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

Samsung acted very quickly; less than two hours after TSMC's business jet took off from Taoyuan, the SemiWiki homepage was flooded with comments.

Exclusive news: Morris Chang, founder of TSMC, has departed for the United States, with his destination being San Francisco. According to sources, he will personally meet with FlowEDA founder Chen Yiran. TSMC has not yet officially responded.

The rest of the text doesn't go into much detail, just the flight route and arrival time. Then it comments on the impact of FlowEDA on the chip industry, saying that if TSMC cannot quickly acquire new EDA software, it is very likely to be abandoned by the market.

After that, the news started circulating on major tech news websites and in various small groups in Silicon Valley.

Chen Yiran was eating fried noodles with soybean paste when he saw the news. He made it himself. The taste was alright; it was just fried minced meat and soybean paste, so it couldn't be bad.

Catherine forwarded the link to the company group chat, and the company began to discuss heatedly whether Chen Yiran would be just as vicious when she encountered an 80-year-old man.

Park Jae-sun from Samsung called soon after, his voice cheerful as he asked, "You saw SemiWiki?"

"Of course I saw it. You guys did it? You're really shady, you're really ripping people off."

"That's how business works. We're very grateful for your recognition. If you have any questions later, please feel free to contact us and we'll do our best to cooperate. The main reason we're calling is that we're a little worried about your company's manpower. We know your previous compilers made a lot of money, but if you really need external investment, please don't forget about us."

"Um, we don't have that plan for now. Don't worry, I'll increase our manpower as soon as possible."

"Okay, okay, we'll transfer the money to you next week. We hope you can update to the official version as soon as possible."

Chen Yiran felt that Samsung was really a bit of a hindrance, always urging him to work with a smiling face.

This can't go on. Chen Yiran started planning to expand the team.

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Although Morris Chang is very wealthy, he is not a person who enjoys luxury and has never bought a private jet.

TSMC's business jet isn't actually that luxurious. It's more about convenience; for example, with better equipment, he can now receive technical evaluation reports from Hsinchu while on board.

The report, which is about twenty pages long, begins by stating that DeepFlow's core architecture can improve the development efficiency of iterative computing tasks by dozens of times compared to traditional CPU cluster solutions.

In short, this is a very terrifying thing.

When the plane arrived in San Francisco, before even leaving the airport, Morris Chang called Leather Jacket Huang.

Nvidia has been a core customer of TSMC since 1998, and all of Nvidia's graphics cards are now manufactured using TSMC's process.

When Nvidia's Fermi graphics cards were almost killed by power consumption at 40nm, it was TSMC engineers who squatted on the production line and fixed the thermal density piece by piece.

Jensen Huang once publicly stated, "TSMC is our most important partner, without exception."

Nvidia is one of the few companies that transcends the client-vendor relationship with TSMC, largely thanks to the personal relationship between Leather Jacket Huang and Morris Chang.

When Huang Renxun first started his business, he received a lot of help from Morris Chang. According to Huang, Morris taught him how to be a CEO.

For Huang Renxun, Morris Chang was not just a business partner, but a senior figure who truly deserved respect.

So when he received a call from Morris Chang, Leather Jacket Huang did not refuse.

"Morris, you've arrived in San Francisco?"

"How did you know we just landed?"

"The media is going crazy about it. I don't know which PR firm spread the news that you came to the United States to negotiate with Chen Yiran."

"Since you know, I'll be frank. We have a small misunderstanding with FlowEDA. You know Chen Yiran, and I need you to introduce us."

Huang Renxun remained silent for a few seconds on the other end of the phone, then began to struggle with his decision.

Although Morris Chang was his elder, he had many favors to repay.

However, Chen Yiran's connection between Deepflow and CUDA is becoming increasingly deep.

This is an 18-year-old teenager with a delusional mindset; it would be troublesome if he upset Chen Yiran.

Although there is no news of Chen Yiran having any connection with AMD, GlobalFoundries was previously with AMD, so it's hard to say they wouldn't help with introductions.

This is a dangerous situation. After thinking for a moment, Huang Renxun said, "Alright, but I'll only make the introduction. You'll have to negotiate the rest with him yourself. I won't set a price for you or act as a go-between."

"Enough, enough. Let's meet first to break the ice. Besides, the media today gives me a bad feeling."

"It's very abnormal, but don't worry about that. I'll help you make an appointment with Chen Yiran at a golf course. Don't tell him you made an appointment yet, just bump into him by chance. The rest is up to you."

"Okay, that's enough."

After hanging up the phone, Huang Renxun dialed Chen Yiran's number.

"Chen Yiran, do you play golf?"

"Won't."

"It's nothing, just a walk. There's a golf course clubhouse behind my house; it's not big, but it's quiet with lots of trees and few people. Shall we come over tomorrow afternoon?"

Chen Yiran isn't stupid. What a coincidence! The news of Morris Chang's visit to the US came out in the morning, and Huang Renxun invited him to play golf that evening? It's obvious that he's trying to mediate.

"I'll go if you bring me a pole; otherwise, I have no equipment at all."

"Okay, it's settled then."

The next afternoon, Chen Yiran went to the golf course behind Huang Renxun's house empty-handed.

The golf course is surrounded by a ring of low oak trees. The grass stretches along the gently undulating ground all the way to the foot of the distant hills.

This golf course is indeed small, but it is completely private and extremely well-maintained.

At this moment, Hwang In-hoon was wearing a white polo shirt and was doing a practice swing next to the tee box.

Upon seeing Chen Yiran approach, Huang Renxun had someone hand him a package.

"Don't say I'm neglecting you, I'm giving you the Majesty Gold Supreme Edition. Let's see if it can make you, a young man, like this slightly dull sport."

Just as Chen Yiran was about to say something, two old men who were standing in the rest area walked over.

Huang Renxun said cheerfully, "Ah, Morris Chang, what are you doing here? Let me introduce you."

While mentally criticizing Huang Renxun's exceptionally poor acting skills, Chen Yiran greeted Zhang Zhongmou.

The group chatted while playing ball, and Chen Yiran, who seemed indifferent to fame and fortune, actually achieved pretty good results.

Morris Chang was indeed a cunning old fox, very patient and composed. Only after digging several holes did he begin to get down to business.

His Chinese has a slight Jiangzhe accent, he speaks slowly, and he has a habit of pronouncing each word very clearly.

"Mr. Chen, we have high hopes for your OPC tool, Tiya. We believe it has the potential to improve Samsung's yield by five percentage points. Our industry will be completely different within three years. I flew here today to clear up any previous misunderstandings and discuss the next phase of our cooperation."

Looking at this man who was almost eighty years old, Chen Yiran found it hard to say the harsh words he had prepared.

Morris Chang looked at the silent Chen Yiran, sighed, and asked, "I've considered it. If you agree after we apologize, it might make you seem easy to fool, which wouldn't be good for your future business negotiations. So you won't agree easily."

But now I'm wondering if we're out of luck in the short term? I haven't even landed yet, and the news is already everywhere. This must be Samsung's doing, so you signed a priority agreement, right? Samsung, they want all our customers to know that we don't have any new software to use."

Chen Yiran was somewhat moved, after all, he was an eighty-year-old veteran, and he easily figured out Samsung's little tricks.

"You're right. When we were working with Samsung before, they were very enthusiastic. Later, they even took the initiative to help us develop a tiered cooperation framework for Tiya. Samsung is a strategic partner, and frankly speaking, this contract will objectively exclude TSMC from the first wave of new version updates."

Chiang Shang-yi, who was standing nearby, couldn't hold back any longer and quickly asked, "What exactly do you mean?"

"Samsung's lawyers took the initiative to draft it, and I also had our lawyers review it."

One-year contract, with three tiers established each year.

Our strategic partner this year is Samsung, with complete production line data, on-site R&D support, and exclusive access to the new version update for ninety days.

Next are deep partners, such as GlobalFoundries and SMIC. They are essentially the same except for the fact that they don't have a 90-day exclusive contract.

Finally, there are the regular partners, who receive relatively fewer services. Therefore, TSMC can only use Tiya at a earliest in three months.

Morris Chang sighed. He knew that falling behind at the first step meant falling behind at every step, but there was nothing he could do now. The contract was already signed; what could he do? He could only smile and say, "It's alright, how about being a senior partner?"

Chen Yiran laughed as well: "It's not that easy. I have conditions too. First, I need the original wafer measurement data calibrated by the OPC model."