Those Years When I Was Forced to Top the Forbes List

Chapter 364 London, Chips, Architecture
2019, sunshine, clouds and mist.

The woman wearing sunglasses gazed down at the city below, tugged at the sleeve of the man beside her, and said excitedly, "Honey! It's so beautiful!"

The man crossed his arms and absentmindedly hummed in agreement.

The woman persisted, "Look, what a huge sea! So blue! Let's live here from now on!"

The man sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Brother, this is Greece! What's there to live in? They're so poor they're practically starting a revolution! They live on borrowed money every year!"

"Greece, Greece is great too! The Athens Olympics, isn't it here?"

"We have to transfer to Portugal later, and then take a bus to Madrid. The schedule is very tight. Don't bother me, I'm going to take a nap."

"After I take photos at the Royal Palace in Madrid today, can we go to the Louvre Museum in Italy tomorrow? We can walk around there, and wherever I like, we can stay there from now on, okay?"

The man grinned and raised his hand to make a "6".

"You managed to pick three out of the five European pigs, that's amazing."

"What five pigs?" The woman's eyes were clear.

"It's nothing, I'm going to sleep a little longer."

The man waved his hand dismissively, tilting his head to the side. He wasn't particularly interested in the vast ocean below; instead, he was feeling a bit unwell from the food he'd eaten the past two days. After a while, he started to crave Chongqing hot pot.

London in February 2007 looked like a newspaper soaked in water.

As Chen Xuebing's thoughts drifted back to the Thames River, he looked out the porthole and heard the cabin announcement in British English: the ground temperature was 4 degrees Celsius, overcast with light rain.

As we approached Heathrow Airport's Terminal 3, its glass curtain wall gleamed with an iron-gray hue, surprisingly resembling the imposing grandeur of Beijing Capital International Airport, where we had departed.

Beijing Capital International Airport has been upgraded and expanded in the last decade or so. Terminal 3 is still not completed and uses the latest technology, while the airport's original terminal building was put into use decades ago.

Europe's mechanical systems developed earlier, and the British Empire enjoyed a glorious past; its old buildings are much larger than those in China.

However, the new ones might not be the same.

In his previous life, he had been to many countries. He had been to Europe twice, nearly ten years apart, and the changes were minimal. To see modern skyscrapers and bustling cities, one had to go to the Middle East, Tokyo, Chicago, Singapore, and New York.

China's level of prosperity is not that dense. Apart from places like Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Wuhan, Tianjin, Taipei, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing, Xi'an, Qingdao, and Chengdu, which are rare in the world, other places are roughly equivalent to the capital cities of one or two medium-sized countries per province.

"The EU's eastward expansion in 2004 brought in 10 Central and Eastern European countries at once, increasing the number of EU member states to 25. Many immigrants came to the UK through EU integration, competing for local job opportunities. The UK has begun to focus on employment issues this year."

Goto Miki whispered to Chen Xuebing.

Chen Xuebing nodded.

The rapid expansion of the European Union, coupled with the need to use membership fees to alleviate poverty, strengthen EU integration, and develop the euro, has placed a significant burden on its developed member states.

This also made the Americans very nervous.

The United States launched the Kosovo War in the third month after the birth of the euro, creating turmoil in Europe. Later, it pushed up oil prices through the Iraq War, triggering inflation in the eurozone.

The United States has been stirring up trouble in recent years for three reasons: first, to benefit the military-industrial complex; second, to promote the Euro and maintain the dollar's hegemony; and third, to attract safe-haven funds from around the world, especially Europe, into the United States.

Therefore, the 9/11 attacks, the graveyard of Middle Eastern empires, and the covert struggle between the US dollar and the euro in recent years have tied up a lot of the US's energy, giving China a decade of smooth trade development.

Three years later, the Greek debt crisis, orchestrated by Goldman Sachs, fully erupted. Soros seized the opportunity to lead the short selling, causing serious divisions within the Eurozone over whether to bail out or not, disrupting internal order. Greece then dragged down the "PIIGS" (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Greece, and Spain) countries, significantly reducing the Euro's competitiveness. US financial institutions, which had suffered heavy losses in the 08 financial crisis, recovered significantly by shorting Europe, causing the dollar index to rise. Only then did the US strategic focus return to the Asia-Pacific region, intervening in East Asian economic integration and creating security issues.

The tactics haven't actually changed.

However, this time the opponent is not a fragmented Europe, but a monster house in East Asia. The US has suffered even greater losses here. The method of creating turmoil and causing the return of dollars through physical warfare is no longer effective. The only option is to gather its allies and expand economic friction. Over the next decade, this gradually led to a new world order—deglobalization.

Europe has always had some unrealistic illusions about the United States, thinking that they are at least sworn brothers who harvest the world together. However, the United States has treated them like the main course, sucking them dry and inserting two tubes to bleed them dry: finance and oil.

Unlike Europe, Britain established its maritime hegemony after the First Industrial Revolution and gradually became the big brother with colonies covering half the world. The earliest colonists and rulers of North America were the English and Scots, who are Anglo-Saxon brothers related to the United States by blood. Their territory was an isolated island at sea, independent of the European continent, and they always had their own ideas.

However, its era has passed. Its former external territories have gradually broken away. The main island of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is only 24 square kilometers, about the size of Guangxi. Later, it even held a referendum and was forced by public opinion to leave the EU. Its GDP has not grown for more than ten years, and it has become increasingly out of the public eye.

Chen Xuebing's thoughts raced as he looked down at the chaotic urban planning of the old and new buildings. He found it fascinating that this small place actually had a 300-year history of the world.

It is said that in the 58th year of Qianlong's reign (1793), the British government sent people to China to demonstrate the achievements of the Industrial Revolution and left records. Even if Qianlong was senile at that time, the three emperors who followed him, Jiaqing, Daoguang, and Xianfeng, were all diligent in their work. They ruled for more than 60 years, but none of them were involved in industry. Tongzhi was a devoted philanderer, and the only one who had some ideas, Guangxu, was taken away by his aunt when she left. The Qing Dynasty was indeed short-lived.

Some of these buildings might have existed when Li Hongzhang went to sea.
Did Li Hongzhang's vision of America at that time bear any resemblance to modern-day Britain?

But these buildings can no longer inspire fear.

Chen Xuebing felt a sense of security that surpassed that of powerful nations, and a sense of vigilance that all of this was hard-won and difficult to maintain.

Some people say that going abroad can make one patriotic, and he thinks this makes a lot of sense at this moment. However, this statement applies to people who understand their own national history.

In his past life, he didn't have much ability and thought about escaping the country to become a small contractor abroad. However, when he seriously considered it, he was filled with confusion about the future.

Living in a foreign country is meaningless.

In this life, he will still venture out.

However, my mindset has completely changed.

He actually quite likes those landscapes, but the procedures are too troublesome; it's best not to go abroad when visiting them.

The smell of diesel fuel mingled with the cold wind at the hotel entrance.

A red double-decker bus drove through the puddles, with an advertisement on its back: the corporate logos of Huawei and British Telecom and a 3G base station logo. Below the poster, there was a boy in a Manchester United jersey playing with a Nokia N95.

"Hey, hey." Chen Xuebing patted Lin Bin's arm and pointed towards the slowly passing bus. "You know, they've got a pretty eclectic range of ads. Go ask around, how much does it cost to trade an N95 for a Kirin phone?" Lin Bin turned his head, took a closer look, and smiled.

"You promised Apple that Kirin couldn't be sold in Europe."

Chen Xuebing waved his hand: "Heh, you're just too naive. You're really treating this temporary partnership as a lifelong commitment?"

Lin Bin shook his head and said, "I'm afraid that once you get here, you'll start thinking about exploring other markets. You should focus on getting ARM sorted out. Our Kunlun system's memory management unit, power management framework, secure boot chain, and graphics unit are all deeply customized for the kernel license, basic documentation, and instruction set provided by ARM. The instruction set is still the previous version, ARMv6. The latest ARMv7 instruction set is not licensed to us, and the acquisition is not yet finalized. We don't even know if the development toolchain layer we've created should be deeply coupled with ARM features. The development toolchain involves the promotion of system programs, and everyone is waiting for it. You need to finalize things as soon as possible."

The relationship between a smartphone system and its processor architecture is essentially like that of "soul and body." Energy efficiency, parallel computing, and memory management are all determined by the architecture's instruction set. Without these, a smartphone is just a brick.

"What are you waiting for? Just do it!" Chen Xuebing glared at him.

If given a choice, he would certainly choose to develop his own controllable architecture and instruction set.

At the very least, they will be using ARM while developing.

However, there are only a few available architectures. MIPS is used for educational devices and counterfeit phones. SH-Mobile is exclusive to a few Japanese flip phones. The x86 instruction set is complex and consumes a lot of power, so it is only suitable for computers and PDAs that are plugged in.

The real alternative is RISC-V, an open instruction set architecture developed by the University of California, Berkeley, which anyone can use, modify, and extend for free.

However, this architecture will not be released for many years. Although he doesn't remember the exact year, he remembers seeing the news that RISC-V was made publicly available and free on the Neihan Duanzi APP. At that time, Neihan Duanzi was already very popular.

It was many years later that Neihan Duanzi (a popular Chinese humor app) became popular.

As Chen Xuebing thought about it, his attitude became more and more determined: "I will definitely make a deal. If ARM doesn't agree, I will take over their headquarters. You can do the compiler work as you like, and the system instruction set will also be upgraded to v7."

Lin Bin sighed and patiently explained, "It's not that simple. The Linux kernel is architecture-independent C code that achieves cross-platform support through underlying adaptation layers for different architectures. However, Linux version 2.6 only supports ARMv4T to ARMv6 by default and does not support v7. Therefore, we need ARM to first license the ARMv7 instruction set and technical documentation to us. We also need to take this set of technical documentation to the Linux Foundation to patch the kernel. Once the patch is applied, not only the compiler but also the underlying adaptation layer code can be upgraded, and there is still a lot of room for improvement in smoothness."

"Oh," Chen Xuebing said, slightly embarrassed. His knowledge was rather fragmented, and he didn't quite understand the more technical aspects.

But then I thought about it again and became happy.

"After the upgrade, the smoothness performance can no longer reach the level of the iPhone?"

“That’s for sure,” Lin Bin said confidently, then added a twist: “However, this system upgrade requires a next-generation chip to work, because the ARMv7 instruction set can only be used with chips that support the ARMv7 architecture. The chip’s hardware circuitry must be designed according to this specification to correctly decode and execute instructions. ARMv7 instructions will be treated as gibberish on ARMv6 chips, and our current chip is v6, so it can’t support it.”

Chen Xuebing was immediately disappointed, and then asked, seemingly understanding but not quite, "v7, I remember the design requirement was 65nm process, right? This architecture was announced the year before last, and we got the 65nm production capacity, so why didn't we let Marvell design the v7 architecture?"

“It’s not just a manufacturing process issue.” Lin Bin shook his head: “Although ARMv7 was released earlier, the Compiler 4.0 toolchain was only just released. Developers cannot adapt to it in advance. Everyone is just getting started with this version. Moreover, the complexity of the v7 architecture has increased by more than four times. It can fully utilize the performance of 65nm. If you want someone to design a v7 chip for you, the price will be much higher than this one.”

Chen Xuebing's eyes darkened slightly: "So this upgraded system won't be usable for another year or two? And according to this logic, there will be very few V7 architecture chips even in the next two or three years. Our downstream manufacturers probably can't afford them. This upgraded version is practically for our own use?"

“System upgrades and development also require a lot of time.” Lin Bin paused, then said earnestly, “This is a strategic move to prepare for the future and also a way to hone our skills. The Kunlun Business Unit is constantly recruiting top talent, and now all departments are on track. There are no profit targets, so everyone is focused on R&D, and the system optimization is progressing very quickly. However, some optimizations have their limits. To continue, we need to improve the kernel code, chips, and the overall architecture. It’s a great thing that we can quickly get to this stage of preparing for the future.”

"Furthermore, the next stage of the competition will mainly depend on the chips. Don't you plan to be the first to develop the V7 architecture chip? Marvell has done a pretty good job with our current generation of chips, but do you plan to upgrade and replace them next? Who are you going to hire to do it? Our design team is not yet mature. You need to think about these things carefully and plan ahead."

Upon hearing this, Chen Xuebing suddenly realized that it seemed to be quite urgent.

Based on the upgrade frequency of mobile phone chips, once this generation of products is released, the design of the next generation of chips can begin.

While the 65nm level will remain in the lead for the next year or two, he doesn't want to leave chip design stagnant.

Apple certainly won't stop.

The 2008 Olympic edition will use version 7.

"We can't keep going back to Marvell. We need to hire a master, an even better one."

As Chen Xuebing spoke, he exchanged a glance with Lin Bin.

Two seconds later, the two of them gave two answers at the same time.

Broadcom.

"TI".

Chen Xuebing was taken aback: "Won't Broadcom work?"

"Tch." Lin Bin waved his hand. "Broadcom is the dominant player in communication and connectivity chips. For mobile phone CPU design, you either need to go to TI (Texas Instruments) or Samsung! Broadcom CPUs are just dependent on the ARM reference design! You might as well go to Marvell instead of them!"

Chen Xuebing's faith crumbled: "Damn it, I always thought they were really amazing."

Lin Bin laughed: "Broadcom is renowned in the chip design field, but they have their own specializations. Your information in this area is not comprehensive enough. You can't find information about which company is strong and which is weak online. Everyone will claim to be strong. You need to listen to the experts. I recommended Marvell back then, specifically for your needs for a touchscreen phone, and it did a pretty good job, right? Now we need to find a better design firm that can solve our problems. I recommend these two companies: either TI or Samsung."

Chen Xuebing took a deep breath and organized the information.

"TI is Nokia's official supplier, and Nokia is coming to beat us up soon... This is not good."

He subconsciously ruled out Samsung.

Lin Bin smiled and patted Chen Xuebing's arm: "I can't help with these two companies, so I can only leave them to you."

At that moment, Miki Goto came out of the hotel and waved to the two of them, indicating that their check-in was complete.

Chen Xuebing patted the back of his head.

This completely dispelled some of the distracting thoughts that had arisen in Lin Bin when he first arrived in England.

There are so many things to do, let's just take it one step at a time.

"Let's go, let's go upstairs and rest. Let's get the ARM done first!"

(End of this chapter)