History Is Made at Night
CES was the world's largest technology exhibition.
It was a festival, and a show as well.
A single booth cost tens of thousands of dollars a day, yet companies from every corner of the globe willingly paid the price to parade their pride.
For tech firms it was a stage for boasting and publicity; for businessmen it was a place to arrive with open wallets in search of products worth investing in.
Some came simply to learn. Others came to catch the latest trends and spark inspiration.
And I was standing on the stage right now for a presentation.
A low, resonant hum.
The audience sat in silence, yet the space itself seemed to make a sound.
Focused eyes. Many had already peeled their backs from their chairs and leaned forward.
The sensation of thousands of people hanging on my every word.
It was heavier than I expected.
Their gazes felt as if they possessed gravity of their own.
During practice I had spoken into empty air; now it felt as though I were delivering the talk underwater, every syllable dragging with weight.
I had never experienced anything like this.
But freezing was not an option.
I opened my mouth and pressed on.
"Ladies and gentlemen. Of all the countless animals on Earth, why did humans come to rule the planet?"
I had been given one hour.
Honestly, it was far too long for a pure semiconductor lecture.
So I bought time and, since this was also a showcase, began with something that wouldn't be too dense.
"Fire, the wheel, the gun, fertilizer, the nuclear bomb… Humanity has produced a great many inventions. Yet among them all, I would choose this as humanity's greatest legacy."
Hello. Konnichiwa. Hello. Ni hao. As-salamu alaykum.
"Humanity's greatest legacy. That is writing itself. Would you agree?"
A few might disagree, but the general mood was one of mild acceptance.
"Some monkeys use tools and even develop techniques the way humans do. Yet a monkey's technology never advances across generations. Why? Because they have no writing with which to pass knowledge to those who come after them."
I advanced the slide.
After writing itself came the various materials on which writing had been recorded.
"Humans wrote on cave walls, stone tablets, tortoise shells, bamboo strips, and paper. Those tools were the vessels that held writing. Without recording knowledge somewhere and handing it down, the great civilizations we know today would never have existed."
As I spoke a little longer, my frozen mouth began to loosen.
I raised a hand and tried a gesture.
"Where do modern people write today? On smartphones, laptops, tablets. And the thing that actually records the writing inside those devices is this."
Snap.
I flicked my fingers for the sound.
Timed perfectly, the screen behind me zoomed into a smartphone and revealed the semiconductor within.
A deep, rhythmic thump of background music.
Electrons pulsed there in orderly waves, as if keeping time.
"The place where modern people record their writing. The vessel that holds today's letters and knowledge is the semiconductor."
My body finally loosened. I surveyed the audience naturally.
Most of them looked as though they agreed.
"There are three major laws connected with semiconductors. The first is Moore's Law."
Moore's Law, announced in 1965, stated that semiconductor performance would double every two years.
For decades chips had grown smaller and denser, keeping the law alive.
"The second law is Hwang's Law."
Surprisingly, this one had been formulated by a Korean.
It was not optimism about semiconductors; it was a law declaring that Moore's Law had limits.
Chips could not shrink forever; eventually they would hit a wall. That was Hwang's Law.
Moore's Law and Hwang's Law had collided, and for a time Hwang's Law seemed to be winning.
Infinite miniaturization was impossible, after all.
Yet there was a way to make both laws true at once.
"The third law is Hwang's Law (2)."
Hwang's Law (2) came from the same surname but a different man—the American CEO of Mvidia.
It declared a doubling every year.
From now on semiconductors would advance twofold each year. If infinite shrinkage was impossible, then simply stack them upward.
"Now I will show you what our lab has made. First, the layer count is twenty."
"Whoa!"
The audience stirred with excitement as the real explanation began.
"Well, if you heard Wilson Hwang's presentation yesterday you already know… the tallest stack so far is still only five layers."
Ours was twenty.
"Layers aren't everything."
I revealed the measurement data produced by Korean research institutes.
I walked them through speed and capacity one by one.
"In the end, capacity and speed are the heart of a semiconductor. Compared with last year's top-of-the-line product, the performance is roughly two thousand times higher."
Hwang's Law (2) predicted a twofold gain per year.
What I had just unveiled was about two thousand times last year's best.
"One year, two thousand times instead of two—surprising, right?"
A light joke at just the right moment.
"Oh dear. I've broken Hwang's Law (2). What should I do? It appeared in the world far too early. Let's see… according to the law… should I put it away and bring it back in ten years?"
The relaxed tone made the time fly.
Then came the Q&A.
Many hands shot up.
In the very front row sat Wilson Hwang.
"Ah… one of the people who created Hwang's Law (2) is in the audience. Wilson. I'm sorry. I broke your law."
"Haha. It's fine. Violations like this are always welcome."
"Thank you."
"First, I applaud the effort your company put into stacking twenty layers. But I see something even more astonishing. Looking at that speed and the way heat is controlled, it appears a new material has been used. What is the new material in your company's HBM?"
Typical Wilson Hwang.
He must have analyzed the DRAM he bought last time from every angle.
Both the DRAM and the HBM had been carefully coated in the Nano World with a certain substance.
A material that let electrons flow far better than ordinary metals.
"We call this material Mithril."
"Mithril?"
"Yes. Mithril is a substance that allows electrons to travel quickly and with very little resistance."
A wave of murmurs.
Stacking twenty layers was already shocking; hearing that the material itself was different made the audience realize the game had grown even larger.
I added an explanation.
"Simply stacking twenty layers would never have produced two-thousand-fold performance. Stacking creates all sorts of problems."
I had studied hard in the short time available.
"Especially heat. If you raised performance by stacking twenty layers the ordinary way, it would be nearly impossible to keep the temperature from climbing into the hundreds of degrees."
A semiconductor works by moving and storing electrons.
More precisely, electrons leap like sparks and pile up.
It was movement like lightning.
Inside a chip, countless tiny bolts of lightning were striking.
Nano-scale lightning bolts flashing hundreds of millions of times per second—that was a semiconductor.
That was why electronics generated heat.
With a planar chip you could cool the top and bottom faces, but the core of a three-dimensional stack had no such escape.
That was why high-rise semiconductors were so difficult.
But.
"My semiconductor doesn't generate heat."
Confusion flickered across the faces in the crowd.
First interest, then astonishment… and now, listening to the exchange with Wilson Hwang, they seemed to understand exactly what they were seeing and hearing.
A hand shot up.
I gestured for Wilson's microphone to be passed over.
The man with the intense gaze was the one who had once sent me a private jet.
Aaron Merks.
"A truly impressive presentation."
"Thank you."
"From a technical standpoint I can see that the product you showed is the best currently in existence. And since this is the second product after the DRAM, I will acknowledge that JH possesses the world's finest technology."
Wow. Sitting right next to Wilson Hwang, he had just declared JH the world leader.
Classic no-holds-barred alpha male.
I had the sudden feeling that exact sentence would become tomorrow's headline.
"What I want to know is JH's direction. What dream does JH hold?"
True to the Mars man.
The man who built rockets because he could not bear for humanity to remain on a single planet, dreaming of a multi-planetary species.
A brief silence.
Even I found myself re-examining my own dreams.
I don't have a dream, do I?
I just receive items and auction them off.
This whole stage is just promotion for the auction.
I couldn't say that out loud.
For a moment Illys's face flashed through my mind.
"Nano…"
Yet receiving Aaron's question made me realize clearly what I needed to do.
"Becoming friends with the Nano World. That is the path JH must walk."
Clap, clap, clap.
A few people rose to their feet and began to applaud.
After the presentation, in the rest area behind the stage.
I slumped back in the wheelchair, drained.
My phantom legs trembled.
"Manager Jang. I was shaking a lot, wasn't I?"
"Not at all. Didn't you see the standing ovation at the end?"
"Well, there was that."
Americans really did give big reactions.
"Director. Articles are already circulating."
"Really?"
Manager Jang showed me several news pieces.
A quick glance at the comments showed they were going wild as well.
National pride was surging everywhere, and people were calling for the bartender.
While I was resting for a moment, a staff member called me.
"Director. Someone is here to see you."
"Who is it? Can't you just take a business card so I can rest a bit?"
My indifferent reply made the employee's eyes waver.
"Ah… yes. I'll do that. But the visitor is… Mr. Joke."
"What?"
Joke?
I straightened the body that had been slumped sideways in the wheelchair.
That Joke from FaceRank?
Joke was the CEO of the world's largest social-network company.
In college he had built a site that rated students' faces and scored them—FaceRank.
A simple site where you chose "pretty / not pretty" for face photos.
Who was the prettiest person?
As a man, who could claim they wouldn't click?
Women were the same.
Who was the handsomest man?
How many people could coolly scroll past without pressing the button?
Of course the early FaceRank had been shut down for unauthorized photo use, but after a few tweaks it evolved into the world's biggest SNS.
"Show him in."
Joke ranked among the world's richest men with one hand, right alongside Aaron Merks.
I couldn't turn away a man like that just because I wanted a break.
Joke entered.
Short, lightly curly light-brown hair, pale skin that seemed to gleam coldly, a rounded nose bridge.
His face still carried a boyish innocence, yet his eyes held a strangely hazy light that seemed to pierce straight through people.
Joke twisted his thin lips into a smile and held out his hand.
"Nice to meet you. I'm Joke."
I hesitated a moment, then took his hand.
The handshake was gentle yet firm.
"Pleasure to meet you. I'm Kim Jiho."
Joke pulled over a chair and sat so our eyes were level with me in the wheelchair.
"The presentation was truly impressive. You went beyond a simple technical explanation and showed the world's highest 20-layer HBM."
"Thank you."
"I saw it less as a semiconductor lecture and more as a moment of historical interpretation. You made me feel that 'technology is humanity's footprint.' Honestly, today's talk was both a technical presentation and a historic event."
Whoa, a historic event?
Americans didn't just react big; their expressions were oversized too.
"I mean it. This isn't just a tech presentation. It's a historic event."
"Haha."
"What are you doing this evening?"
"Ah… nothing particular."
Joke's smile widened further.
"Then the four of us should grab a beer. Aaron, Wilson, me, and you, Jiho."
The way he listed the names was so natural it felt as if we had all drunk together just yesterday.
Hold on.
If Aaron Merks, Wilson Hwang, and Joke gathered in one place, couldn't they simply buy a mid-sized country?
"All right."
Joke narrowed his eyes and asked,
"You know, right?"
"Know what?"
"That history is made at night."