Chapter 50

But what should she do next?

According to the plan, she should advance into the electronics industry. Catherine had even organized a team of technical workers to research the most important thing—the CPU.

However, this plan had not made much progress. Although Catherine understood the structure of the CPU, the process of miniaturizing it was quite challenging. Fortunately, Catherine knew a lot about this field.

Making a CPU, in fact, was not that difficult, even in this era.

Of course, if one were to talk about "process technology," there was no way to compare.

But the simplest CPU, if one wanted to make it, was not that difficult.

It's worth noting that in the future, many American computer enthusiasts have made their own CPUs, although they were crude, they worked quite well.

The hardest part was miniaturization.

Once this problem was solved, Catherine's GameTV could launch a standalone console version.

Catherine ordered a batch of micro transistors from Fairchild Semiconductor and then handed them over to the technicians for research and assembly. Finally, she managed to create her first CPU, and by then, it was already mid-November.

This was a very crude CPU made up of 2250 transistors, but it looked decent from the outside.

Undoubtedly, this was the world's first micro CPU.

This CPU could process 4-bit data, perform 60,000 operations per second, with a clock speed of 0.74 MHz and an operating frequency of 108 kHz.

—In fact, the data of this CPU was almost identical to the first CPU in history. The only difference was probably the appearance.

In fact, the size of this CPU was as large as two playing cards laid flat.

It must be said that Moore's Law had some truth to it—of course, Moore himself was still at Fairchild Semiconductor and had not yet proposed this concept.

In the original timeline, Catherine always cared about the aesthetics of her products, and after coming to this world, she felt even more like a perfectionist.

A CPU could also become a cool and trendy fashion item.

Although Catherine wanted to say this, making a CPU fashionable... well, well.

She just tried to make this CPU look more sci-fi and aesthetically pleasing, which was essential.

Because her company's plan was taken by Bruce, Catherine came up with another company plan.

And the name of this company was—Intel.

In fact, Intel and Apple were complementary.

Catherine's ultimate goal was to separate the gaming function of GameTV, and Intel could provide sufficient support for her future Apple company.

With the CPU, it meant that the market was fully open to her.

At least in Catherine's view, IBM seemed much easier to deal with than the arms dealers.

Incidentally, Catherine restructured her company.

The Ark Group was the core of Catherine's company, and for this, she even acquired a small bank on the verge of bankruptcy.

—At this time, small banks were struggling, and it was a turning point for the American banking industry.

Due to the existence of the antitrust law, competing companies were not allowed to acquire such banks, so these banks had no choice but to go bankrupt. When they learned that Catherine wanted to acquire the bank, the original shareholders almost gave it away.

After handling all the business, the core of Catherine's company was finally established.

When dealing with such matters, Catherine often liked to prepare everything in advance. This way, things would naturally fall into place, and there would be no need for reorganization or division, saving a lot of time.

Under the Ark Group were several wholly-owned subsidiaries.

Intel, the most recently established, focused on semiconductors—more specifically, various computer devices.

Then there was Apple. Catherine positioned Apple as entertainment and fashion. The company's main business was televisions, gaming devices, and computers. GameTV was Apple's first product.

Following that was "Blizzard Entertainment," which was originally the toy company "Hogwarts Magic Factory"—now a department under it, mainly focusing on the Magic Chess series. However, Catherine repositioned it as a game company, not just for tabletop games but also for electronic games in the future. She even entrusted the arcade version of GameTV to this company.

Catherine's naming might not have been very technical, but these names reflected her expectations for her company.

The company's total assets were now around ten million. Most of the profits came from the Hogwarts Magic Factory under Blizzard Entertainment. However, these profits had reached their peak and could no longer bring Catherine more wealth, so she had to look into other areas.

The patent for the micro CPU belonged to Catherine. With this, the appearance of personal computers was just a matter of months.

Although it was called a micro CPU patent, it actually consisted of 48 patents. Just like the integrated circuit patent.

Although it was generally called an integrated circuit, when broken down, Catherine owned 75 patents in this area, all of which were types of integrated circuits. These patents effectively blocked the patent paths of Texas Instruments and Fairchild Semiconductor.

For this reason, Catherine increased her investment in Intel, hoping to catch up with the Seattle World's Fair in April next year.

Unlike other industries, in the electronics industry, Catherine did not value monopolies, as monopolies in this field could only stifle the diversity of the electronics industry and even delay the emergence of personal computers.

Moreover, in the computer industry, monopolies and closed systems were fundamentally wrong approaches.

Apple in the 1980s declined due to its closed standards, and it was only when Jobs returned to Apple that the company's decline was reversed.

Therefore, what Catherine was thinking about was setting a standard, a computer standard!

With a standard, any company's products would have to follow her rules, which was what Catherine wanted.

There's a saying: third-rate companies make products, second-rate companies make brands, and first-rate companies make standards.

Catherine wanted Intel to become a first-rate company.

...

"This book is just a Hollywood adaptation; I can't even finish one chapter."

Oh, you still have the patience to read one chapter. Can you find 20% of the differences?