Chapter 255 This Is a Trap
Su Yuanshan visibly let out a breath of relief.
After knowing Xi Xiaoding for three years, he understood very well that Xi Xiaoding rarely praised anyone, and he would never offer compliments just because of personal connections — especially not in technical matters.
Moreover, as a fellow technical person himself, Su Yuanshan knew exactly what it meant when someone in the field said, "the direction is correct."
—Nothing was more encouraging in the tech world than hearing that your direction was correct.
"Thank you, Senior Brother."
"It's not because of me — she has talent herself," Xi Xiaoding waved his hand and said casually, "I didn't offer much guidance, just occasionally helped clear up a few doubts."
"Clearing doubts isn't something just anyone can do—by the way, has the school assigned you any teaching duties?"
At the mention of this, Xi Xiaoding's face showed a bitter smile.
"The school leadership are a bunch of liars. They promised they wouldn't assign me any teaching tasks..."
Su Yuanshan laughed out loud.
When Xi Xiaoding returned to the university, the school had given him a very favorable and flexible offer — like only having to attend weekly meetings so he could focus on software development and supervising graduate students.
But after he finished writing Fundamentals of Algorithms, the school couldn't help themselves. They kept persuading him to take on some teaching duties, arguing that since he was the true authority in the domestic algorithms field, they needed him.
To convince him, the school even got Professor Su Xinghe involved — who had recently become the new dean of the freshly established School of Computer Science and Engineering at the university.
Although Xi Xiaoding was unwilling, in the end, he accepted the teaching role for the sake of the "big picture" and agreed to teach a specialized algorithms course for computer science majors.
"But Senior Brother," Su Yuanshan said as he glanced at two books on the table — Fundamentals of Algorithms and Introduction to Algorithms — "domestic algorithms education is just getting started. If we really want leapfrog progress and to cultivate top talent, it has to be you personally leading the way."
In terms of difficulty, Introduction to Algorithms was definitely harder. Programmers often joked that if you mastered ninety percent of Introduction to Algorithms, you'd be better than ninety percent of developers out there.
By comparison, Fundamentals of Algorithms was more suited to the foundational level of domestic students and was slightly easier.
Still, even Fundamentals was an extremely tough course for the average undergraduate.
Xi Xiaoding nodded, sighing,
"Honestly, I do like mentoring students. It's just... I don't like mentoring certain kinds—you know what I mean."
"Uh… yeah, totally," Su Yuanshan laughed.
Xi Xiaoding naturally had an intellectual superiority complex. If he encountered "dull" students, he truly had little patience for them.
"But Senior Brother, take it slowly. Once you get a little more teaching experience, you and I can lobby my dad and the school to set up a special elite computer science class — high entry standards, strict conditions... basically, only admitting the very best!" Su Yuanshan smiled, thinking of the future "Yao Class."
"Go as high-end as possible. It would match your identity as the head of Pandora Lab."
Xi Xiaoding's eyes lit up.
"That's a great idea! Plus, our lab can provide excellent hands-on opportunities."
"Then I'll ask Sister Xiaohui to book the plane tickets now. Are you bringing students along?"
"No need, just me."
—
The next day, Su Yuanshan, Xi Xiaoding, and Zhou Xiaohui boarded a flight to Shanghai.
After landing, they didn't bother disturbing anyone locally. Instead, they waited at the airport for about an hour, picked up Xi Xiaoding's senior brother, and then checked into a hotel together.
The following day, Xi Xiaoding and his senior brother returned to the provincial capital, while Su Yuanshan and Zhou Xiaohui stayed behind in Shanghai, where Su Yuanshan attended a CPU department meeting that afternoon.
Currently, the CPU design project was smoothly entering its final phase, with at most a month left before entering the long simulation and verification period.
...
That night, Su Yuanshan was walking along the street with Li Mingliu, while Zhou Xiaohui and Li Mingliu's "apprentice" walked behind them.
"According to Xinghai's sources, Cyrix's progress is slightly ahead of ours, and they've even fine-tuned their architecture," Li Mingliu said, frowning slightly as he faced the night breeze. "President Shan, we're worried that we might not even be able to compete with Cyrix."
Although Li Mingliu had initially joined to work on cache memory and had later shifted to flash memory, as the head of the CPU department, he was of course expected to understand all aspects of his team's work, including the CPU architecture itself.
Though not directly involved in the chip design, Li Mingliu knew the specifications of the Sol architecture inside and out.
"It's okay," Su Yuanshan smiled lightly. "It's perfectly normal if we can't beat Cyrix right now. If we could beat them so soon, that would actually be strange."
Recalling his past dealings with the Claude team, Su Yuanshan sighed gently,
"After all, we're a brand-new team; they're seasoned veterans."
Li Mingliu nodded but hesitated before asking softly,
"I've always had a question."
"Go ahead."
"Why aren't you personally designing the chip?"
Li Mingliu stopped walking and looked at Su Yuanshan earnestly.
"If you personally got involved, the progress and the architecture quality would surely be much better."
Su Yuanshan was briefly taken aback before smiling,
"Didn't I already handle the overall architecture and instruction set design?"
"That's not what I mean."
Li Mingliu shook his head.
"We've all seen you design integrated circuits firsthand. You're easily worth five engineers, not to mention ten. Especially because you already defined the overall structure and instruction set—you'd know best how to implement them. Particularly in microcode design. Right now, just figuring out the cache communication scheme has taken us several months. I don't believe you would need that long."
Su Yuanshan pressed his lips together, remained silent for a few seconds, and then slowly shook his head.
"One person's strength is always limited. Remember how I forced you to take a vacation? It's the same principle. Relying on one person pushing everything forward isn't sustainable. We need everyone to grow and excel together."
"Right now, things aren't too urgent. We still have time to catch up. So… it's better to give the regular engineers room to make mistakes and learn."
Li Mingliu also fell silent for a few seconds. Then, his expression turned odd.
"So can I interpret this as: in your eyes, all the CPU team engineers are just... rookies? Little kids?"
Su Yuanshan coughed.
This was a trap — he wasn't going to fall into it.
But he quickly added,
"Senior Brother, it's ordinary people who create miracles, not geniuses."
"Tsk tsk, listen to yourself spin nonsense."
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