hong Kong company called Star Group. It seems to be called X-1001 chip, and the manufacturing process is 5 microns. Their supercomputer only used 1600 of these CPUs to achieve this computing speed. Considering the speed loss in parallel computing, the computing speed of their CPU is at least 150 million times per second." Opel told Andy all the news from China.

He couldn't help but be nervous. IBM was now the largest buyer of Intel's high-performance chips, and many R&D projects were carried out in cooperation with IBM and were designed according to their requirements.

For example, the personal computer compatible machine technology launched by IBM now is the chip compatibility modification that IBM and them have completed together, so that most computers on the market now use the chips they produce. In addition, IBM's supercomputers, mainframes, mid-range computers and other products are all using their chips in large quantities.

Now, a company called Star Group suddenly emerges and produces a CPU with better performance than their chips. This is bound to break their monopoly and even compete with them.

Once the competition begins, Intel will be the first to be affected, followed by IBM. It is also possible that IBM will turn to support the other party because the chips produced by the Star Group have higher performance than theirs but the price is not much different from theirs, which makes Intel President Opel very nervous.

"Oh? Xingyao Group, I don't have any impression of it. Do you have any detailed information about them?"

"We are still collecting intelligence, Andy, let's meet and talk. The coffee in your office is delicious."

"Come on, I'll ask my secretary to prepare coffee for you."

In less than half an hour, the president of Intel arrived at IBM's headquarters building by helicopter, and then with the help of the airport staff on the rooftop of IBM, he quickly got off the plane and came to Andy Grove's office.

"Andy, I don't mind disturbing you, do I?"

"Oper, have some coffee first and show me the information you've collected. We'll talk later."

Andy poured a cup of warm coffee for Opera, then took a stack of A4 papers from him. The contents on it had not been properly formatted yet. It was a combination of intelligence sent back from different channels.

Andy calmed down and read it section by section. His expression changed from relaxed at the beginning to frowned, which showed that the content of the intelligence was also very unfavorable to their company.

"Damn Motorola! They knew how powerful this company was a long time ago, so why didn't they tell us? And why did they just take the loss and not retaliate? Will the British really protect this colonial company?"

Andy saw a piece of intelligence that said that Xingyao Group had squeezed Motorola out of the Hong Kong market with text messages as early as last year and with mobile phones in the first half of this year, forcing it to withdraw. He couldn't help but curse. It was obvious that this company had made huge profits through the mobile communications market, and then it couldn't wait to start developing personal computers and supercomputers.

"Hmm, I don't know what Robert was thinking. He didn't even tell us about such an important thing. Is he afraid that we will laugh at his embarrassing incident in Hong Kong?" said Opel.

"Oper, your information is too brief. This company was founded so recently, where did they get the semiconductor technology? And where did their production equipment come from? Even if the yellow people have many smart brains and have mastered the technology, manufacturing equipment cannot be figured out by just thinking. Do you have any information on this?"

"I have already paid a consulting company to help collect intelligence in this area. In addition, I have asked the company's department to find major suppliers to understand their customers and see if the companies within our supply chain provided the production equipment to this company."

"Well, if the production equipment is provided by a company within our supply chain, then we have many ways to control the company in this colony, but if not, then we will be in big trouble." Andy also showed a trace of worry at this time.

"Yes, but apart from the equipment manufacturers in our supply chain, which other companies have the ability to produce these equipment? You know, producing these equipment is not like making shirts and shoes. It requires reaching a certain level from heavy industry to high-precision manufacturing." Opel said after thinking.

"At present, apart from us and Japan and South Korea, the rest are the Europeans, the Soviet Union and the University of Tokyo." Andy counted on his fingers and listed the countries or forces that have the ability to produce these semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

"The Soviet Union can be ruled out. Their circuits are still based on vacuum tubes, and their transistor technology is very backward. I have the latest intelligence on their transistors in recent years. They have not yet mastered the manufacturing of large-scale integrated circuits. Now many civilian chips are imported or purchased directly as finished products, so they can be ruled out." said Opel.

Because the Soviet military and top leaders had been preparing for the Third World War, they chose to prioritize the development of electron tubes in the semiconductor industry. Now their electron tube technology has reached perfection, with the smallest electron tube having a diameter of less than 1 mm. Their military radars and control circuits use a large number of electron tubes to prevent all weapons and equipment from being destroyed by electromagnetic pulses after a nuclear war.

Because transistors have almost no defense against electromagnetic pulse attacks, it is difficult for transistor-made circuits to survive even if a shielding cage is installed. They have conducted experiments and found that the shielded circuits were all destroyed after the nuclear explosion. This is because the external circuit will instantly generate a strong electric field and very large instantaneous current under a strong electromagnetic pulse. These induced currents will cause the internal circuit to short-circuit, while the control circuits made of vacuum tubes can survive because they can accommodate extremely large instantaneous currents.

"Then Tokyo University can also be ruled out, right? They were very closed in the past few years and we didn't get any intelligence. But in recent years, our relationship with them has been very close. Many projects have been demonstrated to us, and it is said that they are preparing to upgrade their fighter jets." Andy has some understanding of Tokyo University and knows some inside information about the close relationship between the two countries in recent years.

"From the projects shown to us and the products on the market, they do have some manufacturing capabilities. But if they have really reached this level of technology, why is it not the state-owned enterprises in China that produce this CPU, but the Hong Kong company that produces it and then returns to China to cooperate with Tsinghua University?"

"You ask me, who should I ask? Dongda is too good at hiding its strength. The two failures in the Korean and Vietnam battlefields are enough to show that they are not easy to deal with. We should hurry up and collect intelligence. Be careful about the way we do it and don't cause any trouble. We are still in the honeymoon stage with them and we can't mess up our plan."

"I know that. We will be careful. Let's first look at the intelligence feedback from Europe. If they really supplied the relevant equipment secretly, then we have to convince the commander-in-chief to crack down on them."

"Well, but we can't push too hard. Now is the critical time to push down the polar bear. We can't push the Europeans towards the polar bear, otherwise we will end up in trouble."

"Oh, this is really troublesome. It seems that even if we find out that the equipment comes from the University of East China or Europe, we don't have any good way to curb this company that emerged in the colony?"

"Yes, that's the case at the moment, but let's be prepared. Polar Bear won't last long. When he falls, it will be the end of this company."

Andy Grove and Opel spent the whole morning in the office talking and asking their secretary to refill their coffee cups. In the end, they could not come up with any good solution. They could only try to find out the details of the company called Star Group and the source of their semiconductor production equipment before formulating a corresponding attack plan. What Intel had to do was to speed up the next generation of chip production technology and beat the other company in performance to win over domestic customers.

IBM will lower the prices of corresponding mid-range computers and exascale mainframes, and try to dump them eastwards on a large scale, to see if this method can interrupt Xingyao's path to mainframe development.

……

"Prime Minister, a semiconductor company in the Far East has recently joined hands with the University of Tokyo to create a supercomputer, whose performance ranks among the top 10 currently." In the British Prime Minister's residence, an attendant reported the news from the Far East to Mrs. Thatcher.

"Are you saying that a semiconductor company in Hong Kong helped the University of Tokyo to build a supercomputer?" Mrs. Thatcher couldn't help but feel a headache when she heard the names of Hong Kong and the University of Tokyo, and frowned at the attendant who reported the news.

Last year, she wanted to win at the negotiation table at the University of Tokyo with the momentum of defeating Argentina, but the result went against her will. She was suppressed by the other party during the negotiation and accidentally fell when she came out. She was photographed by reporters waiting at the door. She was so embarrassed that the whole world was ashamed. So she became irritated whenever she mentioned these two places.

The attendant felt a little guilty about Mrs. Thatcher's look, so he said with a stiff upper lip, "Yes, Prime Minister. The company is called Xingyao Group. It has a subsidiary called Xingyao Electronics, which is responsible for producing high-performance CPUs. It also produces a personal computer with performance that exceeds that of IBM-compatible computers. The supercomputer that Dongda built with the high-performance CPUs they provided has a computing speed of 21 billion times per second."

The intelligence the aide-de-camp received was also very brief, and most of the news was reported in the Dongda newspaper, so the internal situation of the Xingyao Group was not mentioned at all. However, the Prime Minister did not have the energy to take care of such details. It was good enough that he could spend some time to inquire about it. Moreover, at this time, the UK had already prepared for the loss of Hong Kong, so now it is thinking about how to transfer more wealth from there. It has long been unconcerned about the development there, let alone a small semiconductor company, because even their own domestic semiconductor companies are not very concerned.

It is hard to say that Britain is such a big country, from being the sun never sets in the last century to being disintegrated and retreating to a small island now, without any struggle.

There have also been some big moves in the semiconductor field. In July 1978, the British Labour government allocated 7 million pounds (about 5000 million US dollars) from the budget to invest in an emerging semiconductor company - Inmos.

At that time, the British Labour Party discovered that the chip industry was a booming industry. The United States had already taken the lead, and a number of companies such as Texas Instruments, Intel, and Motorola dominated the market. However, as the former overlord, Britain would not willingly give up the semiconductor industry to other countries. The Labour government placed its hopes for a counterattack on Inmos.

Founded by British computer consultant Iann Barron and American semiconductor industry veterans Richard Petritz and Paul Schroeder, Inmos maintained its operations by producing and selling popular SRAM memory while using government funds to develop a dedicated parallel processing chip, the Transputer.

At that time, Inmos had a mature design team in Bristol, known as the "Silicon Valley of the UK", and built a wafer factory in Newport, South Wales. It also gathered the largest number of semiconductor talents in the UK. It was described by some as the "British version of Intel". It is no wonder that the Labour government favored it.

But the situation soon changed. In 1979, the British Conservative Party replaced the Labour government, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher began to implement a privatization policy. The targets she wanted to target were the nationalized enterprises established with the support of the Labour Party. The National Enterprise Commission was incorporated into the British Technology Group and eventually had to sell its shares in Inmos.

Inmos itself was not in a good situation. After several years of losses and a total of $8500 million in government funding, Inmos lost $1983 million in 5000 despite total revenue of $1800 million. At that time, some Soviet analysts predicted that Inmos would have a revenue of $1984 million in 1.3 and a pre-tax profit of $1300 million to $1900 million, but Mrs. Thatcher could not wait any longer.

At this time, Inmos had been listed on the privatization list and acquisition negotiations had begun.

Richard Petrits, an Inmos engineer, recalled: "Mrs. Thatcher liked what Inmos had achieved in the semiconductor field, but she hated that the company needed funding from the British government. It was a bit like Ronald Reagan's idea that as long as the government was not involved, she would be happy. She did not realize that without the help of the government, Inmos would not have been born, let alone the success it brought."

So when Mrs. Thatcher heard that the Star Group had achieved such great results, she did not seem very excited, because as the name suggested, this company was obviously not founded by the British. Although it developed in the area under their jurisdiction, it had little to do with them.

"Does this company pay taxes normally? Can Governor Edward Youde invite them to London to build a production plant? Also, export restrictions must be imposed to prevent this company from selling high-performance CPUs to the mainland."

Mrs. Thatcher made a series of demands that were obviously impossible to achieve, and the aides cursed in their hearts. The prime minister lost her composure when she heard about Hong Kong and the University of Tokyo, and had no skills in handling domestic affairs or dealing with the crisis on the European continent.

However, although he knew he couldn't do it, he still answered affirmatively and said that he would convey the message to the Governor. He was just a small civil servant and there was no need for him to remind others. Let the Governor deal with this difficult task.

The UK does not pay any attention to the Star Group because the Conservative government has given up on the semiconductor industry and is only concerned about whether Hong Kong can get tax revenue from this company. It would be even better if they could use intimidation to get the technology or even force them to move to the UK.

……

"Xiba, how come the University of Tokyo suddenly developed such an advanced supercomputer? Is this fake news?" Samsung Group's president Lee Byung-chul said after receiving cutting-edge intelligence about the world's current semiconductor field from his subordinates.

At that time, they were still working on the first 64K DRAM (dynamic random access memory) VLSI chip and were conducting intensive tests in the laboratory. Unexpectedly, Dongda University and Xingyao Electronics Company gave them a big blow.

He saw in the briefing that supercomputers used higher-performance memory, which meant that before their product was truly successful, the other party would release a higher-performance product, which would cause all their previous investment to go to waste.

"I want detailed information about this company, the sooner the better. I also want to try to contact them to see if we can cooperate. I want to be prepared for both situations." Lee Byung-chul handed the information to the person in charge of Samsung Semiconductor and then put forward his request.

"Okay, President, I'll arrange it right away." After saying that, he quickly went to arrange the intelligence gathering work and contact the person in charge of Xingyao Electronics.

Chairman Lee Byung-chul was angry for a long time, then calmed down and called senior government officials to explain the situation to them and seek help from the government because the matter involved Dongda. If it was just the Hong Kong company Xingyao, they would have many means to use, but with Dongda involved, those methods could not be used, otherwise it would cause big trouble.

……

At this time, Japanese companies had already taken the lead and had already transmitted the publicly reported information back to their country. They also sent a large number of personnel to dig deep into the details of the cooperation, hoping to understand the full picture of the cooperation.

Because Japan is vigorously developing in the direction of semiconductors at this time, and many domestic companies are involved in the semiconductor field. Now they are overtaken by an unknown company. What should they do? They had to lick the United States to obtain the early technology and corresponding equipment support, and then invested a lot of resources to gain the world's second place in the semiconductor industry. Now it seems that they are going to be squeezed to third place. How can they feel at ease?

Thus, a large-scale espionage campaign against Xingyao Semiconductor and related domestic semiconductor companies began, and Wang Jiankun and Xingyao Group also began to take advantage of the situation, releasing a large amount of true and false information, intending to delay semiconductor companies in Europe, the United States, Japan, South Korea and other countries for a period of time.

For this purpose, Wang Jiankun often took leave. He used hypersonic aircraft to frequently travel between the mainland, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and other countries. On the one hand, he made copies of those spies and passed some true and false information through them. On the other hand, he launched the Trojan Horse plan to infiltrate new humans into these companies and even countries to obtain corresponding intelligence, thus planting the seeds of unification for the future.

(End of this chapter)