The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide.

Chapter 12 Back to the real world
After Zhou Xin arrived at Berkeley, it was equivalent to transferring from his undergraduate degree at Yanda University to Berkeley to continue his undergraduate studies.

It's just that I was a sophomore before, but now I'm a senior directly.

What he needs to do is not to take classes, but to take exams.

What you have taken at Yanda University before can be directly converted into credits. For basic courses that you have not taken, you need to make up.

In addition to the exam, he needs to revise the email he sent to Hu Zhengming according to the format of the paper. After the revision, Hu Zhengming will guide him to publish it in a journal in the field of integrated circuits.

In fact, the time Hu Zhengming arranged for him was very full.

Although it is only a basic course at the undergraduate level, the difficulty is definitely not small.

Changing emails into papers, the standard requirements for the format, is also an arduous task for those who have not been exposed to professional academic training.

Because when you write an email, you can assume that some things are known to the other party, but you need to have normative citations in the paper.

It's just that these are trivial matters to Zhou Xin.

"Lawyer Stephen, please, this matter needs to be done as soon as possible."

"If it's as soon as possible, you can choose the expedited file for $700.

This stage usually takes about a year. "

"That is to say, it will take a year at the earliest?"

"Yes, it will take a year at the earliest. Because there are many links in American's patent review.

From application search to inspection. "

"Is there a faster way?" Zhou Xin couldn't accept such a long patent application time.

A year is too long.

"If you are willing to add an additional three thousand dollars, we can compress this time to six months at the earliest."

Zhou Xin has a new understanding of the expensive fees of lawyers.

It is equivalent to if these expedited fees are added, the total cost will be about [-] US dollars.

Basically, the rmb he earned from New Oriental was consumed. In 98, the exchange rate between the US dollar and RMB was around 8.2.

The price will be more expensive if it is exchanged from some people who are dumping foreign exchange.

One hundred thousand RMB, less than ten thousand dollars.

"Can this be written into the contract?"

"Sorry, no, this cannot be reflected in the contract."

That is to say, it was only the opinion of the lawyer's family that he could apply for the patent in the American region within half a year.

There is no credibility at all.

For the Chinese who have just arrived in American, they must follow the zero trust mechanism.

This is the first lesson Zhou Xin learned after arriving in American.

No matter who the other party is or how friendly they are, a zero-trust mechanism must be adopted, and don't believe anything the other party says.

Especially immigrants of Chinese descent.

The fellow pitted the fellow, with tears in his eyes.

"Then follow the expedited rate of [-] dollars.

If you have any news, please notify me as soon as possible. "

This is a law firm in the greater Los Angeles area that focuses on patent applications. Some of Zhou Xin's patents in later generations were applied through this law firm.

In other words, the law firm has been established for at least 20 years.

Even so, Zhou Xin couldn't believe the expedited service of $[-] that the other party said.

Because there is no guarantee in black and white.

The patent that Zhou Xin wants to apply for is a patent in the field of DSP. The Chinese full name is microprocessor and digital signal processor.Texas Instruments is developing rapidly in this field.

Although they have not caught up with the wave of smart phones, they can be said to be the first choice of countless mobile phone manufacturers in the 2G era.

Texas Instruments is one of Nokia's largest partners in the processor field.

In 98, Texas Instruments' revenue in the DSP field exceeded 2.5 million US dollars.

Semiconductor companies from Neon and Korea have to pay high patent fees to Texas Instruments every year.

The patent in the DSP field that Zhou Xin wants to apply for can help the semiconductor companies of Neon and Korea to bypass some of the patents of Texas Instruments.

At least one year can cause Texas Instruments to lose $5000 million in patent revenue.

It's just a one-year patent application period, which is a bit unbearable for Zhou Xin.

It's not that he has never thought of cooperating with Hu Zhengming, but considering that Hu Zhengming is currently starting a business and is short of funds, it is difficult to see such a considerable income and not be tempted.

To avoid letting the other party fall into the torture of human nature, it is better not to give the other party a chance to choose.

After leaving Omni Law Firm, he let out a long sigh.

There is always a gap between ideas and reality.

When I applied for a patent before, I didn't think about making money at all, I just thought that this thing might be valuable.

After looking for a law firm to act as an agent, I just put it there, and waited a long time for the receipt from the lawyer.

Realizing that the real world cannot operate like this era, the time jump of 22 years has been realized in the blink of an eye.

The operation of things in the real world needs to be strictly followed by the rules.

Even if the rules can be changed sometimes, changing the rules itself is also a kind of rule.

After realizing this, Zhou Xin chose to integrate into the Los Angeles of this era.

You must know that there is also a top university, Stanford, near Berkeley, which is part of the Bay Area with Silicon Valley 21 kilometers away.

The dream of future generations of problem writers is to profit from American, and then find a job in a big factory in the Bay Area to achieve work-life balance.

At this time, Silicon Valley already has a large number of companies that have influenced the world for decades, such as Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Amazon, Apple, and Google.

"What do you think is the most important thing in the process of developing a product?"

"First think about my target audience: Professors? Students? People with a technical background? People without that background?

These will have a direct impact on the design of the visual interface.

The audience determines the level of product learning costs.

For example, a program that deals with desktop management might include a built-in command line that is always on if it's aimed at users accustomed to the command line, but for casual users who might be completely confused, such a feature might not be so Useful command line.

Learning cost roughly refers to how much effort I think my users are willing to put in to use the software I design.

ViM is a text editor with a very high initial learning curve, but considering that most serious programmers consider learning how to use such a good text editor to be a good investment, this is acceptable.On the other hand, if ViM was aimed at the general user, like Microsoft Office, then the average user would not be interested in learning how to use the software.

So the most important thing is to clarify your target users. "

Both vim and office suites have a long history. As long as 1998, neither of them is a new thing.

"Congratulations on getting the internship qualification from Microsoft. Even Berkeley students, there are only a few who can get the internship qualification from Microsoft."

Before the patent application was completed, Zhou Xin chose to go to Silicon Valley for an internship. He basically chose Haitou.

Microsoft was the first company to send him an intern offer.

Microsoft is headquartered in Seattle and also has a branch in Silicon Valley.

Here are mainly some developers, and a product team of an entire business line.

Suzy Dink, head of Microsoft's product team in Silicon Valley,
(End of this chapter)