The God of Coding, Becoming an IT Conglomerate

96. 2nd place company for later years (2)

AMD started out as a friend company of Intel.

In 1969, colleagues at Fairchild Semiconductor, Robert Noyce and Jerry Sanders, left the company to found Intel and AMD, respectively.

Unlike Intel’s Robert Noyce, who could develop integrated circuit technology, Jerry Sanders was a marketing guru, so AMD was always lacking in technology compared to Intel.

So, the method chosen was to follow Intel’s path as it is.

If Intel first puts a product on the market and succeeds, it could share the pie and grow by putting the product on the market at a slightly cheaper price after confirming its success.

“Let me introduce myself properly once again. I am Harper Sanders. I am the CEO of AMD.”

“Do you have any relationship with Jerry Sanders, the founder of AMD?”

“He is my father.”

“okay. I really wanted to meet you.”

“Me too. Again, Kronos is really great. It inspires me immensely.”

“haha. It is overrated.”

AMD has always been nicknamed the second-class CPU maker behind Intel.

However, there were only two companies in the world that made CPUs for PCs, Intel and AMD, so being second for 10,000 years also meant ridicule.

So Harper flew all the way from the United States to Korea to see if there was a small clue to beat Intel.

Harper opened his mouth impatiently.

“ruler. now tell me What the hell is there to do?”

“Before that, I have a few questions for you. Are you still licensed for the current x86 architecture?”

“yes. That’s right.”

“Then what is your top selling product right now?”

“They are 386 and 486 CPUs.”

“Are the blueprints for that CPU developed in-house?”

Harper’s white cheeks turned slightly red at Hoyoung’s question.

“ah···. Nip.”

“okay.”

Hoyoung nodded her head, thinking to herself.

He guessed the current situation of AMD to some extent.

Right after Intel developed the x86 architecture in 1978, the x86 architecture was adopted as the standard CPU of IBM, which was the top computer seller at the time.

And as demand for CPUs exploded, Intel, unable to keep up with the quantity, provided AMD with a license for the x86 architecture.

At this point, Intel made a big mistake: it did not specify a deadline for the x86 architecture license.

Because of this contract, AMD has explosively expanded its semiconductor factories since 1979, and since the contract also included a blueprint for the 286 CPU, AMD was able to make a lot of money without investing in R&D. it had become

“If not self-development, how are you developing it?”

“that···.”

Harper was speechless and evasive.

“Please be honest. We need to know the exact situation right now.”

“It’s reverse engineering.”

“As expected.”

Harper spoke as if spitting out difficult words, and Hoyoung nodded as if he knew that.

Intel initially welcomed AMD’s growth.

Although the related technology was provided free of charge, AMD was able to handle the overflowing demand, and the contract with IBM could be smoothly executed without huge capital investment.

But in the early 80’s things changed.

Because Intel did R&D and fed it to AMD, AMD, which automatically reduced costs, sold 286 CPUs at a cheaper price than Intel, and encroached on the market tremendously.

So, Intel decided not to provide AMD with the 386 processor developed in 1985, and AMD had no choice but to get Intel’s 386 and 486 CPUs, reverse engineer them, and sell them.

“Actually, that’s why we are investing heavily in R&D right now. The reality is that the process is becoming more and more complex with each passing year, and it is also a reality that it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to reverse engineer and produce products.”

“you’re right. It is true that in order to use the x86 architecture license properly you need a homegrown CPU design.”

While talking to Hoyeong, Harper admired him a little.

All he could think of was that Ho-yeong knew the whole situation and had checked with him.

He opened his mouth, waiting for Hoyoung’s answer.

“I have told you everything about our situation so far. How can we beat Intel?”

When Harper asked with a serious face, Ho-young did not look at him, but was staring at the entrance on the first floor of the hotel behind him.

On the first floor of the hotel, someone Ho-yeong knew well had arrived and was looking around.

After a brief moment of color on his face, he spoke to Harper.

“Mr. Harper. sorry. A party came for a while, and I will join us.”

“All right.”

“Procrastination. See that entrance over there? Will you bring me?”

“yes. Director.”

When Miru went to pick up the man who had just arrived, Harper put on a disapproving look.

He thought that Hoyeong was being rude.

Hoyoung said shyly, perhaps seeing his expression.

“Oh, sorry. You’re here now. You asked me to teach you how to beat Intel, right? Here’s how. older brother. This is Harper Sanders, who runs AMD in the US. Say hello.”

The man who appeared at the hotel was Park Byung-jin.

Park Byung-jin was surprised to hear that he was the CEO of AMD, and then opened his mouth.

“Nice to meet you. My name is Park Byung-jin of Anam Industry. I have seen many stories and pictures of Mr. Harper in newspapers and magazines, but seeing it in person like this is truly amazing.”

Park Byung-jin’s English was better than expected.

“Nice to see you too. Mr. Yoon. Wasn’t it just the two of us? this person is···.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you earlier. Actually, I didn’t know when he would come today, so I couldn’t tell him in advance, but fortunately, he seems to have arrived on time. older brother. Please tell Mr. Harper what I have prepared.”

Park Byung-jin took out several boards from his bag and handed them to Harper.

“What is this… or is this?”

Harper was startled and let out a loud noise.

“What on earth are all these netlist blueprints?”

“Didn’t I tell you? There is a way to catch Intel.”

What Hoyoung prepared was the blueprints of numerous CPUs.

A netlist blueprint is a blueprint consisting of only transistors, cells, and wires.

“Anam Industry is a semiconductor company here in Korea. The main products we make are memory semiconductors, but today Hoyoung is here… That’s why I came here to hand over the circuit diagram of a non-memory semiconductor at Mr. Yoon’s request.”

“Anam…? I’m hearing this for the first time. Is this a circuit diagram developed by Mr. Park’s company?”

“no. I also received the HDL (Hardware Description Langage) code and worked on it. I have only been working on synthesizing and converting to a netlist.”

“Then who coded it…?”

Park Byung-jin looked at Ho-young, and Harper followed Ho-young.

“ah! Mr. Yuni…!”

Hoyoung nodded and said.

“I made it with my lack of knowledge. It felt very different from software programming, so I struggled a bit at first. However, when I sent the result to Mr. Park here, he replied that it could be implemented sufficiently.”

“As I said earlier, we cannot guarantee that we have made this netlist well because we only deal with memory semiconductors.”

Harper took a closer look at the netlist and looked at Hoyoung and Byungjin Park with admiration.

“no. In my view… This product already appears to be of a considerable level. You know Mr. Yoon much better than me, a CPU expert, right? A circuit diagram like this is at a level that many researchers at AMD have to rush to and study for several months.”

“It is overrated. It is only at a very basic level.”

“From my point of view, two things are very different from the existing 486 CPU, right?”

Hoyeong also looked at Harper with an interesting expression.

Harper, like his father, was both a CEO and an engineer.

Naturally, he had the ability to interpret blueprints.

“We increased the number of pipelines from one to two. This allows multiple instructions to be executed per clock. One of the two can handle all commands, and the other one can handle only the most frequently used simple commands, so it can move efficiently.”

“And you increased the external bus to 64 bits.”

“you’re right. By changing the data bus between the hard disk and the CPU, the speed of data transfer will increase dramatically.”

“great. It’s such a simple idea, why didn’t we think of something like this?”

“I can guess why.”

“For what reason?”

Harper’s eyes lit up.

In fact, until now he hadn’t had a chance to have a conversation like this with anyone else.

From the beginning, he was a bone marrow engineer, and his personal connections were very narrow.

With a bit of exaggeration, no one knew anything outside of AMD.

Hoyoung looked straight at him and said.

“Because AMD doesn’t spend big on R&D. There will be no development if we run a business that only pursues stability.”

“I can’t agree with that! Our investment in research and development has increased fivefold compared to the year before.”

Hoyoung asked with a smile.

“So, how much is your annual investment?”

“About twenty million dollars.”

“Twenty million dollars? Are you saying this because you don’t know that Intel already spent that much money developing the 386 CPU in 1985?”

Harper was speechless, like a honeydew mute.

After clearing his throat once, Hoyoung continued.

“As you may already know, to build a CPU using the blueprints I gave you, you would have to rewrite the process from scratch. To do that, you’d have to set up all new manufacturing plants, which would cost a lot of money. So I wouldn’t have thought of it. No, I would have tried not to think about it. It will be developed only in the direction of using the same process as the 386 and 486.”

Harper continued to remain silent in response to Hoyoung’s answer.

Everything Hoyoung said was true.

At an internal meeting, the next CPU was also instructed to research in a direction that could utilize the current process, so development was gradually slowing down.

Harper struggled to open her mouth.

“Currently, we have more than 80 factories across the United States. The cost of maintenance and labor for the plant is also very high. Moreover, sales now tend to decline slightly year by year. In this situation, I think it is absurd to establish additional factories and hire new personnel.”

“Mr. Harper. You forgot something important.”

“What is important?”

“When I was young, I went to New York and was deeply moved and inspired by what my father said in an interview with ‘Hardware’ magazine. In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that those words made me who I am today.”

“What did my father say?”

“We are warriors and pioneers heading into the future. (We are the warriors and pioneers of the future.)”

Harper looked a little shocked.

These were the words his father, Jerry Sanders, told him to keep in mind when handing over the CEO job to him.

Seeing his expression, Hoyoung thought that his words were right and continued.

“AMD stands for Advanced Micro Devices. It literally means an advanced micro device. It is only natural that the company goes astray, as AMD does not want to develop, but rather maintains the status quo.”

After Hoyoung finished speaking with a relaxed expression, he waited for Harper’s reaction.

In fact, it was a blatant lie to say that I saw in a magazine that Jerry Sanders had said that.

That meant that when he stepped down from the CEO position of AMD seven years from now, his father said that in his resignation speech, and now that he thinks about it, Ho-young remembered his words that he regretted not following his words well. will be.

Hoyoung looked at Harper’s face, who seemed to be contemplating something, with a grin.