No need to add any extra updates, taking a break to rest. I'm tired.
"Can Professor Jones determine the general properties of this material, especially what elements it's primarily composed of?" the suited researcher couldn't help but ask.
"Although the Chinese invited Professor Jones to inspect the material, they guarded it extremely closely. Professor Jones was unable to touch this special material by hand. It wasn't even allowed to be used with a microscope, and could only be measured directly with various measuring devices to verify the authenticity of the material's data."
"However, as old colleagues, Professor Jones told me that he could confirm it's a special material that can adhere to single-crystal silicon, and this material exhibits a golden color, like gold!"
"Also, although the Chinese didn't tell him the English name of this material, he heard them call it jingjin. He suggested we find someone proficient in Chinese to determine the material's name based on its pronunciation, which might yield some discoveries!"
"Damn it, nothing is clear again! This Professor Jones is just a witness the Chinese invited!" someone said irritably.
"Isn't this normal? If the Chinese were willing to be completely open with Professor Jones, that would be truly suspicious! The Chinese are precisely counting on Professor Jones not understanding anything, which is why they were willing to let him inspect it! Otherwise, it would be like the special material in storage chips; to this day, we still don't know what that special material is, nor do we know its color. Now, at least we know this material is golden and can adhere to the surface of single-crystal silicon!" The man in the black suit said this with a hint of sarcasm.
"Enough, I don't want to hear any more sour grapes. I just want to know if we can develop this material," the person in charge waved his hand. "The higher-ups have already told me that they absolutely will not allow the Chinese to have a second type of chip material that they don't understand. This is a question of Intel's technological strength!"
"It's impossible. We only have this little bit of information, and we can't replicate it at all. Unless the Chinese chips start mass production, reverse research is impossible! This is an impossible task!"
"Moreover, I don't think we should let this sudden appearance of a material distract us. We analyzed it before, and it will take at least several years, even over a decade, for the Chinese materials to be usable. By then, our technology will have surpassed 10 nanometers, and the Chinese chips will be obsolete."
"This special material cannot be further upgraded. The Chinese will still lag behind us, eating our exhaust fumes!" said the man in the black suit.
"But even then, the Chinese can still use price advantages to occupy the mid-range and low-end markets. Furthermore, if this is truly a natural material, it won't require photolithography for processing, which would greatly increase production speed and significantly lower costs. We still wouldn't have an advantage, as the current chip market is still dominated by the mid-range market!"
"We'll worry about that when it happens. Perhaps by then, China itself will have collapsed! Just like the Soviet Union... Oh, right, I recommend everyone read a book called 'The China Collapse Theory.' It was written by one of their own scholars, and it's very interesting and scientific. It's the most insightful book I've ever read!" the old-timer suggested very earnestly.
"My goodness, if China can truly collapse on its own, I'll gladly buy a hundred copies!" the man in the black suit chimed in. The atmosphere in the conference room immediately became cheerful.
"Alright, let's put this issue aside for now. I have another question: do you think we need to research this special architecture?" the person in charge suddenly asked.
"We don't think it's necessary!" the old-timer immediately replied. "Are you asking us to work for the Chinese? That's a huge joke!"
"No, it's precisely because the higher-ups believe that if this material truly exists, then we will also have this material in the future. Therefore, it is very necessary for us to conduct relevant architectural research in advance, so we can use it ourselves!" the person in charge said. However, he wouldn't tell others that the company's board of directors was actually very interested in that hundred million dollars, as it was pure profit!
"There's no need. Developing such a special architecture would require not only elusive inspiration but also an investment of several hundred million dollars, and the full effort of our entire architecture department. If the board is willing to let us expend manpower and resources for a mythical material, then we have no objection!" the old-timer said, and the others nodded in agreement, reaching an astonishing consensus.
"It requires several hundred million dollars in R&D investment? Alright, I will report this to the board. Today's meeting is adjourned. Everyone, get back to work!" With that, the person in charge hurried away.
From his lack of knowledge regarding the R&D investment, it was clear that this person in charge was not a true leader in the technical sense; he was purely a businessman. However, the board believed that having a pure businessman manage the technical department would maximize its effectiveness.
If a pure technical enthusiast managed the technical department, it would never be able to deliver what the board wanted.
After the meeting, it was actually already time to get off work. The researchers who left the conference room began to pack up. Especially the old-timer and the man in the black suit, both of whom left at lightning speed, skipping their usual leisure activities and rushing home as quickly as possible, surprising their families. They had never left work this early before.
However, as soon as they got home, both men immediately went into their studies, ordered their families not to disturb them, then turned on their computers, accessed the technical forums, found the pinned post, and began to browse it in silence.
The old-timer even took out a pen and began to manually transcribe the data in the post. For a programmer who came from the 80s, he was still more accustomed to recording data with a pen on paper and then brainstorming on paper.
The man in the black suit was similar. Although he didn't copy the data down, he created a separate document on his desktop, pasted the data into it, and began to ponder.
However, after pondering for a long time, neither of them seemed to have any breakthroughs. Fortunately, at this time, almost all the posts on the forum were related to this thread, and in these posts, everyone was discussing the possibility of solving this architecture.
On one page of the forum, they saw as many as 20 different ideas and thoughts, along with the discussions from subsequent repliers. This benefited them greatly and even triggered a spark of inspiration, leading them to start researching these discussions.
Meanwhile, their families looked confusedly at the closed doors of the study, wondering what had gotten into their husbands, as they had never seen them work so diligently before.
That's right, although these two, the man in the black suit and the old-timer, refused to have the company launch related research, they began designing this brand-new architecture at home.
These two were very clever. They knew very well that if they conducted research within the company, while they could utilize the company's extensive equipment and more manpower, the research results would belong to the company, and they would at most receive a fixed salary, with the 100 million dollar reward prize having nothing to do with them.
Conversely, if they could develop this architecture in their own time, they would be the sole recipients of the 100 million dollar prize. They were quite confident in this regard.
After all, they were themselves architects at Intel, which was the highest honor in the industry. It wasn't everyone who could join Intel, a world-leading enterprise.
At the same time, they were exposed to the world's most advanced architectural technologies and concepts, so they believed they were certainly the closest people in the world to this 100 million dollar prize. Perhaps with just a little more effort, they could pocket the 100 million dollars.
After all, according to the description in this post, the Jiangnan Group wasn't looking for a complete architecture, but a usable solution.
Therefore, they needed to perform complex architectural calculations and design work, just finding this solution was enough. This was not a labor-intensive task; it only required a stroke of genius.
And the two of them were always geniuses among geniuses.
In fact, not only these two were geniuses; most people working in Intel's R&D department were generally geniuses, and all of them were experienced geniuses.
They all believed they were the closest to the 100 million dollar prize, so apart from a very small number of simpletons, all other researchers, after returning home, quietly locked themselves in their studies and began to tackle this puzzle.
But these researchers were only a corner of the entire industry. Almost all companies in the industry, as long as they were involved in chip architecture R&D, had their researchers start their own research in their spare time.
In some companies with lax management, researchers were even directly using company equipment and resources to conduct their own development during work hours.
It wasn't just these companies; professors and students in universities worldwide felt they had a chance to win 100 million dollars, because this didn't require complex work, but truly just a flash of inspiration.
They never doubted if they were geniuses!
Later, according to incomplete statistics, this 100 million dollar reward from Jiangnan Group attracted at least over 3,000 researchers or experts and scholars in the entire industry to conduct research. If we also include students and others who, while not professional scholars, understood something, the number of related people directly exceeded 100,000.
Jiangnan Group only spent an invisible and intangible 100 million dollars to make 100,000 people work for them. This was truly an extremely worthwhile deal.