Chapter 356: The East European Market Is Live! To You, I Am a Gnat Gazing at the Blue Sky!

Xucheng, Zhuxianzhu Technology Park, the eve of New Year’s Day.

“Boss, Mr. Hu from the Huake Association is downstairs.”

The receptionist’s sweet voice came through the intercom.

“Show him to the conference room on the fifth floor,” Chen Yansen immediately instructed.

“Yes, Boss,” Tian Tian hung up the phone, smiled at Hu Ruihui and the others, and said softly, “Mr. Hu, please follow me.”

“Thank you for the trouble,” Hu Ruihui nodded.

Behind him, one of his attendants frowned and muttered under his breath, “So young, and already so full of himself.”

Hearing this, Hu Ruihui turned and shot the man a furious glare.

Huake and commercial companies exist on parallel lines; if they show you courtesy, it’s a favor, if not, it’s their right.

Tian Tian heard it too, furrowed her brow, and her expression darkened instantly.

In this technology park, no one dares speak so disrespectfully of their boss.

Tian Tian took a deep breath, forced a faint smile, and led Hu Ruihui and the others into the elevator.

*Ding.* The elevator doors slowly opened.

“Mr. Hu, hello, I’m Chen Yansen of OrangeTech. This is Mike Keller, chief designer of the Tiangong T100, and this is Wu Shengyu, lead designer of the Tiangong T100.”

Chen Yansen stepped forward with a smile to greet them.

“Mr. Chen, hello, sorry to disturb you…”

Hu Ruihui’s words stalled mid-sentence as his peripheral vision caught Mike Keller’s face.

“May I ask, Mr. Keller, did you ever work at AMD’s chip division?”

Hu Ruihui raised his hand in apology to Chen Yansen, then fixed his gaze on Mike Keller.

“Oh, you know me? I worked at AMD for six years, leading the design of the Athlon K8 processor—though that was nine years ago. After that, I went to Apple and led teams that developed the A4 and A5 chips.”

Mike smiled, speaking plainly without hiding anything.

After hearing this, Hu Ruihui immediately matched the man’s resume to a legendary chip designer in his memory.

He’d assumed it was just a coincidence of names—but the reality was unexpected.

He froze in place, mouth slightly open, eyes wide with shock.

The dozen or so Huake engineers behind him were equally stunned.

Wu Shengyu, seeing this, smirked slightly.

He remembered how, when he first met Mike Keller, he’d been equally speechless.

It was like the CEO of Alibaba walking into a small e-commerce store to become head of sales—utterly surreal.

Mike Keller’s rank and status at Apple’s chip division were second only to Johnny Srouji; his technical skill and industry influence rivaled Qualcomm’s senior principal engineers.

Whether in North America or Asia, Mike Keller was far from unknown.

So why did you join OrangeTech?

Hu Ruihui wanted to ask outright—but he bit back the words.

Never say stupid things.

Besides, he’d come to OrangeTech for a favor from Chen Yansen.

“Ten years ago, I visited AMD on behalf of the Huake Association to learn. I never imagined Mr. Keller would now be a chip designer at OrangeTech.”

Hu Ruihui quickly recovered, extending his hand to shake Mike’s.

“In my view, OrangeTech’s R&D environment isn’t inferior to Apple’s—especially Boss’s programming skills are astonishing. I’ve progressed rapidly here.”

Mike shrugged, giving a casual reply.

Chen Yansen’s programming skills?

Isn’t he a liberal arts graduate?

Hu Ruihui instinctively turned his gaze toward Chen Yansen, filled with doubt.

“Mr. Hu, shall we sit down and talk?”

Chen Yansen prompted.

“Of course.”

Hu Ruihui studied Chen Yansen closely—he sensed the man’s intent.

Thinking of this, he suddenly turned around, taking in the expressions of the others.

These once-arrogant men now all had their heads bowed, no longer questioning OrangeTech’s chip R&D capabilities.

To outsiders, Mike Keller was just another chip designer—but to these engineers with decades of CPU design experience, he was a god of the industry.

Then what kind of power did Chen Yansen possess, if Mike Keller claimed he was even stronger?

Chen Yansen, meanwhile, thought: If you don’t work in chips, seeing me is like a frog in a well gazing at the moon;

if you do work in chips, seeing me is like a gnat staring at the blue sky.

He’d stunned them all with one move, saving himself the trouble of future conflicts.

OrangeTech needed cooperative partners with the right attitude—not arrogant academic overlords.

The rest of the visit went smoothly—no trouble, no provocations.

Wu Shengyu led the presentation, detailing OrangeZ1’s execution conditions, encoding format, register structure, and memory access methods.

Hu Ruihui’s interest deepened—he’d worked in chip design for nearly thirty years; with his experience, he could easily judge that OrangeZ1’s encoding efficiency far surpassed MIPS, and its power consumption would drop accordingly.

“Mr. Chen, could we run simulations to verify this?” Hu Ruihui requested.

“Of course,” Chen Yansen agreed readily, gesturing for them to use the tools freely.

Even fine wine suffers if hidden down a back alley; a great product won’t sell itself.

As a brand-new CPU architecture specification, OrangeZ1 needed widespread commercial adoption to be refined through real-world use.

Why are Qualcomm and Huawei’s baseband chips so powerful?

Because they’ve spent over a decade building commercial products in the communications industry, accumulating rich testing and tuning capabilities.

Just as Hu Ruihui and his team were busy, Huawei also received word of Hu Ruihui’s visit to OrangeTech.

“Director Yu, do you think OrangeTech’s instruction set patent can match MIPS?”

Hissein’s chip president He Boting called Yu Chendong over. After all, Yu was the one in Huawei who had the most contact with Chen Yansen and OrangeTech—he’d even visited Xucheng to meet Chen not long ago.

“Based on my understanding of Chen Yansen, he never wastes effort—but I’ve also heard from friends in Europe that two months ago, OrangeTech visited ARM, likely to buy architecture licensing. So I’m not sure.”

Yu Chendong frowned, thought carefully, then replied cautiously.

Implicitly, if Chen Yansen had real confidence in OrangeZ1, he wouldn’t have gone to ARM to buy patents.

Therefore, OrangeZ1 likely had little technical merit—or was merely a backup solution for the IoT chip market.

As for developing an instruction set in under two months—from November to December—Yu Chendong never even considered it possible.

If Huawei couldn’t do it, how could OrangeTech?

Yu Chendong was a science top scorer and a graduate of Tsinghua’s Radio Engineering program—he wasn’t some clueless manager.

Precisely because he understood technology, he overlooked the truth closest at hand.

“ARM’s licensing fees are too high,” He Boting sighed, frowning.

Yu Chendong stayed silent—he knew how brutal ARM’s pricing was: tens of millions in annual fees, plus a 1.5% royalty.

For every Hissein chip sold or used internally, Huawei had to pay ARM a patent usage fee.

Open-source instruction sets like RISC-V and OpenRISC existed, but due to power consumption and encoding efficiency issues, they weren’t suitable as Hissein’s underlying CPU architecture.

Huawei was stuck: developing its own tech while still paying ARM.

“Director He, I don’t think we need to rush. If Hu Ruihui judges that OrangeZ1 meets Huake Association’s R&D needs, we’ll soon hear that Huake has licensed the OrangeZ1 architecture.”

Yu Chendong spoke with certainty.

He Boting nodded slightly, suppressing his urge to contact OrangeTech, and shifted the conversation to Huawei’s upcoming Ascend P2 and C8813.

Meanwhile, on the other side:

After a full day of verification, Hu Ruihui immediately decided to license the OrangeZ1 architecture.

“One-time licensing fee: ten million. Royalty: 0.5%.”

Before Hu Ruihui could speak, Chen Yansen named the price.

“US dollars?”

“Chinese yuan.”

Hu Ruihui sucked in a breath—not because it was expensive, but because it was absurdly cheap, making him doubt his ears.

“Is this OrangeTech’s standard external pricing?”

Hu Ruihui asked curiously.

“If Huawei comes, the terms double,” Chen Yansen replied seriously.

Hu Ruihui grinned, satisfied, and said, “On behalf of the Huake Association and the Loongson project, thank you, Mr. Chen.”

“Mr. Hu, let me be clear: the licensing contract must be kept confidential. To develop OrangeZ1, I recruited many senior researchers from integrated circuit firms in Europe and America—costs were high. I have to make a profit.”

Chen Yansen said this with a perfectly straight face, making it up as he went.

“I understand. In fact, the price Huake Association paid for the MIPS architecture license wasn’t the rumored ten million US dollars,” Hu Ruihui smiled.

“Five million?” Chen Yansen asked, half-smiling.

“Funny—Huake Association also signed an NDA with MIPS,” Hu Ruihui replied with a smile.

His implication: once Huake signed the contract with OrangeTech, he’d keep it secret too.

“Mr. Hu, let’s cooperate well.” Chen Yansen stood and extended his hand.

“Cooperate well. I hope OrangeTech brings new momentum to China’s semiconductor industry.”

Hu Ruihui gripped Chen Yansen’s hand and smiled broadly.

“Mr. Hu flatters us. Orange Tech has no grand ambitions—just enough to barely surpass Qualcomm and ARM.” Chen Yansen replied.

Hu Ruihui’s expression froze, then he let out a dry laugh, assuming Chen Yansen was joking—until now, he couldn’t help asking: “Mr. Chen, how did you invite Mike Keller to come to China?”

After careful thought, the most plausible explanation was that Chen Yansen had kidnapped Mike Keller’s family, or obtained damning evidence that could ruin him.

“Because Orange Tech pays up to three times the overtime rate,” Chen Yansen replied vaguely.

“Mr. Chen, that joke’s a bit cold.”

Hu Ruihui was a smart man; seeing Chen Yansen wouldn’t speak, he abandoned his urge to press further.

Chen Yansen invited the members of the Huake Association to dinner at the city center’s sky garden.

The next morning, both sides signed the architecture licensing agreement.

The Huake Association thus became the first external organization in the country to adopt the OrangeZ1 instruction set.

After learning of this, He Boting of HiSilicon sought out Yu Chendong again, asking him to introduce Chen Yansen.

Since Hu Ruihui was willing to pay, the OrangeZ1 instruction set must clearly outperform MIPS in coding efficiency and power consumption.

That afternoon, Chen Yansen received a call from Yu Chendong; after understanding his intent, he immediately agreed to the cooperation request.

Huawei needed Orange Tech’s OrangeZ1 instruction set; Orange Tech needed Huawei’s Balong baseband chip as an alternative to Qualcomm.

The two sides hit it off at once!

They arranged to meet on January 4th at Zhuxianzhu Technology Park.

After seeing Hu Ruihui and the others off, Chen Yansen was about to leave for the day when Zhou Shouzhi called to report: the upgraded OrangeC2, OrangeC3, and Qingcheng D1S were now on sale in Eastern Europe, primarily through telecom operators, with online sales as a supplement.

First-day sales: 19,000 units!

Though not high, this was a solid result for a foreign mobile brand not native to the region; the best-selling model was the Qingcheng D1S, which sold 7,000 units in one day in North Ice Country.

With balanced specs and strong camera performance, priced at just $169, it was wildly popular among young people.

At the same time, Xiaomi imitated Nokia’s strategy, aggressively building offline distribution channels in India, partnering with numerous retailers to place products in physical stores nationwide.

In just one week, they sold 73,000 Xiaomi phones!

Lei Zong waved his hand excitedly, allocating promotional funds to the India market lead, planning to host a Xiaomi Fan Festival to give away data cables, headphones, printed T-shirts, and other event merchandise.

Meanwhile, Cao Dahua drove slowly into Xucheng College in a Mercedes worth over two million, then knocked on Tang Qingshan’s office door.

(End of Chapter)