With the Time Shop, I Too Am the Greatest Conglomerate of All Time

Episode 40. Semiconductor design.(2)

Han Seong-wook could not get up for a while after his fortune was gone.

Although he called his fortune a semiconductor genius.

It was only half a joke.

until now.

I thought I was a smart student.

But it was Seoul National University where there were such smart students.

After graduating from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Seoul National University with the highest degree, he went to MIT to study abroad.

The results brought today were far beyond expectations.

It was an architecture (design structure) of a level that seemed to jump over the time by several years.

“Was it possible for an undergraduate student to do something like that? No, even if you are an MIT professor and not an undergraduate, that is difficult.”

In modern times, in order to create a single system semiconductor architecture, there are countless things to consider.

Architecture was made by comprehensively judging power consumption, heat generation, performance, and production aspects.

I thought it was impossible to do it alone, no matter how genius.

Until I see the note brought by fortune.

There were a lot of tricky parts.

It was clearly a complete system semiconductor architecture.

Because it was a level that clearly surpassed the existing architecture.

Han Sung-wook’s shock was bound to be great.

Seongwook Han, who had been sitting there for a while, picked up the phone.

Beeps a few times.

A male voice was heard.

“It’s me. Seongwook.”

“Hey, what’s going on? It seems like it’s been almost a year since we contacted you?”

Byeong-Hoon Lee, a classmate in the Department of Electrical Engineering, was a wealthy student who studied at the California Institute of Technology, a prestigious science and engineering college called Caltech.

When I was in school, I became close with Lee Byung-hoon after an invisible nerve war over the tower.

Unlike him, who chose the path of a professor, Lee Byung-hoon set up a semiconductor design company after returning to Korea and started his business.

“A student will come to visit in a few days.”

“student?”

“Yeah, I’m a student at my school, and I asked you to introduce me to a fabless company, so I handed over your contact information.”

“Why do students look for fabless companies? Any good ideas?”

“It’s not going to be a good idea. Don’t be surprised to see it.”

“Hey, I’m looking forward to seeing you say that. What the hell kind of guy are you to hear all that stuff from you?”

“He’s a genius.”

Lee Byung-hun was speechless for a moment.

“Are you saying that you are a genius when you are only thirty-three years old and have published a paper on the cover of Science, one of the three major scientific journals?”

“yes. You can’t even compare it to me.”

Byung-Hoon Lee smirked.

“her. There is someone who can make that sound come out of your mouth.”

“..I never thought the day would come when I would be able to say something like this.”

“Anyway, okay. Oh, I hope that friend will come soon. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep from today because I’m curious about what kind of friend he is. Whoops.”

In front of Seongjin Logic, Paldal-gu, Suwon-si.

“under. I just found it.”

I called in advance the day before and heard the location.

There are many similar buildings around, so it took a long time to find them.

In the future, it would have been easier to find it using a navigation system.

It was a pity that I didn’t have a smartphone again.

Go past the nameplate that says “Sungjin Logic”.

We entered the entrance of a two-story building with a gray paneled exterior wall.

There were dozens of high-performance PCs that were bulkier than regular PCs.

The employees were busy moving their hands while looking at the monitor.

I looked around and there was no space that looked like the representative office, so I approached the nearest employee and asked.

The employee, who was concentrating on work, turned his head.

“Where do I go to see the representative here?”

He pointed his finger over the partition.

“..the person on the other side over there is the representative.”

this. There wouldn’t even be a separate office.

The employee shouted forward.

“Byung-hoon hyung. Someone came to see you.”

At that, a man in his early 40s turned his head back.

jumped up from his seat.

“Student Jaewoon Kang?”

“yes. hello. This boss.”

“haha. Come on. I thought my throat was going to fall out of waiting. Sit here.”

The boss brought a chair and put it next to him.

“Would you like a cup of tea?”

“it’s okay. I don’t have much time, so can I tell you the main point first?”

“okay. then. In fact, I was also curious about what the student who had been lucky enough to bring, so I couldn’t sleep last night. haha.”

He handed the prepared materials to the president and continued the conversation.

“As I said before, I came here because I wanted to commercialize the system semiconductor architecture. This is relevant material.”

President Lee started looking at the materials I had given him with a look of anticipation.

After that, for the next 30 minutes, the only words from this boss were ‘Ummm.’ or ‘Oh!’ It only lasted two syllables.

He closed the data I had given him, wrote down various things in his notebook, and did the calculations.

Suddenly he grabbed my hand.

“Good luck student. How about coming to our company? I’m sure you’ll get an annual salary of 200 million or more. In the future, if the company does well, I will give you a generous bonus that goes beyond your annual salary.”

2 billion

It’s an extraordinary amount, though.

Considering the size of this company, it seems difficult to give such a salary to one person.

That’s how much my company earns in a day or two. It wasn’t an offer that really appealed to me.

“Thanks for the suggestion, but I have work to do.”

“Is there anything else you are doing? Aren’t you studying?”

“yes. I have several small businesses. I just don’t have enough time to take care of it.”

The boss looked at me with admiring eyes.

“her. I heard that you are a good student in your studies, but even in business. After all, it’s not unreasonable to be a lucky student.”

“It’s overrated. Back to the point, can we make this into a product?”

“Well. As of right now, there are a lot of missing parts in the data, so I can’t give you a definitive answer. Fill in the missing parts and run the simulation to see for sure.”

“How long will it take to run the simulation?”

“I do not know. About a month?”

“A month? It’s taking too long.”

“It doesn’t normally take that much, but we have to eat and live. That’s because I have to do it from time to time.”

If money is an issue.

It was rather fortunate.

“Then I will make an official request. Will the commission be around 200 million won?”

At my words, the boss gave a blank expression and then laughed out loud.

“haha. i ate one 200 million is nothing, right?”

There was a reason for that.

If I get help for free, I’d rather pay the cost, as the president might later claim that he has a stake in my semiconductor architecture.

“I apologize if I offended you.”

“no. You are the boss of a company, but I did it wrong because I tried to scout without knowing it. If you’re in a hurry, just wait a week. The commission has paid off.”

“I’m sorry, though.”

The president narrowed his eyes and continued.

“I don’t think I’m really sorry. If it’s something like that in case I’ll ask for your rights later, don’t worry. Because I’m not hungry enough to do such a reckless thing. Besides, it looks like you have already applied for a patent?”

Of course it was done.

I nodded and the boss laughed again.

“Look. Are all young people like this these days? I don’t have a lot of time to be like a beginner in society.”

“I’m a bit eccentric.”

“I think this quest is a gift I give because I want to get along with that unusual person. Are you okay then?”

“..then I would appreciate the gift.”

“I will contact you as soon as the results come out.”

I got a call from this boss.

“The simulation results are out.”

“okay? Thank you. Is it possible to commercialize it?”

“Hey, that’s a bit vague. Will you come over here when the time is right? I think the story will be a bit long.”

I was busy that day, so I went to Sungjin Logic the next day.

When I entered the office, the employees were sitting around looking at the monitor of this president’s seat.

“hello. This boss.”

“Five. We were talking about the architecture brought to us by a student who was lucky. Welcome.”

One of the staff brought me a chair.

As I sat down, the manager continued.

“There was no problem with the architecture that Jae-Woon students brought.”

“So you’re saying it was a functioning architecture?

“yes. I think we can pull it out as a product. But if you think you have to sell it, another problem arises.”

“Any other problem?”

The boss glanced at the employee next to him.

The employee has two monitors, one architecture each.

“The one on the left is the architecture that PRM announced two years ago, and the one on the right is the architecture brought by Jaewoon. The one on the right looks more complicated, right? Overall, the right side performs much better, but when it is made into a product, it will be more than 30% larger than the left side. That means the cost will go up that much.”

“ah. I know that. Still, I think we have a competitive edge because our performance is good.”

The architecture I brought is the architecture that will come out 4 years from now.

At that time, semiconductor manufacturing companies were able to make smaller semiconductor devices because their process capabilities were better than they are now.

It was the result of taking into account the advanced process capability, so the structure had to be more complicated.

I know of a better version of the architecture, though.

Because the current semiconductor manufacturing companies’ process capabilities are too inefficient.

The 2002 version of the architecture was chosen.

“Right. If you design well with the right architecture, you will get better performance than the current Onetel CPU. But it will take at least two years. Since you can’t know everything through simulation, it takes that much time to make a real product and design it again. And maybe in 2 years, Wontel will release a better CPU, and the Wontel CPU that came out then may have better performance than the CPU made with this architecture today. Then we would be in vain.”

A product cannot come from architecture alone.

Architecture is the big picture that explains how semiconductors work.

A single semiconductor product is completed only when a detailed picture of how the semiconductor devices are actually arranged is completed.

Most of what the president said was right.

One thing is wrong.

“I get what you mean, but it won’t take you two years to design it.”

At my words, the boss put on a slightly offended expression.

“Well. What does that mean? Am I lying now?”

“It doesn’t mean that. I mean, I can save you two years.”

“..how?”

“I have drawings that I have been designing whenever I have time. There will probably be no major problems in applying it in practice.”

Actually, the detailed design data I saw during my tenure at Hwansung Electronics was copied and drawn as it is.

When this product came out, it wasn’t very high performance.

It was also a product of too high performance to be released now.

The boss scratched his chin and said to me.

“I’m not saying it’s bad. I know that the student I worked with is a genius, but the actual semiconductor design requires a lot of experience in this area. There are a lot of things that cannot be known by theory alone.”

“Then I’ll bring you the drawing, so can you tell me after you see it? If Mr. Lee says no, we will find a way to use this architecture differently.”

The president nodded his head softly.

“okay. then. It’s not difficult to take a look.”

I handed the drawing I had prepared to the boss.

The boss smiled and unfolded my drawing.

“Now, shall we take a look at the drawings our genius student brought?”