Hong Kong films: From street thugs to Hong Kong financial tycoons

Chapter 92 The Darkest Hour in Silicon Valley: Despair After Violent Dismantling!

MSI headquarters building, Silicon Valley, California, USA, top floor president's office.

Outside the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, the California sun shone as brightly as ever, but the office was as cold as a morgue.

Paul, the president of MSI, had bloodshot eyes and his tie was loosely undone, hanging around his neck like a hanged ghost.

He stared intently at a black computer tower on his desk, his eyes filled with an overwhelming fear.

This is the Loongson 1.0 supercomputer that he had his assistant snatch back from an electronics store on Fifth Avenue in New York three hours earlier, at a high price.

Besides Paul, the office was filled with MSI's five top hardware engineers and software architects.

This group of elites, who usually pride themselves on changing the world, all held their breath and gathered around this inconspicuous black metal box.

"Take it apart."

Paul took a deep breath, his voice hoarse as if it had been sanded on sandpaper.

"I want to see what kind of shady tricks Lin Yao, that Asian nouveau riche, put inside. $1999? If he didn't cut corners, I, Paul, will jump off this building today!"

The chief hardware engineer took a deep breath, picked up a professional electric screwdriver, and aimed it at the screws on the side of the chassis.

"Buzz—"

With a slight mechanical turning sound, the brushed metal casing was carefully removed piece by piece, and everyone craned their necks and stared intently at the motherboard structure inside the case.

There were no cheap flying wires as I had imagined, nor were there any rough solder joints.

A specially made, deep black motherboard lies quietly inside, its electronic components arranged like the most precise array, each trace exuding the beauty of an industrial work of art.

"This workmanship—impossible—"

The chief engineer, holding a magnifying glass, began to tremble uncontrollably. He leaned over the motherboard, his gaze fixed on the chip in the very center, which bore the logo of a dark gold dragon.

"Mr. Paul—this C—"

The engineer swallowed hard, cold sweat dripping from his chin onto the insulating mat.

"The manufacturing process surpasses all existing production lines at MSI and Intel. It's definitely not the traditional 1.5-micron process; if I'm not mistaken, it's at least a 0.8-micron nanometer-scale process!"

"What?!"

Paul jumped up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.

"0.8 micrometers? Intel's prototype in the lab isn't even finished yet. How could a place like Hong Kong, which doesn't even have a proper wafer fab, possibly mass-produce 0.8 micrometers?"

"Not only that—"

A system architect standing nearby, pale-faced, pointed to another separate chip beneath the motherboard.

"Mr. Paul, look here, they really separated the graphics processing part out."

"This auxiliary chip, which they call the GPU, has its own dedicated video memory chips, and the motherboard's data bus has been completely redesigned, resulting in an astonishingly large bandwidth."

The architect, his hands trembling, plugged in the power cord and pressed the power button. Eight seconds later, a crisp ding-dong sound echoed through the office.

A window with blue sky and white clouds popped up on the desktop. The architect skillfully brought up the underlying console, wanting to use code to probe the details of the system.

However, after he typed a few lines of commands, what popped up on the screen were rows of incredibly tight encryption lock prompts.

"The underlying kernel logic looks very familiar; it is indeed a reflection of our MSI system."

The architect dejectedly released the keyboard and slumped back in his chair.

"However, they refactored the code, removed all the redundant parts, and added a completely new three-dimensional spatial algorithm. The scariest thing is—"

The architect turned his head and looked at Paul, whose face was ashen.

"Mr. Paul, they applied for a global exclusive patent for every single line of core code modification. I just checked the international patent database."

"Just half a month ago, Yaosheng Technology registered a number of underlying architecture patents and peripheral design patents in one go, blocking all the ways we could think of to bypass the barriers."

"This is an iron throne built on patents and technological gaps, and we—we have been unilaterally crushed."

boom!

Paul's legs went weak, and he slumped heavily into the boss's chair. Multiple patents, 0.8-micron process, dual-chip architecture, plus that exorbitant price of only $1999.

What's the point of fighting? As long as this machine circulates in the market for a week, those junk machines from MSI and Intel that are still selling for two or three thousand US dollars will become electronic waste, and even recycling centers won't want to take up space.

"Ring ring—!"

The red internal telephone on his desk rang incessantly, and Paul mechanically picked up the receiver.

On the other end of the phone, the sales director's voice was trembling with tears: "President, it's a complete collapse. All the major distributors just called us, demanding that we unconditionally cancel all our orders for the second half of the year. They'd rather pay the penalty for breach of contract than take another one of our machines."

"And another thing—the Wall Street market has opened, and because of the launch of the Loongson microcomputer, our stock price plummeted by 40% within three minutes of opening. We are facing the risk of being forcibly delisted, President!"

The phone slipped from Paul's hand and hit the ground with a dull thud.

The sun was still shining brightly outside the window, but for these proud white elites in Silicon Valley, their old era had come to a complete end this morning.

Hong Kong, Victoria Peak, Yiu Shing Estate.

Compared to the apocalyptic wailing across the ocean, the scenery here is so beautiful it makes you want to write poetry.

On the spacious terrace, a gentle breeze was blowing. Lin Yao, dressed in pure cotton loungewear, was sitting in a rattan chair, slowly eating a basket of freshly cooked crystal shrimp dumplings.

The aroma of premium Da Hong Pao tea rose slowly from the purple clay teapot beside him, as if time itself had stopped.

"Boss, is your dim sum to your liking? This was made by the new Cantonese chef in the kitchen; he said it has dried scallops added to enhance the umami flavor—"

Soup."

Dressed in a well-fitting silk dress, Chingmy Yau stood quietly to the side, holding an exquisite Suzhou embroidery fan in her hand, gently fanning Lin Yao.

Lin Yao swallowed the shrimp dumpling in his mouth, wiped his hands with a hot towel, and nodded in satisfaction.

"It tastes good, chewy, and very flavorful. I'll have the housekeeper give that master chef a big red envelope."

Money is no longer a number to Lin Yao; what he cares about more now is the warmth and ordinariness of life.

Just as Lin Yao was about to take a sip of tea, Chen Zheng walked quickly from the other end of the corridor, carrying a thick black folder.

His leather shoes clattered on the wooden floor, and his usually meticulously combed hair was now slightly disheveled from running.

"Boss!"

Before Chen Zheng even got close, his voice had already reached him. His usually cold face was now filled with undisguised excitement and fervor.

"What's the rush? Have some water first."

Lin Yao pointed to the chair opposite him, gesturing for him to sit down.

Chen Zheng couldn't sit still any longer. He immediately opened the folder in his hand and spread out several pages of newly printed reports on the coffee table in front of Lin Yao.

"Boss, the data is in! We've compiled the world's first batch of data!"

Chen Zheng took a deep breath and tried to make his voice sound steady, but he couldn't do it at all.

"300,000 Loongson 1.0 chips were shipped to North America, Europe and Japan yesterday."

"Starting from 9:00 AM local time —"

Chen Zheng swallowed hard, his eyes wide open.

"In just three and a half hours, 300,000 machines were completely sold out. Even the demo units used for display in major stores were forcibly unplugged and bought by those crazy consumers."

Chen Zheng braced his hands on the table, staring intently at Lin Yao.

"Boss, demand far exceeds supply, absolutely far exceeds supply. On the black market in the US, the scalper price for a single Loongson microcomputer has already reached five thousand US dollars, and there's no market for it even at that price!"

Three and a half hours later, 300,000 units were sold out. Lin Yao paused slightly in his teacup.

He expected it to be a hit, but the fact that the prototype was being carried away by people was quite unexpected.

It seems that Westerners have long suffered from those cumbersome DOS character-based machines, and are now eager to experience true graphical windows and 3D graphics.

The game instantly ignited that long-suppressed desire to consume.

"How much did you make?"

Lin Yao took a sip of tea and asked casually.

"Three hundred thousand units, at a unit price of $1999, plus exchange rate fluctuations, the first wave of cash repatriation will amount to nearly $600 million!"

Chen Zheng quickly gave a number, then his brows furrowed slightly.

"However, boss, while six hundred million US dollars is a lot, if we deduct the expenses we incurred in acquiring contract manufacturing equipment at high prices, hiring 100,000 workers at high salaries, and adding the air freight costs of heavy transport aircraft—"

"We actually incurred a loss of nearly 200 million US dollars on the books for this first batch of goods."

As the chief financial officer, Chen Zheng still felt the pinch of losing two hundred million US dollars, which was all real money.

Lin Yao was not angry at all after hearing this. Instead, he burst into laughter. He put down his teacup, leaned back in his rattan chair, and looked at Chen Zheng's distressed expression.

"Old Chen, you still have too narrow a vision."

Lin Yao extended a finger and tapped it lightly on the coffee table.

"Let me ask you, if I had taken two hundred million dollars to Silicon Valley yesterday and told them I wanted to buy 80% of the global PC market, would they have sold it to me?"

Chen Zheng paused for a moment, then shook his head: "Of course not. Let alone two hundred million, they might not even sell for two hundred billion."

"That's right."

Lin Yao's smile deepened.

"Now, with only a loss of 200 million US dollars, I have firmly driven our Loongson Windows system and gaming ecosystem into the heart of North America and Europe like nails."

"With these 300,000 seed users, word-of-mouth will spread like a virus."

Lin Yao stood up, walked to the railing of the terrace, and looked down at the bustling Hong Kong below.

"Tell Lu Qiu that the underground factory should not stop production. Keep it running at full capacity. The second batch of one million units should be shipped in half a month."

"This time, we won't offer free shipping. We'll have our distributors in Europe and America send their own ships to pick up the goods, and they'll pay for the shipping themselves."

"Since the market can no longer do without us, the cost should naturally be borne by the consumers themselves."

Just as Lin Yao was deploying the next harvest plan, the pale blue light screen in front of his retina popped up again without warning.

[Ding! The Godly Riches Forecast Panel has been updated!]

Lin Yao narrowed his eyes slightly, his gaze falling on the latest data on the panel.

[The host has successfully used hardware as a springboard to dominate the underlying layers of the global software ecosystem.]

[Currently available working capital: US$1024 billion (first wave of payments has been received and settled).]

The valuation of Yaosheng Technology, a core asset, has undergone a significant leap.

[In-depth Wealth Analysis: Due to the dominant monopoly of the Loongson OS operating system, global software developers (including office software, ...]

A small game studio has begun working overnight to study the Loongson architecture, attempting to pay ecosystem licensing fees to Yaosheng Technology.

[It is expected that within thirty days, the host will experience the first wave of pure software ecosystem dividends, at which time Yaosheng Technology's cash flow will completely turn from negative to positive, entering a money-printing machine mode.]

Looking at the deductions on the panel, Lin Yao stretched lazily.

"I'm getting a little bored of fleecing people on Wall Street."

Lin Yao gazed at the distant horizon, his tone revealing a lonely, undefeated spirit.

"Now, sitting here collecting protection money from tech companies all over the world, that's starting to feel kind of interesting."

"Let the bullets fly slowly for a while longer in this new era."

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