Chapter 280 A Mission in Hand
Howard, the expert Su Yuanshan had "picked up" at Fields Bar, had proven himself time and again — from the initially "undervalued" cordless phone project to later contributions in base stations and mobile phones.
He was now one of Xinghai's undisputed founding members.
In many ways, he was even more qualified than Chen Haoming to serve as CTO.
But Howard was still too young, scruffy in appearance, prone to loose talk — hardly leadership material.
Otherwise, Xi Xiaoding wouldn't have had to think twice about succession back then.
"I just happen to be on good terms with the graphics card team," Howard said with a shrug and a grin. "The VOODOO team is considering two ideas.
One is to integrate 3D and 2D graphics into a single GPU.
The other is to integrate a 2D graphics unit into the CPU while keeping 3D as a separate accelerator card.
So, they're trying to design a high-speed switching channel."
"Oh..."
After a few sentences, Su Yuanshan understood and couldn't help but laugh.
"The second idea is a dead-end. Tell them not to waste their time.
In the future, GPUs are the way forward.
However... integrating low-end graphics onto the motherboard is doable."
Meijie had already started collaborating with VOODOO to research motherboards with integrated graphics cards, but progress was slow — it was more like an expensive experiment than a serious project.
Howard shrugged. "Exactly.
Their second idea got shot down quickly.
But for open architectures like YX01, I think some integration is still possible and necessary."
"There's no need to integrate with the baseband module just yet," Tian Yaoming said, tossing down his pencil and stretching lazily. "Designing that would be hellishly complicated.
Let's focus on integrating the baseband first."
Su Yuanshan glanced over at the sketches in front of them — rough pencil diagrams dividing different modules like parcels of land, arrows pointing toward various regions, annotated with different protocols and plans.
In short, these three guys had started brainstorming new architectures during their free time.
But that was the spirit of Yuanxin, Xinghai, and the whole tech industry at the time —
Whenever an idea popped up, you jotted it down first.
Whether it could be implemented wasn't the immediate concern; saving the idea was what mattered.
"This level of integration is definitely ahead of its time.
Even five years from now would still be considered early," Su Yuanshan said with a chuckle. "But integrating CPUs and 3D graphics units — now that's a direction with immediate applications."
With the continued success of the PlayStation, PS2 development was already underway.
Sony's plan wasn't just to surpass the PS1 in terms of functionality — they also wanted it to look sleek and stylish.
After all, it would sit proudly in people's living rooms.
If someone could design a high-performance CPU with an integrated GPU, it would be perfect.
Sony was even considering launching another product —
Ken Kutaragi had once confided to Su Yuanshan that he wanted to revolutionize the handheld gaming market, which was still dominated by Snake and Tetris clones, with a massive global audience.
Sony needed to offer gamers a device that allowed them to play anytime, anywhere — just like the Walkman had done for music.
The idea was already in Kutaragi's mind:
The PSP.
And a PSP would need a CPU with low power consumption and a highly integrated display core.
"So I think the idea Howard mentioned is actually feasible," Qin Weimin said with a laugh, tossing his notebook onto the coffee table.
Su Yuanshan glanced over and laughed — there wasn't even a spot allocated for a baseband module on the diagram.
Since their early cooperation with Sony, through supercomputers, and now baseband SOCs, Qin Weimin had always overseen YX architecture integrations.
Under his leadership, the YX architecture had blossomed into multiple successful products.
Because of this success, YX architecture was now in a boom period.
They had signed several major licensing deals, and Yuanxin's own CPU sales were soaring — making the CPU division the third major profit center after VCDs and mobile phones.
"You guys weren't discussing this all morning, were you?" Su Yuanshan asked, half-joking.
"We were mainly discussing the next steps for smartphone chips," Tian Yaoming said, leaning back and lighting a cigarette. He flicked one to Howard and lit one for himself. "Based on current power management solutions, controlling energy consumption is priority number one.
Can you believe our smartphone chips have to clock down to 25MHz to be usable?"
"Yeah," Howard added, blowing a smoke ring. "Power is everything.
You can't expect people to carry around five or six battery packs like laptops."
Qin Weimin nodded. "Exactly. By the way, Xiaoshan — what's the latest on lithium batteries?"
Hearing the words "lithium batteries," Su Yuanshan winced inwardly.
Yuanxin's chemistry lab had been running for a year now, but progress was painfully slow.
They had boldly abandoned traditional electrolyte methods from the start, and despite burning a ton of money and trading for lithium tech, they still hadn't produced a production-ready battery.
Only Yuanxin would dare tackle such a risky path from the outset.
Now there were over a hundred people working across two teams in the lab.
Security even stationed a guard outside the lab because weird fumes kept leaking from experiments.
Li Xiao's strained expressions these days said it all —
Success in materials science always involved an element of luck.
The fact that Su Yuanshan had even pinpointed the right cathode material was already nothing short of miraculous.
"You can't rush it," Su Yuanshan said with a smile. "All you can do is burn money and be patient."
He then shifted gears.
"Speaking of which — did you guys get Claude too drunk?
I'm actually here to find him."
"I'm here!"
Claude's voice called from the doorway before Su Yuanshan even finished speaking.
Claude, face still slightly flushed, shrugged apologetically. "I went to your office first — they said you were here."
"Heh, let's go take a walk," Su Yuanshan said.
"Gladly. I'm scared to drink with these guys again," Claude muttered, giving a wary look at the polite but deadly Qin Weimin.
Just remembering their drinking session made his head hurt.
As the founder and chief architect of Cyrix, Claude's "vacation" at Yuanxin wasn't just for fun.
He had come carrying concepts and visions for the next generation of architecture —
He had come with a mission.
Thank you for the support, friends. If you want to read more chapters in advance, go to my Patreon.
Read 30 Chapters In Advance: patreon.com/Albino1