"ATI? Why?"

When Su Yan heard Xia He's words, he touched his chin and began to think. After all, ATI's size was still there, and it was an existence that could compete with NVIDIA.

"It's very simple. If we want to enter the field of graphics cards and gain a firm foothold, we must have a strong foothold, and neither s3 nor sis can provide us with this foothold. If we choose s3 or sis

Then we will probably be the next 3DFX."

Xia He looked at Su Yan seriously and said.

"The next 3DFX?"

Su Yan also silently recited the name of this once veteran graphics card.

Many people in later generations may not know the name of 3DFX, but in this era, to be precise, a few years ago, the name of 3DFX was well known. Even compared to AMD and NVIDIA, it is not far behind.

3dfx is a company that specializes in the development and production of graphics cards and 3D chips. It was founded in 1994. The company has been the leader in graphics chips from the 1990s to the beginning of this century, and its 3D accelerator cards and graphics cards have the highest performance.

It was the industry's top level at the time, and its free authorized dedicated application programming interface - Glide, attracted many game manufacturers and gave birth to legendary games such as Quake, Tomb Raider, Need for Speed ​​and so on.

It can be said that it was brilliant at that time.

In 2000, it lost a lawsuit with NVIDIA and was acquired by NVIDIA for only US$70 million and US$1 million in stock, and went bankrupt at the end of 2002.

This change of 3DFX and NVIDIA undoubtedly shocked the entire graphics card industry, making many graphics card manufacturers suddenly feel insecure. After all, this move of 3DFX not only greatly increased the strength of NVIDIA for no reason, but even made NVIDIA

There is a faint tendency to become the industry leader. The patents and technologies accumulated by 3DFX have become the basis for Nvidia's subsequent growth.

Take s3, a graphics card owned by 3DFX, for example. Before the 3DFX dynasty matured, S3 firmly occupied the vast majority of the market share and became the well-deserved number one brand in the industry. Later, due to technology, market and driver reasons, S3

It was acquired by VIA Electronics on April 11, 2000, withdrawing from the independent graphics card market and turning to integrated graphics cards and mobile graphics cards.

If 3DFX had not been swallowed up by Nvidia, it is still unclear whether Nvidia could become the behemoth it became later.

Moreover, it is not that simple to acquire s3 from VIA Electronics at this time.

"What about sis?"

sis is the English abbreviation of Silicon Integrated Technology Co., Ltd. from Wanwan. Speaking of which, sis can be said to be more popular among the graphics card manufacturers mentioned above. After all, it is not comparable to the above companies in terms of technology and patents.

But one good thing about SiS Technology is that they began to invest in setting up their own wafer fabs in the late 1990s. Although this strategy caused financial pressure on the company and reduced investment in other new

Funds were available for the product. Later, the management admitted this mistake, but they did build their own wafer fab.

“SiS Technology’s investment in wafer fabs in the past few years has doubled the financial pressure on SiS Technology. Even the research and development of many products has stalled due to financial problems. Compared with several other graphics card manufacturers currently on the market, SiS

Technology is obviously not of the same level. In addition, there is another very important reason why I don't agree with choosing Silicon Systems."

Xia He looked at Su Yan and said seriously.

"what is the problem?"

Su Yan was also a little curious about the important reason Xia He mentioned.

"Political issues! SiS Technology is different from the several game companies we acquired in the Bay Area before. It is obviously impossible for high-tech companies like SiS Technology to be acquired by mainland companies from the Bayan Government.

Yes, to be precise, let alone acquisition or even becoming a shareholder is impossible!”

When Xia He said this, Su Yan also reacted. It is true that the Taiwanese government is also a problem, and just like many people think that TSMC is a Taiwanese company, but in fact it is controlled by the United States. Even if the mainland takes over Taiwan later.

Come back, TSMC will not be able to make up for China's shortcomings in lithography machines.

Not to mention Wanwan’s current relationship with mainland China, let alone holding a controlling stake, it is impossible to acquire shares!

After listening to Xia He's words, Su Yan realized that there were not many options left for Shenxiu Technology. After thinking rapidly for a while, Su Yan made a decision, looked at Xia He and said, "Go and contact ATI and them.

Communicate there and let the company’s Shenxiu Technology Game Division and Friend Music prepare for the listing!”

Su Yan originally planned to separate the Shenxiu Technology Game Division and Friends Music for listing, but now the issue with the graphics card has obviously disrupted his plan, but there is no way around it. If he follows the original plan

The trajectory of ATI is that it will be acquired by AMD in 2006 for a huge sum of US$5.4 billion and become part of AMD. If we don't get ahead of AMD now, it is very likely that Shenxiu Technology will not enter the graphics card market at all.

qualified.

It can be said that game users are the group that pays the most attention to the graphics card market and the console market. They pay more attention than those businesses such as computers, game consoles, mobile phones, and electronic products. The slightest disturbance will immediately start to spread.

In the past two days, some merchants in the graphics card market also smelled something unusual, that is, suddenly there were a lot of young people in the store, and as soon as they entered the store, they took out a piece of paper and wrote it all

The names of many pieces of hardware.

For a time, the graphics card market also became popular.

After Shenxiu Technology started moving as a whole, a piece of news reached Su Yan's ears, that is, the battle over operator standards was settled.

China Telecom will use the cdma2000 standard, China Unicom will use the wcdma standard, and China Mobile will use the td-scdma standard. As for the issuance of licenses, it is estimated that it will remain the same as before until 2009. After all, the early base station construction is also a big problem.

In China, I have to say that the demographic dividend is still very powerful these days. Once the state provides strong support and corporate funds are in place, there is no need to worry about no one to work for you. Last year, Huawei and ZTE built a total of about 140,000 3G equipment across the country.

base station.

From the classification of standards by operators, to the laying of 3G base stations and the news gradually revealed above, Su Yan estimates that China's 3G era will arrive in the next year, but it will take several years to fully enter.

If nothing else, Apple's highly confidential project called "Project Purple" also started this year. The project has assembled a total of more than 1,000 internal employees to form an iPhone research and development team.
Chapter completed!