Chapter 35 Let's Copy Together
Lin Yonggu pulled open the curtains and stood by the window on the twenty-third floor, looking down at the city below.
The city was large but old, vastly inferior compared to Taipei and even worse than Hsinchu. Even the construction workers at the sites below didn't seem very spirited—it all felt a little lackluster.
However, Lin Yonggu quite appreciated Yuanxin's direct style downstairs: straight to the point, no unnecessary ceremonies.
True tech people didn't have time to waste drinking fancy tea.
Behind him, Jiang Mingqi spoke up. "Brother Yonggu, you don't think we're being bugged here, do you?"
Lin Yonggu turned around, seeing the guarded expression on his colleague's face, and chuckled. "You're overthinking it. We're not military or political officials. Why would anyone bother bugging us?"
Jiang Mingqi laughed awkwardly. "Well... have you contacted headquarters yet?"
Lin Yonggu shook his head. "Not yet. Although Manager Pan keeps saying Little President Su is the real decision-maker here, we still need to meet his father to finalize anything. Plus... what do you guys think about all this?"
Jiang Mingqi and Chen Zihao exchanged glances and cautiously said, "No strong opinions, but it's clear mainland China's chip technology is still weak. Even if they want to reverse-engineer, it'll take at least a decade to see results."
Lin Yonggu smiled and shook his head. "Reverse-engineering depends more on microcode than on process technology.
And the main issue is: headquarters probably won't approve."
"Then just refuse them directly. Surely they won't refuse to sell us the software, right?"
"Of course not," Lin Yonggu said. "But without having their designers working directly with us, whether we're reverse-engineering or designing, everything will be much harder."
He rubbed his temples, clearly troubled.
As the head of UMC's IC design department, Lin Yonggu knew all too well about their current situation.
Upper management was hinting at stripping off or even selling the IC design division, following TSMC's pure foundry model.
This made all the design engineers deeply uneasy—after all, there was still no truly successful pure design company (fabless) in the world, aside from maybe Cyrix.
Perhaps Yuanxin could be considered a fledgling IC design house.
When the future of independent IC design companies remained uncertain, none of UMC's designers wanted to lose the comfort and security of a big parent company.
"It still depends on how much they can help us," Lin Yonggu sighed. Then he smiled. "Let's not worry about that now. Everyone go shower and rest. Tonight, we'll see what their boss says.
In China, business is often decided over dinner and drinks."
**
At five in the afternoon, Professor Su Xinghe arrived at Yuanxin, spent an hour getting updated on the situation, and then, at six o'clock sharp, took Qin Weimin, Su Yuanshan, Xi Xiaoding, Zhang Ke, and Pan Xiaojun up to the twenty-third floor.
After some polite small talk, the group moved to the thirty-second floor's revolving restaurant.
Although Professor Su was a scholar through and through, he was no stranger to handling his liquor.
As for Zhang Ke and Pan Xiaojun, they were battle-hardened veterans of the drinking scene.
After only a few rounds, the UMC engineers were already visibly tipsy.
Of course, they were all professionals—even when drinking, they kept it civil. No one got wasted or made a fool of themselves.
Su Xinghe gave his son a meaningful look.
Su Yuanshan caught on, smiling as he casually placed two slices of dried tofu into Lin Yonggu's bowl. "Director Lin, dried tofu is great for sobering up. Try our local specialty."
Lin Yonggu's cheeks were flushed, but his eyes were still sharp. He smiled and nodded. "My father mentioned the dried tofu from here."
"Oh? Is your father from Doucheng?"
"Yes. I was born in a military dependents' village, but unfortunately, I can't speak the dialect."
"Ah! Then maybe you should visit Doucheng sometime?"
"This trip is for business only," Lin Yonggu smiled. "Maybe in a few years, I'll come back with my father."
"Strictly professional. Admirable," Su Yuanshan chuckled. "Looks like we can't get Director Lin drunk and make outrageous demands."
His joke lightened the mood again, and even Lin Yonggu laughed.
After a moment, Lin Yonggu set his teacup down and turned to Su Yuanshan.
From their earlier conversations, it was clear that Little President Su fully represented his father. It made Lin Yonggu think carefully about how to respond.
"I understand your proposal, but... forgive me for being blunt. Reverse engineering may help you gain experience, but it brings no real benefits.
As a professional EDA and IC design company, you could simply create a new CPU directly—you don't need to copy anything."
"True," Su Yuanshan said lightly, tapping his teacup. "But we lack hands-on experience designing CPUs. Even just seeing how it's done would be valuable. Plus, working together could help both sides."
"It's difficult," Lin Yonggu shook his head. "Given the current cross-strait situation, whether you come to us or we come to you, everything must go through Hong Kong with complex procedures.
And even if logistics weren't a problem, UMC's management would still have concerns about commercial secrets."
"Then what if," Su Yuanshan narrowed his eyes slightly, "we work together? We reverse-engineer the 486 together. What do you think, Director Lin?"
"We would assign engineers familiar with EDA development to personally teach your designers.
At the same time, future versions of Yuanxin EDA would be customized to match your production lines—
validated through our simulation tools, greatly improving yield rates."
Lin Yonggu's breath caught, and his eyes sharpened.
In an IC design company, the core advantage was the ability to design chips quickly and accurately.
For a foundry, the core was process technology, tape-out success rate, and yield rate.
Tape-out failures typically got blamed on the designers—but no one liked taking the blame.
If improved EDA tools could dramatically raise yield rates from the very beginning, it would be a win for both sides.
"And even though the 486 reverse-engineered chip wouldn't have x86 licensing, it doesn't matter.
We just won't sell it in the West. The domestic market is just starting—sell cheap, and we can easily recover costs," Su Yuanshan said, smiling. "What do you think, Director Lin?"
Lin Yonggu stopped rotating his teacup. He took a deep breath, then stared at Su Yuanshan.
"If," he said slowly, "if UMC's leadership agrees, how many people are you planning to send? What roles?"
Su Yuanshan smiled nonchalantly.
"A dozen or so—
besides EDA engineers, also chip designers and mask engineers.
After all...
copying...
is a skill we all share, right?"
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