Reborn in 2010, the AI ​​in my mind is too powerful.

After clearing the exhibition hall on the first day, Chen Yiran told Gao Dewei to take the others back to the hotel. They had been working non-stop all day, and hadn't even had a chance to drink water before the main group arrived at noon; everyone's energy was practically depleted. Tomorrow would probably be another tough day, so the workers needed to rest. He would attend the dinner party alone that evening.

It takes an hour to get back to Silicon Valley from here without traffic, and at least two hours with traffic.

Chen Yiran had already booked several rooms at the Four Seasons Hotel as a place to rest for the next few days.

But at the time, we didn't expect so many people would be needed. Apart from Catherine guarding the house, everyone else came.

The International Semiconductor Industry Association booked rooms in bulk nearby, and manufacturers like Samsung and Intel booked entire floors of the Four Seasons Hotel.

Fortunately, Datong was resourceful and managed to find two rooms each at the nearby Ritz-Carlton and St. Regis hotels. Although it wasn't possible for everyone to have their own room, at least they managed to get two people per room. Of course, Wang Xue, the company's only female technical employee, happily checked into the king-size bed room.

Chen Yiran greeted his employees and headed towards Spear Street.

For dinner, he chose a long-established Cantonese restaurant, Yank Sing Tea House.

This restaurant has a very good reputation among the Chinese community in San Francisco, and it's located at 101 Spear Street, which is very close to Moscone Center, less than a ten-minute walk away.

This is an old shop that opened in 1975. They've been making pastries in San Francisco for over 30 years, and their flavors are substantial yet not bland.

Many cuisines are actually very well-developed in the United States. You may not be able to find authentic Cantonese food in second- or third-tier cities in China, but you can find it in the United States.

Moreover, while many restaurants in China started using pre-made meals, Cantonese restaurants in the United States continued to make all their dim sum by hand, which is truly commendable.

At 7 p.m., there were still people queuing at the entrance. Chen Yiran gave his name, and a waiter led him through the lobby. Zhang Wenbin and Engineer Zhou, who hadn't rented a booth, had arrived even earlier and were already sitting in a corner booth.

Zhang Wenbin was studying the menu and waiting for Chen Yiran to arrive so he could order. He only ordered a pot of tea.

"The place you booked is great. It's so comfortable living in California. You can eat all kinds of food here. The Cantonese food here is much better than in many cities in China."

"Of course, they've been in business for decades and are all from Guangdong. They just serve classic dim sum. Their chicken feet look delicious, I have to get these."

A waiter pushed a cart over, and Zhang Wenbin carried several baskets himself. Shrimp dumplings, siu mai, char siu bao, and black bean chicken feet were the standard four-piece set, and he had to try them all.

Yangcheng Tea House also offers its signature cuttlefish balls and several other seafood balls, all of which are very delicious.

After the waiter pushed the cart away, the group started eating and chatting.

"The exhibition was so popular on its first day, that's impressive. Your results are truly outstanding."

"I knew it would go viral, but I thought it would take a few days, after all, we are a new company."

"In the normal EDA industry, new companies are basically ignored for the first six months. But you are not an unknown small company. After all, although Andrew Ng's research direction is different, there is still some connection. Anyone who works in chip manufacturing will know about that paper. Besides, a company is a company and an individual is an individual."

From many companies' perspectives, they'd definitely try to delay your exposure so they can contact you and assess your abilities first. But in reality, people in this industry are interconnected and often know each other; you never know when you might end up working together again. So, word spreads like wildfire.

"And what about you guys? You agreed so quickly at the booth today, wasn't it because there were so many people and you were embarrassed to refuse me?"

"That's rare. As we said before, HiSilicon offers a 30-day free trial, limited to one project with the Balong baseband. We will provide you with timely feedback throughout the process."

"Okay, we have a lot of confidence in Grey. We will adjust accordingly based on your feedback, and we believe the results will be good."

"Okay, Synaptics still has a year left on their contract. If your final results are similar to theirs, I can give you a definite answer that we'll sign with you. But let's make it clear beforehand: you need to be careful about data confidentiality. Balong is HiSilicon's most important project right now. When your Grey is processing our design data, all design files must be stored locally and cannot be transferred to any external server. I'll write this in the agreement, and your lawyer can check the wording later."

"That's no problem."

Zhou Gong waited until Zhang Wenbin finished writing before speaking: "I've already asked Zhao Yuanzheng to start scheduling the PDK certification today. Send him the design rule check format tomorrow. There are a few things that need special attention: the minimum spacing of the metal layers, the size tolerance of the vias, and the stress effect compensation parameters unique to the 40nm process."

A company previously spent almost two months repeatedly making changes in these three areas. Have your engineers conduct a self-check of these three sections first, instead of waiting for our feedback, to save time.

"How long will it take to walk the whole way?"

"The normal process takes about three months, but your booth is getting so much attention, I'll urge them on for you. It should take about a month and a half, but that's assuming your three panels are formatted correctly."

"No problem, I've got it all in mind. I'll definitely put it into practice when I get back."

[It was clearly me who remembered it.]

Chen Yiran and Jasmine have become increasingly in sync lately. When talking to others, he can even switch gears to chat with Jasmine and eat a few more bites of food.

The three chatted about interesting things that happened at the exhibition. Chen Yiran showed great interest in the design and manufacturing of the hardware and subtly steered the conversation. Zhou and Zhang Wenbin assumed that Chen Yiran wanted to learn more about actual needs so that the EDA tools could be better adapted and matched, so they didn't hold back and talked about many practical issues.

After a satisfying meal, the three of them headed to the Four Seasons Hotel, where all three happened to be staying. They didn't part ways until they reached the elevator, and agreed that their respective lawyers would draft the contracts in the next couple of days, and they would find a place to sign them on the last day of the exhibition.

After arriving home, Chen Yiran first messaged TED, asking him to prepare the contract. He then sent Gao Dewei a list of HiSilicon's various requirements, instructing him to follow up.

Then she fell asleep immediately. It had been a very tiring day, and Chen Yiran felt her voice was a little hoarse.

As a result, the number of visitors remained high on the second day, and more and more people came to seriously discuss cooperation.

Around 10 a.m., Mr. Lin, the director of Rockchip, found the booth. He had actually come to look at the data for a while on the first day, asked some questions, and then quickly went back to report.

After arriving, I found a secluded corner with Chen Yiran for a detailed discussion.

"Mr. Chen, you may not have heard of Rockchip. Our company is indeed quite small. Our main controllers were previously used in MP3 and MP4 players, but now we've also started making tablet SoCs for Android channels. To be frank, Synaptics' annual fee is still too expensive for a small company like ours. If your Grey can perform similarly to Synaptics but at more than half the price, we can sign an evaluation agreement now."

[Our pre-prepared materials included Rockchip. According to Datong's research, this company has an outrageous market share in China's counterfeit mobile phone market, representing the rampant growth of Chinese manufacturing, and is a unicorn-level company. I think he's feigning poverty to appear more distressed and ultimately pay less in annual fees.]

How cunning! Chen Yiran thought it was good that Datong had produced a simple investigation report, which gave a general introduction to the main players.

"30-day free trial, price negotiable if satisfied."

Seeing that Chen Yiran hadn't addressed the price issue, Director Lin stopped talking about the price and started discussing performance.

"Sure, thirty days should be enough. I'll send you a design module for our next chip when I get back, and you can run the placement. You don't need the whole chip, just a key module. For us making tablet SoCs, area and power consumption are critical. If you can help me expedite the process, we can cooperate long-term."

Both parties exchanged contact information and will contact each other later to sign the contract.

In the afternoon, two more companies came and reached preliminary agreements with FlowEDA.

One of them is SiTime, which makes MEMS clock chips. Its headquarters are located in Sunnyvale, Silicon Valley, and the company has fewer than 100 employees.

Their technical director, a man in his forties, came over and, after reviewing the data, explained the situation directly. The placement precision requirements for clock chips are different from those for mobile phone basebands, but their design team had always had reservations about Synaptics' pricing.

If Grey could help them save even a few percentage points of space in their mixed analog and digital circuit layouts, it would be a huge financial contribution. As usual, Chen Yiran asked him to send over the design data for a free 30-day trial, with both sides keeping in touch and monitoring the situation.

Another company called Adapteva is quite interesting.

First of all, this company is ridiculously small. While Datong's reports are just basic industry reports, updated regularly for its clients, even a small company like SiTime with only a hundred or so employees has a basic introduction.

However, Adapteva was not mentioned in the report at all because the company was just starting out and only had a dozen or so employees.

Their founder is Swede Andreas Olofsson, who started his career at Texas Instruments and worked at Analog Devices for ten years before leaving in 2008 to start his own small company in the suburbs of Boston.

As a veteran in the industry, his idea is that line computing should not be the exclusive domain of expensive supercomputers, so he aims to develop a new architecture that integrates a large number of minimalist chips to generate great computing power.

The team is dirt poor; they haven't even bought a proper placement tool yet and have been surviving on free open-source solutions.

Olofsson came to visit for two days, but he didn't come up to talk to anyone. He just stood at the door looking at the screen running data, pacing back and forth, looking a bit embarrassed.

Chen Yiran, the most idle person in the company, noticed this very stereotypical engineering guy.

It's raining, so why bother hitting the child when you're just killing time?

Chen Yiran went over and struck up a conversation, while Olofson looked bewildered.

However, Olofson relaxed when the conversation turned to specific technical topics.

The two went to the rest corner to get coffee and chatted for more than ten minutes.

Chen Yiran was astonished; she never expected to find such a promising talent so easily at the entrance of the exhibition booth.

Jasmine kept reminding herself in her mind.

We can't let him get away; we have to trick him. Investing in his company might not be very safe either; the best course of action is to lure him directly to China.