Chapter 191 Lithium Battery Exchange
Just a five-minute demo was enough to get the group of tech testers playing with excitement, something even Su Yuanshan hadn't anticipated.
But it clearly showed how captivating a good game could be at this point in time.
After running tests across all mainstream configurations, it became obvious:
Without the VOODOO accelerator card, no matter how good the configuration, the game was unplayable.
With the VOODOO card—even a Cyrix 486DX or an AMD 486 could barely manage to run it.
There was no frame rate counter yet, but Su Yuanshan could tell by eye—
Maybe around 10 frames per second.
Better than a slideshow, but only barely.
Li Mingliu tested the setup with a Cyrix CPU and felt a bit regretful.
As someone involved in the CPU project, he knew that Cyrix's future focus would shift entirely toward the Sol Core, just like Yuanxin's.
The old architecture would only get minor frequency boosts and patches.
"Didn't expect this to end up helping Pentium," Li Mingliu said, smiling.
"Well, when your technology leads the way, you deserve the spoils," Su Yuanshan replied casually, showing no concern.
Chen Daohua, seeing Su Yuanshan's full confidence, couldn't help teasing,
"President Su, now you've got me curious—just how powerful will your new core be?
Will it completely crush Intel?"
"Depends on how Intel's next development cycle goes," Su Yuanshan answered cautiously.
As he spoke, he stared for several long seconds at the 66MHz Pentium chip on the table before finally withdrawing his gaze, a faint smile appearing on his lips.
Ironically, Intel had advanced so aggressively that they hadn't even bothered making deals with Yuanxin's EDA branch, instead allying themselves with America's traditional EDA companies.
Over the past two years, Yuanxin EDA had hammered the U.S. EDA market so hard that while the term "collapse" might be an exaggeration, the Americans had indeed been forced to merge and form alliances.
Currently, the EDA market had essentially split into three camps:
志远 (Zhiyuan), Synopsys, and Cadence—
like a reenactment of the Three Kingdoms era.
Zhiyuan held over half the market, while Synopsys and Cadence each specialized (one in auto-routing, the other in simulation) and opened interfaces to counterattack against Zhiyuan.
As a result, this year, Intel had completely abandoned Zhiyuan EDA.
Or rather, they had never even used Yuanxin's YXEDA for Pentium development.
Thus, they had made all the same mistakes they had in the previous timeline.
Including, most notably—the Pentium FDIV bug.
The infamous floating-point division error that plagued the first-generation Pentium CPUs.
This bug had cost Intel over $500 million and left Andy Grove sleepless, eventually forcing a full recall of the affected processors.
The cause?
Intel, in a rush to boost performance, had hardcoded a multiplication table into the CPU.
Out of 2,048 entries, five were wrong, leading to calculation errors in specific division operations.
It wasn't a technical incompetence—it was carelessness.
Still, when Intel promptly admitted fault and recalled the products, it bizarrely boosted their brand's reputation for honesty,
leading to even stronger future sales.
Su Yuanshan, however, had no intention of letting Intel's "loss turning into gain" happen again in this timeline.
He wanted them to sell more flawed chips—
the more, the better.
...
The next day, Li Mingliu, finally feeling rested, demanded to return to work, declaring that labor was a basic human right, and even Su Yuanshan, as the boss, couldn't deny him that.
What could Su Yuanshan say?
He could only remind Li to take care of his health.
If he needed a break, he should consider experimenting with memory chip designs to refresh his mind.
After sending Li Mingliu off, Su Yuanshan brought three VOODOO accelerator cards back to the provincial capital, intending to archive one of them—
to be preserved as a historical exhibit at a future museum.
At Yuanxin, they treasured every milestone:
either recording it on video or preserving actual products.
Upon returning, he found Xi Xiaoding had also just returned from Beijing, while his father Su Xinghe had already headed back to the capital carrying all the achievements related to the 16-bit microcontroller project.
In October, it had been decided that the title of "Academician" would replace "Member of the Academy," aligning with international practices.
Next year would be the biennial academy election,
and Su Xinghe, despite his scholarly modesty, was very likely to become one of the first batch of Engineering Academy academicians.
Age was catching up, administrative duties would pile on once he became Dean of the new "School of Computer Science and Engineering,"
so this might be his last shot at pure academic glory.
Su Yuanshan fully supported his father's ambitions.
...
December 10th.
Sony's delegation quietly arrived at the provincial capital.
Negotiations lasted nearly a week.
Almost every patent was meticulously reviewed,
and eventually, both sides reached a patent licensing and technology exchange agreement.
Meanwhile, Yuanxin's chemistry lab provided detailed experimental data and results on lithium iron phosphate cathode materials.
Dr. Kazunori Ozawa, the leader of Sony's lithium battery team,
after reviewing the data, made an unexpected request—
he wanted to immediately borrow Yuanxin's lab to conduct tests.
Of course, that was politely refused.
However, Su Yuanshan offered a compromise:
they could engage in academic exchanges and data sharing.
Once Yuanxin's team had the lithium battery technology in hand,
Cheng Peng's group moved into overdrive, aiming to absorb the knowledge and launch a safe, commercial lithium-ion battery as fast as possible.
...
The night after Sony's departure, around eleven o'clock,
Su Yuanshan stepped out of the chemical vapor deposition lab.
Waiting by the door of the lithium battery lab,
he soon saw Li Xiao emerge,
still wearing her white coat and stretching as she walked.
"How's it going?" he asked.
"Come on, even reading a modern literature piece would be faster," Li Xiao grumbled.
"All their documents are in Japanese—we're lucky Gao Chang studied it, or we'd be screwed."
"Haha. Why don't you complain that our documents are in Chinese?" Su Yuanshan teased.
"Good point," she admitted, laughing.
"But seriously, they dumped a ton of material on us—I think they did it on purpose."
Su Yuanshan smiled knowingly.
Although Yuanxin and Sony had built deep trust,
some minor "sabotage" through language barriers was only natural—
especially when they would soon become direct competitors.
Li Xiao straightened up and said,
"Late-night snack?"
"Sure. How about dan dan noodles?"
"Sounds good."
But before they left, Su Yuanshan added seriously,
"One more thing, Sister Xiao."
"What?"
"Abandon carbon anodes.
Start considering other polymer materials for the anode.
And switch from current electrolytes to organic solvents."
He stared at her.
"My gut tells me it'll be safer that way."
Li Xiao's eyes widened in shock.
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