CES (1)
I entered the new headquarters with Manager Jang.
The building was still empty, its interior hollow and cold.
"This way, Director."
We had rushed through the deposit for the purchase and decided to hold the interviews right there in the new building. The schedule was tight, but CES was next week.
Was I supposed to handle that alone?
Manager Jang was capable, but he already had far too much on his plate. We needed people, and we needed them fast.
"Here are the applicants' documents."
I took the file he handed me.
First candidate.
Chinese.
The moment I brought semiconductors into the world, calls had poured in from everywhere—not just Korea, but the United States, Japan, China, Russia. Having staff who could handle English, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian would be useful. She was applying for the China desk.
"Come in."
A round, friendly-looking woman entered.
"You graduated from Peking University's semiconductor department?"
"That's right, yes."
Her Korean pronunciation was a little rough around the edges.
"E-7 visa?"
"Yes. If I'm hired, the visa gets extended, yes."
"You also worked at Ohsung?"
"Yes. Two years, yes."
"Why did you leave?"
"Well… the security was too strict…"
"Pardon?"
"Ah, no—because of security we had to change clothes so often it was inconvenient, and my visa was expiring then, so I left, yes."
"I see."
"Explain stacked semiconductors for me."
"Stacked semiconductors mean semiconductors piled up layer by layer, yes. And…"
Her explanation was solid. The accent was a little off, but her education, experience, and knowledge left nothing to be desired.
"Thank you. We'll be in touch."
I interviewed many more after that.
"I graduated from Yongin University Law School."
"Special Forces background."
"Secretarial studies, and I have Formula 1 driving experience. I'll get you anywhere, anytime, fast."
We hired quickly.
Then we threw ourselves into preparing for the CES presentation with the new team.
"Everyone. Next week I'm presenting at CES. Helping me get ready is your first job."
In the large conference room the new hires' eyes lit up at their first assignment.
"Anyone who contributes meaningfully to the prep will come with me and support the presentation, of course."
Laser beams practically shot from their eyes.
Someone's hand shot up.
"Director! How long is the presentation?"
"I was wondering the same thing, so I checked. We can use up to about an hour."
A normal regular session ran thirty minutes. Mine had been given a special session slot—a full hour.
Long or short, depending on how you looked at it. From my seat, the idea of talking for sixty straight minutes in front of experts was enough to make me sweat.
"We'll need to lock down stage direction, delivery style, phrasing…"
"We could use props for analogy. Lego towers, Jenga, acrylic models—something to catch the eye."
"Visuals are mandatory as a backdrop. Better to keep numbers light and use images or comparison graphics."
"I'll gather existing presentation materials."
"What if we open a little humorous? American-style icebreaker humor."
"Any ideas?"
"Since it's stacked semiconductors, a photo of a hamburger tower could work."
"Meaning?"
"If DRAM is a hamburger, then a 20-layer HBM is a 20-stack hamburger tower. Just don't eat it. The CPU will. Hahaha… something like that."
The room went quiet for a beat. Then someone asked,
"Is that joke… funny?"
"Uh… sorry. Is it not?"
I thought about it. Whether that line was funny or not. Then decided I didn't have to judge it by my own standards.
"We'll keep it for now. Last time Wilson Hwang's lines also felt a little off when I heard them. American code and feel are different. Leave the ideas open. They might land with their code."
The audience would be American tech enthusiasts. And CES was less a paper presentation hall and more a showcase for showing off technology. Wilson Hwang's previous jokes had felt different from Korean humor too.
Day after day we kept prepping. Working with the staff, I felt myself learning and growing every single day—as if the studying I'd promised my mother was happening on its own.
"Director. English pronunciation practice time. Repeat after me. Ah-rinj~ Not orange. Ah-rinj~"
"Ah-rinj~"
English study came free of charge.
One week later.
"Director. The plane has arrived."
"Let's go."
Incheon Airport.
Aaron Merks had actually sent a private jet. We had never even met face-to-face, yet he was already flying me across the ocean. The man had the kind of scale ordinary people simply didn't possess.
I took the staff and headed for the jet.
"Whoa."
The plane was bigger than I'd expected. Well—it had to cross the Pacific.
A uniformed man greeted me.
"Hello. I'm the captain."
"Pleasure to meet you."
"I usually only fly billionaires, but today I get to fly the guy who makes billionaires nervous. Hahaha!"
Classic American humor. Funny or not—hard to say. The flavor was just different. Maybe the dry jokes we'd prepared in the meeting room would actually land over there.
Inside was a wide lounge with comfortable bed-style seats and a conference area for work.
A flight attendant approached with a bright smile, holding a bottle of wine.
"It's an honor to have you aboard."
"This is wine from Aaron. Have a glass, sleep, and when you wake up you'll be in Las Vegas."
"Thank you."
Château Grand Puy.
We shared the bottle with the staff. Curious how much a billionaire's wine cost, I did a quick search.
Huh?
The same bottle was selling on an online shopping mall for 19,900 won.
Aaron Merks kept surprising me before I'd even seen his face.
Anyway, the alcohol hit, and a pleasant haze settled in. I closed my eyes for a while.
How long did I sleep?
The captain woke me with his signature American flair.
"Good morning. This is Las Vegas. Rise and shine. The slot machines are waiting for you."
Slot machines.
This was Las Vegas—more famous for casinos than for CES.
Outside the window stretched the Nevada desert. When we stepped off the plane the air was cold. They say desert nights are freezing; it was still early, and the chill bit deep.
We unpacked, then spent the next two days touring CES.
They called it the world's biggest electronics show, and there was no shortage of things to see.
Las Vegas Convention Center.
Under the bright lights of the massive exhibition hall, the latest technology from companies all over the world pulled people in every direction.
The first thing that caught my eye was an autonomous electric vehicle.
"In the future, no one will need to drive."
The screen flashed: Real-time data processing at 3 TB/s.
I smiled to myself. To support that kind of speed, memory was ultimately the key. I'd studied enough by now that even autonomous cars looked like just another electronics product to me.
A little farther on, a VR/AR headset booth came into view.
"Come experience another world."
The poster claimed it completely replaced reality with the virtual. People who had tried the headsets, though, were sighing.
"It stutters."
Stutters.
Virtual reality was a device that moved enormous amounts of data in an instant. The bottleneck, again, was memory. If my 20-layer HBM went into one of those? Latency would become a memory no one even remembered.
On another side, AI supercomputer modules were on display. Palm-sized chips packed a wall, glowing like a vast neural net. The presenter shouted in excitement.
"Hundreds of trillions of operations per second!"
CPUs and GPUs had gone beyond mere calculators; they were monsters—or magic. But even magic-level processing power needed data delivered to it. And the highest-performance carrier of that data right now was HBM.
I wondered what face that loud presenter would make if I told him about the 20-layer HBM.
After touring a number of products, I headed to a keynote lecture.
Speaker: Wilson Hwang
I had to hear Wilson Hwang's talk.
He stood on stage in his signature black leather jacket, that distinctive charisma in his voice. He scanned the audience slowly, then spoke with calm certainty.
"Moore's Law… is no longer valid."
A light stir ran through the hall. Everyone who had come to hear Wilson Hwang live already knew it deep down, but no one had dared say it out loud.
Moore's Law said the number of transistors on a semiconductor doubled every two years. Double every two years meant four times in four, eight times in six… 1,024 times in twenty. Semiconductors had been developing in earnest for about fifty years, so today's chips were tens of millions of times denser than those of half a century ago. That was why a brand-new computer felt outdated after only a few years. The speed of progress had been that brutal.
And now the chairman of the world's top semiconductor group was declaring the law finished.
Wilson Hwang smiled and pointed to the screen behind him. Blue light flared, and a massive image unfurled: a semiconductor structure rising layer upon layer. Across it, clear letters read: 5-story mixed-use villa-type HBM.
"The age of cramming more transistors onto a flat plane is over. Now we stack them—vertically, upward."
Every eye locked on the screen. It felt less like a technical explanation and more like the declaration of a new order. Semiconductors were leaving the aesthetics of the plane and entering the world of architecture—of stacking floors.
People held their breath. One sentence was etching itself into every mind in the room.
"After Moore's Law, a new rule begins."
Wilson Hwang opened his palm and added,
"The semiconductor market has moved beyond the race to shrink. The race to stack has begun. We have taken the first step. Look at that HBM! Doesn't it look just like a mixed-use villa? Villa-type semiconductors! This is the new standard."
Applause erupted. People looked at one another and nodded.
"That's Mvidia for you."
"A five-story mixed-use villa. I'd like to move in."
"From now on, the one who stacks owns semiconductors."
Excitement and respect mixed in the air that filled the seats.
I listened quietly. Honestly, it was impressive. I had the Nano World's help; they had done it with nothing but human strength. And his ability to pull the entire audience in was remarkable.
The next day, I was backstage.
The air behind the curtain was thick with its own special brand of tension. Light leaked through the black drapes. In one corner of the waiting area, the interpreter practiced pronunciation one last time. My presentation would be in Korean, but it would be delivered in real time into multiple languages. We had rehearsed with the staff so the handoff would be flawless.
I sat in my wheelchair, breathing slowly, wiping the sweat from my palms. My heart pounded like a drum; my throat was bone-dry.
When had I ever given a talk like this? Even in my freshman year of college I had never been the one presenting for group projects. Middle school? High school?
Thump-thump.
I could hear my own heartbeat.
"Ready?"
A staff member approached. I gave a small nod.
The side door right next to the stage.
"Go ahead."
I gripped the wheelchair handles. The wheels rolled forward.
The soft scrape of the small metal casters against the floor sounded unnaturally loud. In that instant, thousands of eyes locked onto me at once. A silence so complete it seemed to swallow even breathing. Not a single person in the audience whispered.
Under the dazzling lights, every ounce of attention focused on one small figure sitting in a wheelchair. Their eyes shone with curiosity, questions, and expectation.
The host's voice rolled out across the hall.
"The person we introduce now is the one who will open a new chapter in next-generation memory technology."
I stopped at center stage.
Right. What was a presentation, really? I hadn't come to be funny. I hadn't come to show myself off. I had come to introduce one thing.
"Hello. I'm Kim Jiho of JH Research, from Korea."
On my cue, the giant screen behind me lit up with a blue cubic structure.
"The Blue Tower. I present to you the 20-layer HBM."
A collective intake of breath. I could feel thousands of pupils widen at once.