Riding the wind of rebirth

Prior to this, the only semiconductor non-volatile memory that could be programmed, read and written, and store data that does not disappear after power is turned off was the EEPROM invented by Intel.

However, Intel's EEPROM has obvious shortcomings, such as poor read and write performance and difficulty in improving integration.

In other words, Intel is not suitable for storing large amounts of data at all, so it can only be used in the computer's BIOS boot chip to boot the computer's operating system.

And Shi Gang's solution is to "deliberately reduce performance."

Simply put, the way of erasing and writing data in EEPROM is in bytes.

In the NOR chip, these data, which originally held separate number plates, are packaged into "small groups" and viewed in blocks, that is, erased and written in blocks.

In the chip, the "number plate" itself occupies a part of the circuit. In the past, there was one number plate for each room, but now it has become one number plate for each building. In this way, the number of "number plates" is greatly reduced, and the chip The area is naturally reduced and the capacity is larger. Although the writing speed becomes slower, the erasing speed becomes faster.

The overall performance is still reduced, but this price is exchanged for huge cost savings, which meets the requirements of mass production.

And the speed is not really slow. After all, the electrons in the semiconductor are running at the speed of light, so Fujio Fujioka named it FLASH, which means storage as fast as a flash. It is translated into "flash memory" in China.

The emergence of flash memory should undoubtedly be a breakthrough product. However, even now, most manufacturers around the world have not realized its true value. Even Toshiba, where Fujio Morioka is located, and those who first noticed the flash memory industry INTEL has positioned it in the narrow application range of computer system boot chips.

The most critical thing is that Fujio Masuoka is completely unpopular within Toshiba.

At the age of 28, Fujio Samioka graduated with a Ph.D. from Junichi Nishizawa, one of the founders of Japanese semiconductor technology. At that time, major companies in the island country offered olive branches. The reason why he was attracted to Toshiba was because Toshiba was the super-largest company at the time. A word from Takeishi Yoshiyuki, director of the Institute of Scale Integrated Circuits - Let’s make something that doesn’t exist in this world together.

Just for such a "big pie", Shuangang made up his mind to reject other opportunities and join Toshiba.

However, because of his free and undisciplined style, the company's senior management could not believe that he could lead a good team. Although he came up with a new patent on SAMOS memory in the first year of joining Toshiba, this promoted Toshiba and Intel to sign a relevant cross-licensing agreement. , but was subsequently exiled from the company.

First, he was transferred to the sales department, but his performance was poor. Later, I worked hard in the factory for a while, but I didn't achieve anything.

In the end, Bole Wushi, who had unearthed him, raised his hand and brought him back to the research department in 1980.

After the invention of the NOR flash memory chip, the new invention immediately attracted Intel's attention. They quickly contacted Toshiba and Sugaoka for this purpose, and took the lead in mass-producing NOR flash memory chips in 1988.

In other words, although the concept of flash memory was first born in Toshiba, the pioneer of the flash memory industry was Intel across the ocean.

And neither party actually paid much attention to this invention.

Because its cost is too high.

Fortunately, at the moment of crisis for the flash memory R&D team, Yoshiyuki Takeishi, director of the research institute, expressed his stance: Sugaoka’s approach is in line with the direction of technological development, so let’s do it well.

Not only that, because Seigaoka's team could not apply for development funds, Director Takeshi also allocated funds from other projects to them.

By 1986, the unwilling Fujio Sugaoka once again came to the forefront of his peers. He invented cheaper NAND flash memory, which is the kind now used in everyone's mobile phones.

The principle of NAND flash memory has followed the same path as NOR, continuing to sacrifice performance. Although it can achieve higher storage density and faster erasing and writing speeds than NOR flash memory, its transmission speed is even slower. Hip, only one thousandth of NOR. Toshiba rewarded him with a bonus of several hundred dollars and then shelved it.

After receiving the order for Clover NAND flash memory sticks, Toshiba finally mass-produced a batch, but for Fujio Masuoka, his Toshiba career came to an end.

Because of the support of his career, Takeishi Yoshiyuki passed away suddenly.

Losing the only leader who supported and understood him, Sugaoka was quickly and completely marginalized by Toshiba.

"Director, someone is here to visit." The technician under his command hurried to Fujio Sugaoka's work station, explained to him, and then hurriedly left, as if he was afraid of getting into his bad luck.

Yes, Fujio Masuoka was finally promoted to the technical director of Toshiba Electronics last year, but he was promoted immediately and was actually demoted. He simply became a "three-no" - no office, no subordinates, and no R&D budget.

At the age of fifty-one, a scientific researcher is still in the prime of life, but he is sitting at his workstation, doing nothing, and having to bear the strange looks of his colleagues around him.

"Indignant Shugang" is the private nickname given to him by the employees on this floor.

"Easily angry, he started getting angry early in the morning..."

"You sit in front of him all day long and keep nagging..."

"Sometimes he even gets angry and falls asleep..."

"You don't know yet, right? I heard that he would start in the morning and sleep until he gets off work at 5pm, and then ask everyone if they want to go have a drink together, hahaha..."

"Yes, yes, if you want to say what Shuogang did, you can't say anything else but drinking. Hahahaha..."

I can’t say that all the reviews are nonsense, because before I was abandoned, I had a bad temper. Apart from giving the R&D team a great deal of freedom, I really didn’t seem to have any “leadership skills” other than technology... …

And since being abandoned, all I can do is drink...

Shigaoka opened his sleepy eyes, the alcohol still lingering in his eyes, but he saw his old acquaintance from university, Matsui Zuo, standing at the entrance of the elevator shaft waving to him.

Next to Matsui Zuo was a young man with an elegant and calm demeanor. I didn't know if he was his disciple. When he saw him looking over, he nodded towards him.

Matsui and Fujio are actually very despicable. They have been reduced from technical experts to technical brokers. I heard that they are now going to China to develop UNICODE Chinese, Japanese and Korean ideographic characters.

As an expert, Fujio Masuoka certainly understands what is going on. China has already completed the first phase of the Hanwen large font library, which means that the research and development of this workflow from beginning to end has been completed. The next work, Just arrange the remaining characters into the character library according to the designed algorithm.

Therefore, although Hanwen Library has jumped from more than 30,000 words in the first phase to nearly 100,000 words in the third phase, which seems to have doubled, in fact, 90% of the main work tools and processes have been completed in the first phase. , the rest is "repetitive labor" instead of "creation and invention".

To put it bluntly, the Matsui team was actually there to do hard work for the Chinese.

But this does not prevent people from "returning with great honour".