SWNOVELXO Chapter 64: Chapter 64 Ecological Warfare
Chapter 64 Ecological Warfare
Xi Xiaoding hung up the phone and gazed at the starry sky, his brow tightly furrowed. Yang Yiwen turned on the garden lights and walked over to the bench with Qin Si — they had already purchased this house, complete with the garden, and redecorated it according to their personal tastes. Xi Xiaoding pulled back his gaze and saw the two women standing solemnly in front of him. He couldn't help but smile: "Why so tense? It's not like the sky is falling."
"Nonsense," Yang Yiwen scolded with a glare. "Right now, Yuanchip's foundation is its EDA software. Without EDA, we would lose our lifeline."
"What did young Su General Manager say?" Qin Si asked. Seeing that Xi Xiaoding was holding the cordless phone prototype, she guessed that he had waited until nighttime to make this call, surely because he had wanted to speak with Su Yuanshan first.
"He said, 'Let the bullets fly for a while,'" Xi Xiaoding chuckled. "In other words, wait and don't panic."
The moment Yang Yiwen heard that Su Yuanshan said not to panic, her expression immediately relaxed and she smiled: "If he said that, then he must already have a plan. Otherwise, if we waited until after they launched and then sued, we'd be dragged into an endless battle."
Having been in Silicon Valley for nearly half a year now, Yang Yiwen had already applied for an extension to her visa. Over these past few months, aside from continuously filing patents sent over by Yuanchip, she had been busy familiarizing herself with local laws. She knew that lawsuits here, especially those requiring the plaintiff to provide proof in an infringement case, could drag on endlessly and be extremely costly.
Of course, if they won, the compensation would be very generous — but the problem was that Yuanchip's goal was not compensation. Their aim was to beat competitors with superior technology, not rely on lawsuits. Because even if Yuanchip monopolized the market, they would almost certainly be targeted by antitrust laws.
According to antitrust law, it wasn't illegal for a company to achieve market dominance through fair competition and customer choice. But if they used patent barriers, predatory pricing, or other methods to block competitors, then they would be in serious danger.
This was why Yang Yiwen was worried — American antitrust law truly showed no mercy.
Compared to Yang Yiwen's unwavering trust in Su Yuanshan, Xi Xiaoding remained much more clear-headed. Still, he didn't want to worry the two women. He smiled and said: "Alright, go rest now. Oh, by the way, how's the CRM software after your testing? Anything that needs improvement?"
At the mention of this, Qin Si immediately perked up: "It's great, very powerful! Especially suited for our kind of company — managing multiple enterprise clients."
"Good, keep testing it. We'll officially release it in about a month."
Su Yuanshan, after hanging up the phone, couldn't help laughing for a long time. Then he immediately went up to the tenth floor.
Just as Yang Yiwen had worried, even though Yuanchip was far from having a monopolistic position, Su Yuanshan still wanted to avoid launching lawsuits before they had completely crushed their competitors. After all, the goal of EDA wasn't just to make money — it was to become the Microsoft of the EDA world. Unless Synopsys got shameless enough to copy their code directly, Su Yuanshan would prefer to beat them through strength, not lawsuits.
"Old Jiang, can you spare a few people from your team?" Su Yuanshan asked directly as soon as he entered Jiang Wanchao's office.
Jiang Wanchao, scratching his head, immediately grew nervous: "What do you want them for? Qu Hui already took a batch of elite programmers to Chengguang Institute. Zhu Jianting took another batch to help a client with mechanical engineering CAD software. He was just asking me for more people this morning. Right now, I barely have ten skilled developers left…"
Su Yuanshan was momentarily stunned: "The manpower situation is that bad?"
"What did you expect?" Jiang Wanchao smiled bitterly. "I opened up twenty intern spots to compensate. You better prioritize sending me good candidates."
"I'll make sure you're taken care of," Su Yuanshan promised, scratching his jaw thoughtfully before frowning. "Here's the thing. I just got off the phone with Senior Brother Xi. Synopsys is currently beta testing a chip design module that practically mirrors ours — functionality, methods, everything."
"Shit?" Jiang Wanchao exploded. "They must have copied our source code!"
Su Yuanshan nodded calmly: "That's why I'm planning to develop and release several free, open-source plugins officially from Yuanchip."
Jiang Wanchao stared at him, the tension in the room gradually easing: "You mean we're going to strengthen our EDA tool by building an open-source plugin ecosystem?"
"Exactly. We need to build a proper open-source community around it," Su Yuanshan said with a sigh. He had overestimated the Western chip designers' enthusiasm for programming. When he and Xi Xiaoding had first launched the EDA user forum, he had hoped it would blossom. But so far, only five open-source plugins had been submitted — and they weren't even particularly high quality.
"We'll sort out some internal plugins first. Then we'll open up more APIs and data access to the community. Worst case, we keep only the core design and simulation functionality proprietary — and open everything else up."
He smiled, tapping the desk: "This is called ecological warfare."
After assigning the tasks to Jiang Wanchao's team, Su Yuanshan quickly went downstairs, opened his long-neglected C++ development environment, and created a new project.
[An enhanced microcontroller design plugin]
...
Over the next few days, Su Yuanshan and Xi Xiaoding stayed in close contact by email, discussing their strategies. He also asked Xi to help write some plugins for the open-source forum and to promote it more heavily. They needed to quickly build an application ecosystem centered around Yuanchip.
A week later, a delegation from NEC, accompanied by officials from the Municipal Investment Promotion Bureau, visited Yuanchip's headquarters. Professor Su Xinghe personally received them.
Perhaps because he rarely had a chance to help ease his son's burdens, Professor Su was exceptionally enthusiastic this time. He accompanied the NEC representatives throughout their visit and even personally signed the cooperation agreement.
Su Xinghe had only one request:
He hoped NEC would send engineers to help Yuanchip build a clean room.
"Professor Su, why do you want to build a clean room?" asked Tang Ze Yinan, the NEC representative, with a look of surprise. "Are you planning to establish a wafer fab?"
At that point, since the investment promotion officials had made it clear that NEC's delegation was purely for software purchases and not project evaluation, they tactfully withdrew.
Su Yuanshan also made his way directly from the ninth floor up to the thirtieth-floor sky lounge.
Su Xinghe smiled lightly and looked toward Mr. Lin, a temporary interpreter from the Provincial University's foreign language department: "Please translate for me. Tell him that we have no current plans to build a wafer fab. The clean room is merely a part of our research center."
"I see," Tang Ze Yinan nodded, then curiously asked: "But why choose us? I thought your fab collaborations were mainly with the Western companies."
Su Yuanshan listened quietly from the side. His Japanese was a bit rusty after all these years, but he could more or less follow the conversation.
When Mr. Lin hesitated over how to translate "wafer fab," Su Yuanshan whispered: "Please tell him that we admire the craftsmanship of NEC. We believe the clean rooms they build must be the cleanest in the world."
"And, we hope to deepen cooperation with them — especially in the semiconductor field. Including, but not limited to, providing support for chip design and process improvement."
(End of Chapter 64)
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