Reading guide: The era of slow work and meticulous work has just begun.
Author: Yi Gongzi.
Article**: Yi Gongzi's sword (yigongzidejian).
Breakthrough and subversion are never achieved overnight. In the matter of overthrowing Intel, it lasted for 40 years, foundry reform, mobile era, and Apple made cores. In addition to the above, everyone is familiar with another thing - the instruction set, that is, the language in which the chip and the software operating system communicate - only by breaking the monopoly of Intel's x86 instruction set can Intel** be completely dismantled.
China's science and technology must break through in the face of the blockade, and it can also rivet such a trajectory - from technology, to products, to ecology. This is destined to be an extremely huge project, and it will take ten years for qualitative change. We can only survive in the gaps of the era of peace, and borrow dividends in the flames of the era of war.
There has always been only one way to overthrow the old system. The future must be bright, but the road is extremely tortuous.
Since Jobs has been canonized, according to the narrative of success and defeat, the narrative of the twelve years of driving out Jobs, Apple should be stupid.
I hate this kind of narrative, the reality is often complicated.
Apple without Jobs has done a lot of bold and far-sighted work.
Scully led Apple to more than $10 billion in revenue, a tenfold increase in market capitalization, and $2 billion in cash on its books. There are two other major events that will affect today.
First, Apple, IBM, and Motorola are grouped, historically known as the AIM combination (three company initials), to create PC chips. It shows that the PC and even all electronic technology industries are chips.
The second is the release of Newton. That's right, the most failed product in Apple's history. However, it was precisely it that planted the bane for Intel and finally rewrote the order of the technological world.
Jobs had a very strange love for Intel.
Steve Jobs hated IBM all his life - Apple invented the personal computer (PC), and four years later, IBM entered the game and immediately knocked Apple down. Later, Wintel, which was formed by Microsoft and Intel, replaced IBM as Jobs's bitter master.
Oddly enough, Jobs' emotional enthusiasm for IBM is the middle finger shown below. Bill Gates has also been ridiculed all his life, thinking that Windows is plagiarized and uncreative. Only for Intel, I can't hate it.
If you know Jobs well enough, you will understand that Intel is very special to Jobs. Jobs and Woz, the two of them ran into walls in their business until they met angel investor Marcura. Makula relied on his wealth and freedom in Intel to participate in the entrepreneurship of these two crazy teenagers. Marcoura brought Steve Jobs into Intel's circle, befriended Intel legend Grove, and visited Arthur Locke, the "father of venture capital" and president of Intel.
In other words, it was from Intel's resources that the penniless dick silk boy began to enter and exit the big guy's liquor and business K. The phoenix man can understand Jobs's feelings. In a word, Intel was Jobs' first love.
Throughout Jobs's life, he never hated Intel, let alone ruthlessly.
The PC war is about chips, and IBM and Motorola are fighting Intel. Incubated ARM with Newton and directly hit the X86 architecture, these killer moves that directly take the head of Intel are extremely bold and ambitious, and if Jobs is still in Apple, he will definitely not be able to use it.
The cloth boy felt that he should get rid of Jobs. At that time, Jobs had a rough demeanor and a weak heart, and he was completely unable to control such a big country. It is necessary to let the wild monkey endure all the hardships and go through the Five Finger Mountain and the path of learning scriptures in order to become the Monkey King.
The fair description is that Apple without Jobs is like a large multinational company where Yi Gongzi used to work. Led by professional and diligent professional managers, supported by MBB Consulting, the Big Four international accounting firms and Wall Street, the strategy is top-notch and professional. But the price is rigidity, and you have to report PPT layers to do something, stifling creativity, and you can't retain geniuses who can change the world.
Fate is so interesting. The reckless Jobs could not create this silver bullet. And the apple, which drove away Jobs, was able to make a silver bullet fired at Intel, but because the product was boring, this shot missed. The wheel of fate turns, Apple returns to Jobs's madness, and the trajectory of the bullet is gently flicked, and finally shoots into the heart of Intel.
That's it, let the bullets fly for a while.
There is another point to say that Jobs was mythologized - it is not that as soon as he returns, Apple is revived, but it continues to go downhill for a long time.
Jobs returned, took Bill Gates' investment, axed Newton, and took advantage of Arm's listing to sell shares (cash out 56 million euros), which increased cash flow and kept Apple alive. But Apple hasn't gotten any better.
In fact, due to Jobs' stubbornness with products, Apple was in constant crisis. For example, the Power Mac G4 Cube has an excellent design and has won numerous awards, but it is not cost-effective, the price is exaggerated, and it cannot be sold at all, which makes the already not rich Apple even worse.
Jobs is also very "** in layman's terms, a rotten person who stands up and stands." Steve Jobs asked Apple not to set up parking spaces for its own CEO and to advocate equality, but he often occupied parking spaces for other employees, or parking spaces for people with disabilities.
Jobs had an annual salary of $1. Don't ask, just ask, I don't love money, and I regret creating apples all my life. But Mr. Jobs demanded that the directors give them sky-high equity incentives. What's even funnier is that after getting your hands on it, you catch up with the bursting of the Internet bubble, and the value is 0. Jobs's approach was to force the board of directors to give him another equity incentive. As a result, this time, because of Jobs' mistakes, Apple's new products sold poorly, the stock price plummeted, and the equity incentive was worthless. Apple gave Steve Jobs equity incentives in violation of regulations, and was punished by the Securities and Exchange Commission, paying sky-high fines, and letting a director take the blame.
Jobs had an eccentric temperament. Apple executives, in today's parlance, are called upward management - a bunch of high-paid guys guess what Jobs likes every day, and then design a trap for Jobs, first get a few plans to scold him, wait for him to scold you for being stupid, how to do it, and then take out the plan that everyone originally wanted to propose. Steve Jobs would say, OK, and everybody would immediately say, "Leadership." That's how things get done.
You see, there are no great people, the real history of technology and business is like this.
What really saved Apple was the iPod.
All of Jobs's stinky faults are to achieve one of his ultimate merits - the product sense is outstanding, and he is extremely stubborn and persistent. "Put 1,000 songs in your pocket," Jobs was attracted to the idea and let the people below figure it out.
Apple poached Tony Fadell, a cyberpunk that pushes the concept of *** everywhere. Eventually, the iPod caught fire.
For power consumption, iPod uses ARM architecture to build chips. It was many years ago, without Jobs, Apple, which was strategically awesome, engaged in mobile device Newton, and founded ARM. With the ARM of the reduced instruction, challenge Intel, which is invincible with complex instructions x86. The challenge failed, and Arm has been working on edge products for many years, and at this moment, because of the iPod, it is back to the world's hottest electronic products.
Years later, the "father of the iPod", Fadel will once again turn the trajectory of the silver bullet and rush towards the heart of Intel.
And the darkness before dawn is the darkest. Jobs's love for Intel is getting stronger and stronger.
This is the phoenix man's attitude towards his first love - back then, I was a dick, you didn't like me to follow Microsoft, okay, I don't blame you. But, you take a good look now, brother is not awesome.
In 2005, Jobs personally cut Power, the Apple that did not have Jobs, was incubated by himself, in order to kill Intel's chip project. Jobs let his old lover of decades Motorola roll out and officially marry Intel. And it's so fast that overnight, all of Apple's computers are equipped with Intel chips. So much so that Bill Gates didn't believe that such a big transplant could be completed in six months. Apple's operating system, which has been developed for more than ten years, needs to be rewritten and re-adapted for the underlying architecture of x86. Six months is impossible.
All I can say is. Bill, you don't understand the power of love!
In short, Intel died laughing, the biggest threat on the side of the couch for more than ten years, Jobs killed himself. Intel is the only one and is the king.
When Jobs wanted to make an iPhone, the first thing that came to mind was Intel. Immediately talk to Intel boss Odenin. Thankfully, ** didn't talk about it, and Apple had no choice but to let Samsung use the ARM architecture to make iPhone chips. If this is the best talk, I dare not imagine what today's science and technology rivers and lakes are like.
At this time, there is another historic product - iPad. Tablets are somewhere between computers and mobile phones, and Jobs said that it must still be Intel's chips, and they have recently been working on Atom chips, which are especially suitable for mobile devices.
Do you know that Otellan often walks with me for hours at a time, come on, I'll give him a ** now.
Enough is enough!Mr. Jobs, you're a **love brain!
Finally someone slapped the table. wrong！wrong！wrong！- It's the iPod-making Fadel, slapping the table, holding a badge in his hand, you go and use Intel's chips, I resign!Go *** upward management, fed up with working for you as a tyrant. Brother is gone!
This is a famous scene in the history of technology business. In the face of death. Jobs said, how could I be against my best employees. Okay, don't look for intel.
The gears of history have finally turned.
With mobile devices, ARM has risen rapidly, and Intel can't catch up.
Many people have the misconception that mobile devices have become, and Arm will surpass Intel. It's so easy. Completely wrong.
Dismantling Intel, this is not a victory, but only the beginning of a war.
Even if it completely loses the mobile device battlefield, Intel is still deeply rooted in three sectors - PC, notebook, and server.
Despite the emergence of smartphones, PCs and notebooks are still the most important productivity tools for human beings, and Intel has almost no rivals in this huge market.
The server CPU has made Intel happy. As human beings enter the era of mobile devices, the requirements for data and networks have increased dramatically, and the requirements for servers are more and more and stronger. Intel and x86 are absolutely dominant in server CPUs, and there is no rival.
Arm's eyes are red, let's steal a tower. In 2008, ARM, together with NVIDIA, Marvell, Qualcomm, Broadcom and other companies, launched server CPUs based on ARM instruction set architecture. However, due to the weakness of performance and ecology, it was killed.
This is the most painful lesson - the real barrier is ecology. Mainstream software, which has taken more than ten years, has been continuously optimized and updated in Intel's x86 architecture. Now that ARM is coming in, just running under compilation, the performance and stability of these software is greatly reduced. In other words, even if the latecomer has good technology and good energy efficiency ratio, it is still far from enough.
The so-called technological breakthrough is not only a technical battle, but also an ecological battle. This takes time, to take advantage of the contradictions between the giants, to pry the game between the princes, to rely on open and secret fighting, to rely on vertical and horizontal.
The story that followed was enlisted for that sentence - there are no eternal friends, only eternal interests.
The wampant Wintel has loosened.
ARM, Apple, and Android have joined forces to win the smartphone market. Microsoft, the "king of operating systems", panicked, Windows could not be used on smartphones, and Google's Chrome OS had to join forces with ARM to make PCs.
Intel brother, you can't do it. If the rebels can't hold it down any longer, I'll go up on my own. Microsoft began to take the lead and let the software run to the ARM chip. Microsoft is the Apple without Jobs, with advantages (strategic top) and disadvantages (no creativity in starting a war).
Make your own surface, with an arm chip, and it turns out to be garbage. I also looked for Qualcomm and Nvidia to make ARM chips for PCs, but they still failed.
Business and life are too similar, aren't they? This is fate, it was Apple that started this fate, and it was Apple that sent the fatal blow.
Jobs's love brain has finally woken up. Reality educates all romanticism. The iPhone encountered fierce competition, especially Samsung used ARM to make chips for the iPhone, and then turned around and made its own Samsung mobile phone, beating the iPhone to become the world's first.
Jobs insisted that Samsung plagiarized and never trusted anyone. Apple has confirmed that core manufacturing is a core strategy to maintain competitiveness. In 2010, Apple used its own chip for the first time in the iPhone 4.
As for PC chips, looking at Microsoft and NVIDIA, they are also speechless, a group of garbage that can't be beaten. Forget it, useless things, get out of the way, or I'll come in person.
In 2020, Apple PCs abandoned Intel and used Apple's self-developed ARM-based M1 chip. Subsequent M2 continued to be successful and was soon updated to M3.
Before Apple, there was only 14%, negligible. But Apple's core change is amazing, and now it has hit 13-15%, and it is still growing rapidly.
The previous stereotype, Intel's x86, has high power consumption, strong performance, and is suitable for plugged devices. ARM architecture, the performance is a little worse, but the energy consumption ratio is good, suitable for mobile devices that need a long battery life. But Apple's M chip breaks this stereotype, ARM is on the PC, with long battery life and strong performance, which gives the ARM camp great confidence.
Intel has once again lost a large part of its territory. It was Apple's core change that led to the first time in the history of Intel's market value being surpassed by its younger brother NVIDIA.
Only the last stubbornness is left - the server CPU. It's okay, I still have a fast-growing server market. As long as the server CPU is still there, x86 will not fall, and Intel will never be a slave!
Is it?In 2008, the fledgling ARM wanted to steal the tower from server chips. And then I was taught a hard lesson by reality. You can't be ecological, and no one will use it when the technology is in place. So, learn steadily, and be patient and slow.
In 2010, ARM joined forces with IBM, Samsung, Deyi, STMicro, Freescale, and Ericsson to form a non-profit company, Linaro. To do the ecology, start from the bottom, start from the underlying software stack of Arm Datacenter, to compatible and optimize the software one by one, and gnaw hard bones.
Many people think that war is a rush to kill, no, most of the time war is a long, hopeless, desperate wait.
As the ARM ecosystem gets better little by little, the battle situation is finally waiting for new variables. Cloud computing is maturing, and the leader AWS is gradually becoming profitable.
The biggest cost of cloud computing manufacturers is to buy servers, and Intel is very strong because of its monopoly. But cloud computing is on the rise, and everyone is kneeling at the door of Intel begging to buy servers, and the profits are given to Intel.
This group of cloud computing vendors began to work very hard in Linaro, and they had to keep a low profile for fear of offending Intel. As the ecosystem slowly matured, cloud computing finally revolted against Intel's exploitation.
In 2018, cloud computing leader Amazon AWS launched the first self-developed ARM architecture processor chip GR**ITON in order to get rid of Intel's XEON dependence.
The first shot of the Xinhai Revolution was fired. The prince will have a kind of ?!
The crowd followed suit. At this time, it has been eight years since the establishment of Linaro, and eight years have gradually been developed by ARM server chips + mature software ecology to help cloud service providers make money, and the war situation has been completely opened.
Arm is really tired, and he really wants to sell himself to Nvidia to hug his thighs, but unfortunately he didn't make it because of anti-monopoly. This forces Arm to rely on itself, never making money from the Internet of Things, to the profitable cloud computing data center, network equipment, and automotive fields.
From Intel's point of view, in the field of PC notebooks, only Apple has succeeded at present, and Microsoft's Nvidia Qualcomm products are still on PPT. But in the server market, AWS, NVIDIA, AMPERE, Kunpeng, and Ali all relied on ARM to kill.
The good times of Intel are over.
ARM breaks through and breaks Intel's hegemony. For Chinese semiconductors, half is warmth, half is sadness.
In the story of ARM's counterattack on X86, China's technology circle also has money to contribute and make a strong contribution. For example, Huawei HiSilicon and Alibaba Cloud have been charging forward in the battlefield of smartphones and servers.
But with the US technological blockade. The glory of ARM's counterattack has nothing to do with China overnight.
Huawei HiSilicon once ranked among the top level, but suddenly fell. Everyone only knows that TSMC can't be foundry, and the mainland foundry can't get the most advanced ASML lithography machine. Not necessarily. Another aspect is the authorization of ARM. HiSilicon Kirin's highest moment was built on the ARMv8 version, and soon ARM was updated to V9.
What happened in the future was beyond the capabilities of commercial companies. ARM is very, very friendly to the Chinese market, and high-level visits all day long are sweet words, not only through the establishment of ARM China (AMO) to isolate, but also to make it clear that the ARMV9 architecture is not subject to the US Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and has authorized Huawei.
However, Huawei does not have a new product based on armv9, and the entire Chinese semiconductor only feels helpless. Despite ARM and EDA, core making is still a high-investment and high-risk business. Today, if the results are about to come out, the United States will intervene and not authorize it, then I will die. Therefore, China's semiconductors must be independent and controllable, not only the lithography machine at the production end, but also the lowest-level instruction set architecture must be redone.
RISC-V, which belongs to the condensed instruction set like ARM, is known as the last hope of Chinese semiconductors. However, looking back at ARM's breakthrough to Intel, it is not difficult to find that in order to complete the journey of "technology-product-production", the huge project must be prepared for ten years of anti-Japanese war.
This is indeed a long, arduous and uncertain march.
In fact, after three years of optimism, this year has been a year of setbacks for China's semiconductors. OPPO Zheku, TCL Davist, Fosun Furui Microelectronics, these projects born with golden keys, how ambitious they were back then, but they collapsed and disbanded this year. Morale in the industry is low.
However, if I were to draw an analogy, I would feel like it was like Arm's 2008. The advent of the iPhone and the substitution of China's domestic products are both historic opportunities. But the breakthrough did not happen overnight. In 08, ARM had achievements in smart phones, so it was hot-headed and went to attack the server chip market, and returned with a big defeat. Pick up the remnants, set up Linaro, and take your time.
It's the same with Chinese semiconductors today.
Some time ago, I visited a start-up company that is doing RISC-V in China. I mentioned my confusion that the RISC-V claims to be the third largest in the world after x86 and arm, but the share is negligible. Now there are many RISC-V in the Internet of Things, which is nothing more than open source, no licensing fees, and the volume is dead, and there is no profit at all.
The CEO shared with me that when ARM was frustrated, he did Linaro to build an ecosystem. RISC-V has also made such an organization, RISE, calm down, and slowly do ecology. He reminded me that the members of RISE were the same members of Linaro back then. Have faith.
I'm very impressed. In fact, there is no need to be trapped in technological encirclement and self-pity. Looking at the bigger picture, the chip has never been peaceful for a day, and the war has never stopped.
Apple personally lifted Intel to the altar and personally pushed Intel down the abyss. In order to keep the profits for itself, AWS uses ARM as a server chip to deal a fatal blow to Intel. Now the big model is so popular, Nvidia is very beautiful, but behind it is also the same story as cloud computing, Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, and Tesla are all making their own TPUs, and they want to kill Nvidia and keep the profits to themselves.
Once everyone worked together to do ARM to crusade against Intel hegemony. Now ARM is charging too much for bigger, and the brothers are not happy. RISC-V wants to come out, not only do huge Chinese orders bet on domestic substitution, but the giants are not idle. Apple is hiring for RISC-V positions, and OpenAI has invested in a startup company that uses RISC-V architecture to make AI chips. So, the members of RISE are the members of Linaro back then.
The chip is the war that never sleeps, and the bones are like mountains and forget the surname.
The bosses of Intel, Nvidia, and Qualcomm gathered in Washington to oppose the blockade of China, believing that it would backfire and accelerate Chinese innovation. In other words, the Big Three all feel that if you let it go, our Big Three will hold it down, and if you do this now, it will make everything out of control, and I don't know if it will force a difficult opponent.
The recent situation of China's semiconductors is not good, but the listing of Huawei Mate60 is really cheering. My own experience in my work is that a very important change has formed a consensus on China's semiconductors, and the blockade must be getting stricter and stricter.
Can you win in this way?I don't know. But I know that all "quick wins" are **. Personally, I believe that the future is bright and the road is tortuous. War is fraught with serendipity. What we can do is do the right thing and go in the right direction. For example, the emergence of cloud computing is unforeseeable. But doing linaro, doing ecology, and doing it slowly, is the right way. We need to be on the right track and patiently wait for contingencies to arise.
This is the chip war, seize the opportunity at the historical level, and then calm down to endure loneliness and fight slowly. The myth of China's semiconductors, a miracle has been shattered. But the era of slow work and meticulous work has just begun. (The author of this article, Yi Gongzi, ** Yu Yi Gongzi's sword, the web3 boss has been authorized by the author, edited and published by the web3 boss, and the views in the article are the author's views and do not represent the views of the web3 boss.) ）