Chapter 142 - The Day of Connection
"Remember yesterday, June 27, 1993. Because of the birth of the Internet, this country will be forever changed, and because of our sheer size, we will also forever change the world."
In the high-level conference room at the Tech Park, Su Yuanshan was chairing his first full executive meeting since returning.
"Today's meeting is not about commemorating a single day, nor is it about celebrating anything. It's about establishing Internet consciousness. From today onward, whether we're developing products or communicating, our first instinct must be to think about the Internet. It's not a concept — it's a way of life and a future that's fast approaching."
"Of course, this doesn't mean we must immediately start developing Internet products or websites. It means we must cultivate an Internet mindset and vision."
"Yuanchip has always relied on strategic foresight to survive. Embracing the Internet will be one of our future strategic directions."
After the meeting ended, Su Yuanshan and Xi Xiaoding walked and talked.
"Senior Brother, how's Professor Li's optical fiber project coming along?" Su Yuanshan asked.
He was referring to the "National Key Laboratory of Broadband Optical Fiber Transmission and Communication Systems" at UESTC, headed by Professor Li. That was one reason why UESTC's educational network deployment had been so fast.
Su Yuanshan had good reason to believe that, with the combined efforts of Yuanchip, UESTC, and the government's "Science and Education Prosperity" strategy, even though their city was a major inland third-tier city, its network development speed wouldn't lag behind anyone.
"I heard it'll be done before the end of the year," Xi Xiaoding replied as they stopped outside Su Yuanshan's office. "Why? Thinking of getting into fiber optics?"
"Haha, that's the telecom bureau's business. We can just dream about it."
Xi Xiaoding laughed too and said, "What about repeaters? Switches?"
Su Yuanshan shook his head, "Forget it. Yuanchip should leave some room for others."
Xi Xiaoding was momentarily stunned but then smiled. "Is anyone else even working on it?"
"There is..." Su Yuanshan thought to himself that he had already stolen the base station business from his old employer. If he also snatched their telecom equipment business, he might as well push them off a cliff.
His old employer had many flaws, but they had dared to stand up to Western giants — and that alone earned his respect. Besides, for reasons of safety and national balance, the government wouldn't allow Yuanchip to monopolize both wireless and wired network infrastructure.
Chips, lithography, batteries, mobile communications, wafer fabs, future Internet industries — just these were enough to make Yuanchip a supergiant. There was no need to grab everything.
After seeing Xi Xiaoding off, Su Yuanshan turned on his computer and connected to the Huido BBS.
He wanted to see how the first wave of Chinese Internet users viewed yesterday's historic moment.
However, he was disappointed — no one seemed to mention it.
But he quickly realized why. Yesterday's connection hadn't been widely publicized, and it was only an educational network dedicated line. Ordinary people still couldn't even get online.
After checking his mail packages, Su Yuanshan saw that Pony had been paging him repeatedly. The earliest message was from a week ago; the latest was from just a day ago.
"TO: SYS, Big Boss, can you leave an email address?" — Pony
Su Yuanshan blinked and scrolled up to read previous messages. It turned out that Pony had completed the task he had set and proudly explained that he had developed a fuzzy data search tool as his new graduation project — inspired by Su Yuanshan's question. Originally, his project had been a stock prediction software.
Pony even said he had applied for a patent.
Su Yuanshan couldn't help but laugh.
"TO: Pony, would you like to join Yuanchip?" — SYS.
Returning to the main BBS page and checking a few other mail packages, Su Yuanshan saw what he had expected: several companies centered around Han card technology were wailing about the sudden collapse of their businesses after Microsoft released Windows 3.2.
He logged off the BBS and connected to his email server.
During his time at Peking University, Zhou Xiaohui had been helping him manage his emails, responding when needed. But Xinghai knew he was away studying, so they had reduced their email frequency to once per week.
A new email from Howard popped into view:
"BOSS: Wish me luck. We've decided to tape out again. Even though we've fixed all the algorithms, who knows what problems might pop up this time."
— Love, Howard Green
Reading the email, Su Yuanshan couldn't stop laughing.
Tian Yaoming had already told him during a meeting that they were preparing for another go.
While Su Yuanshan had been away, Tian Yaoming and Howard's team had resolved one stubborn algorithm issue and worked together extremely smoothly. But when Howard gleefully sent the chip for fabrication, signal interruptions still appeared.
The two teams practically worked around the clock afterward, exhaustively checking every baseband parameter and algorithm, finally identifying one suspicious parameter and correcting it.
As Tian Yaoming put it, if it still failed this time, they might have to scrap the entire baseband chip design and start over.
Hearing that, even someone as thick-skinned as Su Yuanshan had felt a shiver down his spine.
After sending Howard a comforting reply, Su Yuanshan checked the progress report from Claude.
Under normal circumstances, as the chief architect, Su Yuanshan should have been coordinating the detailed tasks of each team throughout the entire project — especially given the "remote collaboration" model they were using.
But because Su Yuanshan's architectural vision was so forward-thinking, both teams had needed a significant amount of time just to digest his concepts. Once they understood, however, each side entered design mode very quickly.
Judging by Claude's report, the Cyrix team had fully grasped Su Yuanshan's ideas — no wonder, they were seasoned veterans.
After replying to all emails, Su Yuanshan shut down his computer and headed toward the physics lab.
Being just a freshman made his situation awkward. Even if he could bring assistants into the lab, he couldn't really get a bunch of master's students to help him work on graphene experiments. How would that look — a freshman leading postgraduates?
Thus, he could only work alone, submitting future papers under the guise of personal research interest.
And if those top journals rejected him?
Su Yuanshan wasn't worried at all.
As long as he submitted his work first, no one else could steal it.
Besides, Yuanchip's new physical chemistry lab was already up and running, with teams working on lithium battery projects. If Nature pissed him off, he could simply perfect chemical vapor deposition techniques, flood the market with high-end graphene materials, and even create a cutting-edge graphene battery.
Then who would dare deny him?
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