The Prodigy's Arrival
New Experience. There, standing before him, was the real Lisa Su—twenty years younger than the youngest version Yoo Jae-won remembered. Twenty years younger meant that in his memories, recognition of her had only begun to build around 2017, when she unveiled the Zen series. The unfamiliarity mixed with a strange sense of familiarity, creating an odd feeling.
“Hello! I’m Lisa Su!”
Yet even this twenty-years-younger Lisa Su possessed the same personality—proactive and brimming with energy. It was clear that not just anyone could smile so brightly and greet someone in such an awkward situation.
“Ah, yes. Hello.”
“Boss, is it true that this woman received an invitation from you?” the guard, who had been standing stiffly beside her, asked cautiously. Though his words were polite, his posture suggested he was ready to drag Lisa Su away the moment Yoo Jae-won denied it.
“Of course! Look here.” Before Yoo Jae-won could speak, Lisa Su waved the paper in her hand. When he took it, he saw it was a printed copy of the email he had sent her. In particular, the section where he had suggested they meet to discuss her thesis in depth if she was interested had been underlined in pen, with stars drawn beside it.
“Yes, that’s correct.”
Once Yoo Jae-won nodded, the guard bowed his head and quietly withdrew.
“Please, come in.”
Yoo Jae-won led Lisa Su into the house without hesitation. Once again, she stepped inside without the slightest pause. A short while later, the two of them sat on the living room sofa with a table between them. Yoo Jae-won had prepared coffee and snacks for her, which disappeared as quickly as a cat’s eyeblink. She had eaten them with obvious relish—not because Yoo Jae-won had served them, but because she had been genuinely hungry. Noticing this, he brought out bread and fruit as well, which likewise vanished in no time.
There was a reason for her appetite. Her journey to reach him had been something out of a road movie.
“I checked your email on Christmas Day. I was at my house in Boston, and at first I thought it was a prank. The chairman of ID Group personally emailing someone all the way across the country? But when I saw my master’s thesis mentioned and confirmed the server address the email came from, I realized it was real. From that moment on, all I could think about was getting to Silicon Valley immediately. So I left right away.”
That was where the trouble began. Naturally, she looked for the most convenient means of travel—a plane. But from there, Lisa Su’s journey went awry. It was the end of the year, Christmas season, so flights were scarce. Even then, demand was so high that securing a direct route proved impossible. She had no choice but to take connecting flights. Once the first button was fastened wrong, everything that followed went wrong as well. The airport she chose for her layover was paralyzed by heavy snow, forcing her plane to land at a nearby airport instead. From there, she had to take a bus to the next city, but the snow delayed everything endlessly.
While Yoo Jae-won had been at home slaughtering players in Doom 2 and rapidly climbing the rankings, Lisa Su had been sleeping in the cold wind. Only today had the weather cleared enough for her to finally reach San Francisco. Even after arriving in the city, her troubles continued until she reached his house. After all, the guard had been standing watch with both eyes open, yet the person who had pounded on the front door was none other than Lisa Su.
The sheer determination to cross the United States during Christmas season after receiving a single email was undeniable. At the same time, a question occurred to Yoo Jae-won.
“By the way, after receiving the email, did you ever consider replying?”
“Ah!”
At his question, Lisa Su, who had been enthusiastically recounting her story, could only respond with “Ah!” She had simply moved without thinking. If she had only sent a reply, Yoo Jae-won would not have grown tired of waiting, and she herself would not have wasted so much time on connecting flights. He could have set a more relaxed meeting date and even arranged a first-class ticket. Because she had rushed off without a word, only she had suffered.
“When I saw the IP address registered to ID Group, I couldn’t think of anything else. I just knew I had to get there as fast as possible. Since it was Christmas, I figured tickets would already be scarce, so I decided to move first. Besides, this much trouble is nothing compared to my graduate school days.”
Lisa Su laughed heartily. On the surface, she seemed a bit scatterbrained, but her abilities were extraordinary. She was only twenty-four years old, yet she had graduated early from MIT and even earned a doctorate in electronic engineering. Proven talent like hers had attracted many offers. Lisa Su herself had been debating whether to pursue a postdoctoral position and prepare for a professorship or to join a company or research institute. Receiving Yoo Jae-won’s email had resolved that dilemma completely.
“As you saw in the email, ID Group has decided to enter semiconductor manufacturing technology and low-power CPU design.”
When Yoo Jae-won began speaking, Lisa Su leaned in attentively. He was not revealing any great secret—only recounting, in softened form, the same conversation he had once had with his thesis advisor: that none of the current products satisfied him, so he intended to build what he wanted himself.
“Wow! So ID Group really didn’t reach its current position by accident.”
Lisa Su applauded his ambition. Speaking of such things in front of a semiconductor expert made Yoo Jae-won feel deeply embarrassed inside. The woman sitting before him was someone who had professionally delved into every stage of the process—from extracting silicon from sand to create wafers, through lithography, to producing semiconductors. He felt as though he were writing characters in front of Confucius himself. Still, he could not disappoint someone who had come all this way, and once he had begun executing his master plan, he was already riding the tiger’s back. Until the age of artificial intelligence—his true domain—arrived, all he could do was follow the master plan and run with all his might.
“It was while reviewing materials that your paper caught my eye, Dr. Lisa Su.”
The thesis Lisa Su had written—on adding a thin insulating film between the wafer substrate surface and the underlying layer to improve semiconductor device performance—formed the foundation of the copper interconnect process. More precisely, while it could certainly be applied to copper interconnects, it was a technology that would bring significant improvement to the entire semiconductor field. Previously, no one had considered applying an insulating film before entering the production process with a wafer. The insulating film she proposed directly contributed to improved performance and yield. It also made it easier to safely separate completed semiconductors from the wafer and served as a barrier against contaminants, greatly aiding overall yield improvement. It offered some assistance in the copper interconnect process as well. Taken together, combining the insulating film technology with copper interconnect technology would enable the mass production of powerful yet inexpensive semiconductors at high yield.
Yoo Jae-won then briefly outlined the copper interconnect technology. Current Intel and AMD processes were aluminum-based, using vacuum deposition. After drawing the semiconductor circuits, wiring was performed by placing a pure aluminum block into a vacuum chamber, heating it under reduced pressure until the aluminum turned into particles that filled the chamber. The wafer with the drawn circuits was then inserted, allowing aluminum particles to adhere and deposit onto the circuits.
Copper interconnects, by contrast, used copper ions. Achieving precise wiring diagrams with copper ions without damaging the semiconductor circuits required an extremely delicate process—far beyond the copper sulfate plating experiments done in high school science class.
“I’ve thought of a few methods.”
Since things had come to this, Yoo Jae-won laid out several key points of the copper interconnect process stored in his Memory Palace. Though there were many omissions and simplifications, Lisa Su understood his explanation completely after hearing it only once.
“You really are a genius!”
Her firm misunderstanding took root. On the other hand, Yoo Jae-won found Lisa Su impressive. How solid must her fundamentals be to grasp his clumsy explanation in a single hearing?
“Haha, that’s not it. It’s merely a shift in perspective.”
Yoo Jae-won quickly changed the subject, steering away from unnecessary talk and moving straight to the core to avoid the attention focused on him.
“The real issue will be commercial viability. Even when news breaks that a laboratory has created something incredible, most of the time it never reaches the market because it lacks commercial potential.”
Yoo Jae-won agreed with Lisa Su’s assessment one hundred percent. At the same time, he felt pleased. This was the moment her qualities as both a researcher and a capable manager shone through. When she had become president of AMD, the company’s first golden age—the Athlon era—was long over, and its follow-up products had failed miserably. The codename had been Bulldozer, wasn’t it? The name carried the will to crush their rival Intel, but the finished product had not lived up to that ambition. Its disastrous performance had crushed AMD instead of Intel. In that situation, Lisa Su had taken the helm and driven remarkable change. She had refined the pitiful Bulldozer somewhat and released a new product called the APU that combined it with VGA functionality. Not only that, she had succeeded in supplying game console manufacturers. AMD chips went into both PlayStation and Xbox, and those consoles became massive hits, reviving AMD’s dried-up revenue stream. Furthermore, Lisa Su had used the hard-earned money frugally—preparing the Zen architecture. AMD’s second golden age, the Zen series, had been born that way.
“It feels too early to say this, but since we’ve come this far, I’ll make a formal offer. Come work as the head of ID Technology’s semiconductor division! Let’s work together.”
Yoo Jae-won’s hunger for talent was boundless. Lisa Su, who had come all the way to his house after a single email, had already proven her exceptional abilities. There was no reason to delay. Lisa Su, too, seemed surprised by the offer. While traveling to his house, she had imagined at most that ID Group would commission her for a research project—or, if she were extremely lucky, that they might conduct joint research together. She had never expected him to offer her the position of head of the semiconductor division outright.
“Huh? You’re deciding this quickly? Besides, I may have a doctorate, but I haven’t produced any results yet, and I’m only twenty-four…”
“Then shall we not do it?”
“Ah, no! That’s not what I meant…”
As expected, asking directly brought out her true feelings. The fact that she had rushed here with nothing but an email was possible because of her solid confidence in her own abilities. With anyone else, they would have demanded a resume and taken time to observe her, but to Yoo Jae-won, Lisa Su was already a proven talent. No further verification was needed.
Having received her acceptance, Yoo Jae-won immediately contacted Allen and instructed him to prepare an employment contract for Lisa Su. Naturally, the compensation was at the highest level in the industry.
The next day, Lisa Su came to ID Technology’s headquarters and formally signed the employment contract. With that, ID Technology’s semiconductor division was officially launched. The office was impressive as well. The building he had purchased earlier was already fully occupied, so he had bought an entirely new, brand-new building. Originally prepared for startups under ID Technology that had no office space at all, the semiconductor division became its first tenant. This caused a small amount of confusion, as the companies originally scheduled to move in had to be postponed briefly.
The semiconductor division building would naturally include a small-scale semiconductor manufacturing facility for prototyping. The problem was that semiconductor manufacturing used extremely harsh chemicals, requiring special facilities and permits. Originally, Yoo Jae-won had planned to handle pilot production through Stanford University, but with Lisa Su’s recruitment, he changed direction to building their own facility.
The solution for the suddenly displaced startups was simple: buy another building. After all, real estate prices in Silicon Valley would continue to rise, so he purchased it with the mindset of planting another money tree. Though the new division had launched, no lavish celebration was held. The launch ceremony consisted simply of lunch with Lisa Su and the few other experts who had accepted recruitment offers. Some who had expected a glamorous party seemed slightly disappointed. Moreover, when Lisa Su—a young woman with no career experience—was appointed head of the semiconductor division over themselves, who had accumulated shining resumes, a few who had nearly accepted the recruitment offer ended up declining.
Yoo Jae-won paid it no mind. In a private company, results were what ultimately mattered. Once the semiconductor division produced significant achievements, the surroundings would move on their own. With the perfect formula already in his mind and Lisa Su—the finest expert to execute it—by his side, the preparations to continue ID Group’s tradition of achieving massive success from the very start were now complete for the semiconductor division as well.
While ID Group prepared new ventures, its owner, Yoo Jae-won, could not afford to rest comfortably. His leisurely work-from-home days at the house had ended. He had to throw himself into completing the semiconductor division building. To keep his bold promise to AMD’s President Jerry for the summer, there was no time to relax. Moreover, this task was no ordinary affair. If it were merely furnishing a normal office, he could have simply commissioned a furniture specialist. But installing facilities capable of actually manufacturing semiconductors and obtaining permits that met safety standards was an entirely different matter.
Thanks to this, Yoo Jae-won commuted to the semiconductor division building every day and only returned after dinner. He had been so busy that he only realized the new year had passed when he saw the evening news on January 1st. The days of enjoying Doom 2 throughout the Christmas holiday now felt like a distant memory, buried under work. Naturally, as the workload increased, large sums of money flowed out of ID Group’s cash accounts in chunks. Purchasing the building alone had been a massive expense, and since they were dealing with cutting-edge semiconductor technology, the related equipment commanded astronomical prices. Even used equipment fetched prices comparable to new. Lisa Su had even suggested buying new equipment if possible. However, some new items required over a month for delivery. Since Yoo Jae-won needed everything immediately, used equipment that could be delivered within days after the transaction suited him better.
While the semiconductor business was being established, the site for the LCD factory in Daejeon was also decided, and the transaction was completed immediately. That day, Yoo Jae-won’s face briefly appeared on television once again. It was only natural—ID Group’s investment in the LCD factory was a trillion-won project. Though the scale of business could stretch or shrink like taffy, when the unit itself changed, it had to be acknowledged. The MOU signing between Hwang Jae-hong, representing Yoo Jae-won, and the mayor of Daejeon was significant enough to make national news. But this was merely a taste. There was far bigger news than the Daejeon LCD factory.
It was the inauguration of Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States of America.