Chapter 947: Ally or opponent

"Mr. Sculley, before discussing your opinion, I must remind you that MIPS and the "Matrix" laboratory are two different institutions. From a legal perspective, the "Matrix" laboratory is all the knowledge of the MIPS architecture. The true owner of the property rights, MIPS company only has a conditional and permanent license of the structure, and in order to continue the validity of this authorization, MIPS company voluntarily "donates" part of its income to the "Matrix" laboratory every year. "The laboratory is a neutral and pure scientific research institution that belongs to me, so it will not accept any equity investment. Do you understand the meaning of this?"
Tan Zhenhua frankly explained to John Sculley the relationship between the core units in the "Midoor" alliance-the "Matrix" laboratory is a purely private research institution in the legal sense, and belongs to Tan Zhenhua personally. , Its research results will not be used for commercial purposes-well, that is an excuse to cheat the US tax authorities. As for its core companies, such as MIPS, each year 3% of its sales revenue is "donated" to the "Matrix" laboratory to sponsor its research and development and updated technologies, and thus get "free" use of the "Matrix" laboratory related fields The right to technological intellectual property rights.
As for why such a complicated intellectual property authorization chain is set up, it is naturally because the second son of Tan is not enough to think carefully for outsiders.
There is a saying called "Be prepared without danger..."
"Through investigations, we have learned about the structure of the "Matrix" operation," Scully replied: "Although I don't quite understand why you did this, from the standpoint of our Apple, we respect yours. Choice, Eric, we know what position MIPS is in, and we have carefully considered these factors."
Tan Zhenhua nodded, and was silent for a while before asking: "I have a question, Mr. Scully, your current Macintosh personal computer is installed with the 68030 CPU produced by Motorola, and Motorola, I am afraid it is the current country in the United States. One of the largest and most powerful semiconductor companies, so before inviting you Apple to join the "Midoor" alliance, I had a lot of concerns, but you were quick and determined just now, just joining the alliance with me It’s nothing more than bargaining on the terms of the agreement-Mr. Scully, I’m a little curious, can you tell me why?"
Scully hesitated and asked, "Eric, do you have to know?"
"Yes, Mr. Scully, because once Apple joins the "Midoor" alliance, it means that it will adopt the MIPS architecture in your future personal computers. In other words, Motorola will lose a large user— —Mr. Scully, if you are the operator of Motorola, I am afraid you will have to launch a customer battle against MIPS. Since Motorola is likely to become my competitor, I know the reason in advance and prepare some countermeasures. , Of course I should do it, right?"
"Well, Eric, you're right." Scully sighed and said, "It's nothing to tell you, you know, when Mr. Jobs designed the first Apple computer, he used Motorola's 16 bits. The central processing unit MC6800 has become a tradition. After that, we used their company’s MC6809 and the notorious MC6502. Last year’s unsuccessful "AppleLisa" adopted their MC68000, which was popular this year. The "Macintosh" series uses its 32-bit MC68020 and MC68030. From these, you can see that Apple has always been a loyal user of Motorola's CPU series."
"Huh?"
"However, with such a large purchase and loyalty as Apple, we cannot allow Motorola to make even a little change for us."
"Oh?"
"Eric, can you believe it? The instruction sets of the MC6800 and MC68000 CPUs are completely incompatible!"
"what?"
A wry smile appeared on Scully's face: "Eric, you will definitely ask, why don't we, Apple, make compatibility suggestions to Motorola? After all, a chip is designed to consider compatibility with the previous generation of chips. It's not impossible, right?"
"Yes, why?"
"How could we not make this suggestion? Eric, think about it, when we tell our customers that the programs they used to run on APPLE and APPLEII computers cannot run on the latest Macintosh computers. , How painful it is; and in this, how many customers will be lost..."
"This must be a major business loss." Tan Zhenhua said in sympathy and gloating.
"We have reminded Motorola and even pleaded with Motorola, but they just refused to listen to our opinions. Maybe they felt that the feelings of old users didn’t matter at all. They completed the design of the new CPU and put it into the market at the fastest speed and the lowest cost. That's the most important thing," Scully said helplessly.
Tan Zhenhua nodded, knowing that in another time and space, Apple finally abandoned Motorola and switched to the Intel camp. He also finally understood that one of the first movers in the CPU architecture war, once dominated the US semiconductor and communications industry in history. Why did the Motorola company end up sadly?
Because of the past success, because of the hugeness, because of the advantages of the industry, blinded by the advantages of the industry, complacent and unwilling to lean over to listen to the opinions of users, such an arrogant corporate culture is the root cause of its failure; product, investment direction and technical route The wrong choice is just the realization of this failure culture.
"I don't want you to think, I want me to think."
This seemingly domineering presidential style can fool naive little girls to cast eyes full of admiration, and can also be boasted as a man's grandeur in film and television cultural works, but it will definitely be educated by cruel market competition. package.
"So before we are ready to start the research and development of our latest generation products, the board of directors is going to carefully review our core component supplier system, and here you, the "Midoor" alliance is my first stop."
"I guess the next stop should be Intel, Mr. Scully, but I can also reveal a little secret to you. A few days ago, Mr. Andy Grove was sitting where you are now. We We had a very harmonious communication and reached agreement in many aspects. Mr. Andy is considering my suggestions very seriously. I think there will be good news soon-of course, it can be on your visit list. The above is in the first place, I have to say, I am honored, but does this also mean that our "matrix" will have to choose to become a powerful enemy of Motorola?"
"You are natural enemies, and there is no choice." Scully said sharply: "The difference now is just that we, Apple, will become your future ally or opponent."