高通

我走进去，第一眼看到的就是那个带着配重的大吊车臂底部。我当时就想，为什么这里会有奥运举重用的杠铃片？然后我恍然大悟，哦，因为我们有一台专业的吊臂摄像机。这太棒了。

I walked in, and the first thing I saw was the bottom of the big crane boom arm with the weights. And I was like, why are there Olympic weights here? And then I was like, oh, because we've got a professional boom arm camera. This is amazing.

好的，我们开始吧。欢迎来到《Acquired》第11季第6集，这是一档讲述伟大科技公司及其背后故事与成功秘诀的播客。我是本·吉尔伯特，西雅图Pioneer Square Labs联合创始人兼董事总经理，同时也是我们风投基金PSL Ventures的负责人。

Alright. Let's do it. Welcome to season 11 episode six of Acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert, and I'm the cofounder and managing director of Seattle based Pioneer Square Labs and our venture fund, PSL Ventures.

我是大卫·罗森塔尔，旧金山的天使投资人。

And I'm David Rosenthal, and I am an angel investor based in San Francisco.

我们是本期主持人。宇宙有个奇妙特性：电磁信号可以广播并以光速穿越太空，在宇宙另一端被接收。这些频率中极小部分能被人类感知为可见光，另一些如X射线或伽马射线则可能有害。但频谱中有个区域既无法被人类察觉，在适度剂量下也无害，却能用来在我们周围持续传输隐形信息而不被察觉。

And we are your hosts. There's an incredible property of the universe where electromagnetic signals can be broadcast and travel through space at the speed of light to be received at a different point in the universe. Now a tiny fraction of these frequencies are detectable by humans as visible light. Some other frequencies can be dangerous, like X rays or gamma rays. But there's a part of the spectrum that is not detectable to humans, and it's not harmful at modest doses that can be used to transmit invisible messages all around us all the time without any of us having any idea.

就像魔法一样。

It's like magic.

没错。这些频率已被使用一个多世纪来播放电视广播、总统讲话和重要新闻。过去五十年里，人类变得异常聪明，将部分射频频谱用于手机通讯。但从单频段传输短消息，发展到如今数十亿人每分钟并发传输兆字节甚至千兆字节数据，这段历程充满了惊人的发明与创业故事。而让这套令人费解的系统得以实现的，当属高通公司。

Yeah. These frequencies have been used for over a century to broadcast TV and radio shows, presidential messages, and important news updates. In the last fifty years, humans have gotten tremendously clever at purposing some parts of the RF spectrum to be used for cell phones. But the story of how we got from transmitting small messages on a single frequency to having billions of humans concurrently sending megabytes or gigabytes of data every minute has been an incredible journey of invention and entrepreneurship. The company most responsible for the mind bending system of how it all works today is Qualcomm.

今天我们将深入探讨他们的完整历史与战略，解析他们的产品——对外行来说，这些产品简直就像层层叠加的魔术戏法。

And today, we will dive into their entire history and strategy, unpacking their products, which to the outside observer is really best described as a layered series of magic tricks.

给听众们剧透一下：这个故事精彩绝伦。在做调研之前我完全没想到会是这样。

And spoiler alert for listeners, this is an incredible story. I had no idea before we dove into the research.

我也是。

Not me neither.

这个故事堪比英伟达、台积电的传奇。里面有太多你根本编不出来的情节，太不可思议了。

This one is up there with, like, NVIDIA, TSMC. There is so much stuff you can't make up in this story. It's incredible.

全球最大、最卓越的芯片公司。

Largest, fabulous chip company in the world.

确实如此。

Indeed.

听众朋友们，还有件事要告诉大家，这期节目在里斯本现场录制实在太有趣了。衷心感谢Solana基金会在Solana Breakpoint活动中对我们的款待。许多老听众会从Slack上认识Austin Fadera，他盛情邀请了我们，在那里录制确实特别有意思——尤其是考虑到Solana与高通的渊源，毕竟Anatoli曾在那里工作超过十年。确实如此。

The other thing we should say listeners, this was super fun to do this episode live in person in Lisbon. Our huge thank you to the Solana Foundation for hosting us at Solana Breakpoint. Many longtime listeners will know Austin Fadera from the Slack. He was kind enough to invite us and, and really fun to do it there, especially given Solana's tie to Qualcomm with Anatoli having worked there for over ten years. Indeed.

好了听众们，现在隆重向大家介绍我们节目激动人心的新合作伙伴WorkOS。

Okay, listeners. Now is a great time to tell you about a new friend of the show we are very excited about, WorkOS.

没错。WorkOS是企业级平台，OpenAI、Cursor、Perplexity、Vercel、Plaid等数百家成功企业都在使用。

Yes. WorkOS is the enterprise ready platform used by OpenAI, Cursor, Perplexity, Vercel, Plaid, and literally hundreds of other winning companies.

这些公司都用WorkOS做什么呢？想象你是一家快速发展的初创公司，产品已契合市场需求，开始收到大型企业客户的合作意向。但紧接着他们发来了安全调查问卷...

So what are all these companies using WorkOS for? Imagine you're a fast growing startup. You've got product market fit, and you're getting inbound interest from big enterprise customers. Very exciting. But then they send you their security questionnaire.

对，整整47页的要求像字母汤一样晦涩：你们支持SAML 2.0吗？能对接我们的Okta吗？有SCIM用户配置功能吗（s-c-i-m）？

Yep. And it's like 47 pages long with requirements that kinda sound like alphabet soup. Do you support SAML two dot o? Can you integrate with our Okta? Do you have SCIM provisioning, s c I m?

还有RBAC（r-b-a-c）呢？你可能完全不懂这些缩写是什么意思，更别说如何实现了。

What about RBAC, r b a c? And you're thinking, I have no idea what these acronyms even mean, let alone how to implement them.

关键在于，这些不是锦上添花的功能，而是交易门槛。没有单点登录（SSO）、没有用户配置（SCIM）、没有权限管控（RBAC）、没有审计日志，你根本不可能达成企业级合作。

So here's the thing. These are not nice to haves. These are deal blockers. Without SSO, without SCIM, without RBAC, without audit logs, you simply cannot close enterprise deals, period.

但这些功能并不会提升核心产品竞争力。用我们Acquired节目最爱的比喻来说：它们不会让啤酒更好喝。如果你开发的是设计工具，花半年时间构建SAML认证系统并不会增强设计工具的功能。

But none of these features make your core product better. They don't make your beer taste better, to use our favorite analogy here on Acquired. So if you're building like a design tool, spending six months building SAML authentication doesn't make your design tool more powerful.

这就是WorkOS的用武之地。他们为企业功能打造了类似Stripe的服务。WorkOS将企业认证需求转化为即插即用的API，尽可能抽象掉不必要的复杂性。

So this is where WorkOS comes in. They've built Stripe for enterprise features. WorkOS turns enterprise authentication requirements into drop in APIs, abstracting away as much unnecessary complexity as possible.

因此，你的团队无需花费数月研读SAML规范，几分钟就能实现企业单点登录。WorkOS处理用户配置、权限、审计日志等企业IT所需的所有复选框项目。

So instead of your team spending months reading SAML specs, you can implement enterprise SSO in minutes. WorkOS handles user provisioning, permissions, audit logs, all the checkbox items that enterprise IT requires.

所以无论你是种子阶段公司想赢得首个企业客户，还是已具规模正全球扩张，WorkOS都是最快实现企业级准备的途径。

So whether you are a seed stage company trying to land your first enterprise customer or already big in expanding globally, WorkOS is the fastest path to becoming enterprise ready.

只需访问workos.com或直接给他们Slack支持发消息。那里有真正的工程师快速解答问题。联系时记得说是Ben和David推荐来的。

Just visit workos.com or just message their Slack support. They have real engineers in there who answer questions fast. And when you get in touch, just tell them Ben and David sent you.

节目结束后，来Slack和我们聊聊。那里有13000位聪明友善的人。访问Acquire.fm/slack。闲话少叙，现在进入我们在Solana Breakpoint的现场节目。听众须知，这不是投资建议。

After this episode, come talk about it with us. There are 13,000 other smart, kind people in the Slack. Acquire.fm/slack. Without further ado, onto our live show at Solana Breakpoint. And listeners know that this is not investment advice.

David和我可能持有讨论公司的投资，本节目仅作信息与娱乐用途。

David and I may have investments in the companies we discuss, and this show is for information and entertainment purposes only.

不过在进入正题前，我们要特别感谢Dave Mock，他写了精彩的《高通方程式》这本书。虽然不为人熟知，但这是高通的决定性历史，堪称我们节目有史以来参考过的最佳商业史著作之一。

Well, one small bit of ado before we dive into the story is we owe a big thank you to Dave Mock, the author of the incredible book, The Qualcomm Equation Yep. Which is not well known but is the definitive history of Qualcomm and ranks right up there with among the best business books that business histories that we've used as a source on acquired throughout the whole history of the show.

这本书太棒了。而且它甚至不是正规出版社出版的，而是由行业协会发行。没有有声书，也没有Kindle版。

It's awesome. And the book's not even really published under like a real publisher. It's published under an industry association. There's no audio book. There's no Kindle.

你必须读实体书。

You have to read the physical book.

是啊，简直不可思议。前几天我还给Ben发了张封底照片——当然Ben也注意到了——上面有段推荐语，我现在读一下：‘Dave Mock揭示了迄今最重要的商业故事，关于高通如何统治无线行业的未述传奇。’

Yeah. It's you it's amazing. I literally, the other day, texted Ben a photo that I noticed on the back cover, and Ben, of course, had seen it too, of one of the blurbs. I'm gonna I'm gonna read it here now. It says, Dave Mock helps uncover the single most important business story, single most important business story that has yet to be told, how Qualcomm came to rule the wireless industry.

不妨将其视为有史以来最具创新性和杠杆效应的商业模式的食谱书。本，你觉得这话像谁说的？

Think of it as a recipe book for one of the most innovative and leveraged business models of all time. Whose words does that sound like, Ben?

听起来像是一位深谙商业模式的思想家，真正懂得资本主义精髓之人。

That sounds like a deep business model thinker and someone who truly appreciates capitalism at its finest.

而且愿意去发掘稀世珍宝，沙砾中的钻石。这句话正是Benchmark Capital的比尔·格利为这本几乎无人知晓的书所写所说。我打赌这期节目后它会名声大噪。

And is willing to go find the rare gems, the rare diamonds in the rough. That is written and said by none other than Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital for this almost unknown book. I bet it's gonna be a lot more known after this episode.

没错。

Yep.

戴夫在书开头引用了埃德温·兰德的话——直到最近通过Founders播客的大卫·森纳我才知道这位宝丽来创始人、乔布斯偶像的人物。书中开篇引述他的名言：'真正的创造力体现在一系列相互关联的行为中，前一个行为决定后一个行为，并暗示着再下一个行为'。于是高通故事的第一幕，我们从1930年代中期欧洲的奥地利开始，那时希特勒、墨索里尼和纳粹正崛起于二战前夜。

Well, Dave starts the book and it's such an apt place to start with a quote by Edwin Land who I was not familiar with until recently when David Senner on the Founders podcast familiarized us with Edwin. Edwin was the founder of Polaroid and Steve Jobs' hero. And he had this quote that Dave starts this book with, true creativity is characterized by a succession of acts each dependent on the one before and suggesting the one after. So with act one of the Qualcomm story, we start in Austria, here in Europe, in the mid nineteen thirties, in the pre World War two era as Hitler and Mussolini and the Nazis were rising to power.

这是我们第一次能说'在欧洲这里，未被收购'吗？

We start is this the first time we've been able to say here in Europe, unacquired?

确实是第一次。如果你了解高通历史，可能会以为三十年代中期出生的联合创始人欧文·雅各布斯是欧洲人——其实他出生在马萨诸塞州的新贝德福德。

It is the first time. It is the first time. And we start you might think if you know anything about Qualcomm history, you think in mid thirties, you're like, oh, I didn't know Erwin Jacobs, co founder and CEO of Qualcomm, was born in Europe. He was not. He was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

我们要从一位截然不同的人物开始：史上最著名的好莱坞女演员之一，海蒂·拉玛。

We start with somebody very different. We start with one of the most famous film actresses, Hollywood film actresses of all time, a woman named Hetty Lamar. And

插句题外话，现代通信技术的故事竟从海蒂·拉玛讲起实在太酷了。记得我们联系NZS Capital时问'有没有关于高通的资料'，他们回复说'去读读海蒂·拉玛吧'，我当时还想：这是在逗我吗？

Side note, the fact that we're starting with Hetty Lamar on the story of how modern telecommunications came to be is so cool. I remember we reached out to the NZS Capital folks and said, hey, you know, do you have any great resources on on Qualcomm? And they sent back this excerpt of you should go read up on Hetty Lamar. I was like, are they trolling me right now?

是啊，这故事编都编不出来。正因如此我们才做这档节目。海蒂是个不可思议的人——举世闻名的天才演员，美得惊心动魄。

Yeah. You cannot make this stuff up. This is like why we do the show. So Hetty was an incredible, she was like just an incredible human being. She was world famous, incredibly talented actress, incredibly beautiful.

后来她被宣传为‘世界上最美丽的女人’，这是米高梅公司包装她的方式之一。她同时也是个天才，主演过《参孙与大利拉》、《神魂颠倒》、《自由女孩》等多部影片。但直到她去世，大多数人——包括她三十年代中期在奥地利时的丈夫——都不知道她拥有惊人的观察力，且远比周围人聪明得多。这位丈夫弗里德里希·曼德尔是个十足的反派人物，作为纳粹军火商，他当时非常富有。

She would later be billed like the way MGM, she was one of the MGM starlets marketed her, was as the most beautiful woman in the world. She was also a genius. So she starred in Samson and Delilah, Ecstasy, ZigFree Girl, many many more. But what most people at the time, even up until her death, did not know and certainly her husband at the time in Austria in the mid nineteen thirties did not know was that she had incredible powers of observation and was way more intelligent than anybody else around her. So this said husband, that's quite the character, his name was Friedrich Mandel and he was not a good dude.

他靠纳粹军火交易暴富，这可能是他结识海蒂并结婚的原因。但弗里德里希及其商业伙伴（包括希特勒和墨索里尼）不知道的是，海蒂其实是犹太人。弗里德里希常带着这位美艳全球的影星妻子参加纳粹军事会议，而海蒂暗中记下所有情报。随着局势恶化，1937年她伪装成女仆逃往巴黎。

He was a Nazi arms dealer, which made him very rich at the time, which is probably how he met Hetty and they became married. Hetty though, probably unknown to Friedrich and certainly unknown to his business associates including Hitler and Mussolini, Hetty was Jewish. And so Friedrich would bring his beautiful, you know, film actress, world renowned film actress bride to his business meetings, you know, with the Nazi military powers. And Hetty was listening in to everything that was going on. And as the situation deteriorated, in 1937 she disguised herself as one of her maids and escaped to Paris.

从巴黎辗转抵达美国后，她定居好莱坞度过余生。赴美时她已掌握大量纳粹战争机器的核心机密。身为犹太裔，她对纳粹和前任丈夫深恶痛绝，决心贡献力量。她特别清楚纳粹正在使用无线电干扰技术，能有效干扰空投反潜鱼雷的制导系统。

And then from Paris, made it to The US, went to Hollywood and lived in Hollywood for most of the rest of her life. When she came to The US though, she knew like an incredible amount of inside information about the Nazi war effort. And she was incredibly motivated because obviously she's from a Jewish family. She hated the Nazis, hated her former husband, and wanted to contribute. And specifically, she knew that the Nazis were working on and using to great effect a radio jamming technique for radio guided torpedoes that would be dropped from airplanes to attack Nazi submarines.

三十年代人类就能用无线电制导鱼雷实在惊人。鱼雷推进后通过无线电频率控制方向舵转向——真没想到这种技术当时已经存在。

It's also pretty amazing at this point in history that we had as humans the capability to radio guide the torpedo. And the torpedo, you know, gets propelled and you could guide it using radio frequencies deciding which way to turn the rudder. Did not know that technology existed in the thirties.

这太疯狂了！数字计算机尚未问世，数字化概念也不存在（稍后会讲到），这些全是用调频无线电实现的。海蒂想为盟军作战贡献力量。

This is crazy. The computer does the digital computer doesn't exist yet. The concept of digital doesn't exist yet because we're gonna get to that in a minute. This is all being done essentially with FM radios. And so Hetty wants to contribute to the Allied war effort.

你说用调频无线电？那确实容易被干扰。只要在92.3频段发射干扰信号，就能破坏他们的制导系统，导致武器无法命中目标。

And when you say with FM radios, therefore pretty easy to jam. If you know that someone's broadcasting on, you know, jamming 92.3 and you start another signal on 923, you disrupt their signal and they're not able to hit their target with

完全正确。于是海蒂与好莱坞新邻居——电影配乐作曲家乔治·安太尔（请耐心听，我保证这与高通有关）合作。凭借她的创意和他的音乐造诣，他们研发出一项获得保密专利的技术，该专利在美国军方保密数十年。

the weapon. Totally. So Hetty teams up with her new Hollywood neighbor, a composer, a music composer named George Anthea, bear with us here, I promise this is getting to Qualcomm, who is a film music composer. And they, with her ideas and his musical prowess, they develop a concept that they patent and they get issued a confidential patent that stays confidential for decades in the US military.

顺便说，我记得这个直到1981年才解密，在政府档案里尘封了这么久。

By the way, this I believe did not become declassified until 1981. That's how long it was buried inside the US government.

专利于1942年获批，意味着这段历史被隐藏了四十年。他们开创了用跳频技术对抗无线电干扰的新方法，这项描述后来成为扩频技术的起源。如果你熟悉无线通信或高通，听到‘扩频’应该会觉得很耳熟。

Was issued in 1942. So four decades that this history was completely unknown. They developed a novel technique to defeat RF frequency jamming by using frequency hopping. And what they describe becomes the origin of something called spread spectrum technology. So if you're familiar at all with like the wireless world or Qualcomm, right, and you hear spread spectrum and you're like, oh, that sounds familiar.

扩频技术最早的技术文档描述和专利，正是由这两位看似最不可能的发明者完成的。

Spread spectrum technology, this is the first, like, description of it in a technical document and a patent by these two, like, incredibly unlikely people. And and

其基本含义是通过多种频谱传输单一信息的方式。不同于仅固定在JAMA 92.3电台频率（这里以广播为例），他们构思出跳频技术——在信息传递过程中不断切换频率，以规避信号干扰并转移到新频段。

And what it basically means is any way that you're gonna transmit a single message across a variety of spectrums. So rather than just on I'm gonna keep saying it in JAMA 92.3 to ground it in radio. But instead of just broadcasting on one frequency, they came up with this idea to hop, so change frequencies during different points in the message to evade anyone trying to jam the signal and move to a different frequency.

她与音乐作曲家合作的原因是：实现该技术需要两端（在无线场景下则是通信链路所有终端）保持极度精准的时间同步，确保所有终端知晓何时跳频。每秒需跳跃数十甚至数百次频率，这能有效抗干扰，对密码学和加密信息传输至关重要。

And the reason she teamed up with a music composer for this is that the way you make this happen is you have incredibly precise time syncing on, in this case, the two ends, but in, you know, wireless use case, all endpoints of the communication channel, incredibly precise syncing so that all endpoints know when to hop frequencies. And you're hopping frequencies like dozens or hundreds of times a second. And this can defeat jamming. This is great for cryptography. This is great for sending coded messages.

事实证明（双关语警告），当时无人预见到这竟也是最高效利用无线电带宽的方式。

It turns out, this was not on anybody's radar, pun intended at the time, it turns out that this is also the most efficient way to use radio bandwidth.

暂且搁置这点，先回到飞机与鱼雷通信的具体应用：我们需要在极精确时刻切换频率，确保发射端调整频率时，接收端能同步开始接收新频段信号。当时数字概念尚未诞生，戴维，我们如何实现鱼雷与飞机间的跳频同步？

But let's put a pin in that for now. And first, let's go back to this specific use case of we want to transmit from a plane to a torpedo we want to be hopping around to different frequencies and we want to change that at incredibly precise time so the transmitter knows to change the frequency and the receiver knows to start receiving the message on a new frequency at very specific points in time. The concept of digital hasn't been invented. So how are we doing this, David? What's the technology used to synchronize a schedule of frequency hops between a torpedo and an airplane?

若这是好莱坞电影（比如赫蒂的片子），单凭这项技术就足以击败纳粹。但现实中，当时没有数字计算技术，美军和盟军在二战期间竭尽全力仍无法实现——想想在电子管和模拟计算时代完成这种操作的难度。

So here's where if this were a, you know, Hollywood movie like one of Hetty's films, this single handedly would have, like, defeated the Nazis and all that. Unfortunately, the reality is there there was no digital computing at the time. It it wasn't possible. The US military tried very hard during World War two to make this happen, the whole allied military. They couldn't make it work because, like, think about what you're trying to do here and that vacuum tubes and analog computing was what was happening at the time.

真要实现，恐怕得给鱼雷装台钢琴从天上扔下来，这显然不现实。

You would literally need to put, like, any ack on a torpedo and drop it from the sky to make this happen. That was not feasible.

但值得分享他们的原型方案：赫蒂在1940年代初用两卷相同自动钢琴谱，将每个音符对应新频率，接收端与发射端使用相同谱卷同步播放，从而精准定位跳频时机。

It's worth sharing how their prototype worked, though. So the way that they prototyped this, Hetty, in the, you know, '19 early nineteen forties, is they took two player piano scrolls that had the same basically song, and they mapped each note to a new frequency, and they put the same player piano in the receiver, the same scroll on the receiver that they did on the transmitter, and they pressed play on the player piano song at the same time. So it would know exactly where to hop around.

没错，专利技术描述中有88次跳频——正好对应钢琴88个琴键。所以严格来说，不是扔电子设备，而是扔钢琴。

Yeah. So there were 88 frequency hops in their technical description of the patent because there are 88 keys on a piano. So I guess literally, you wouldn't be dropping any act from this guy. You'd be dropping a piano from this guy.

像卡通片似的。

Like a cartoon.

完全同意。这就是扩频技术荒诞又真实的起源（第一幕）。第二幕仍发生在二战时期，时间稍晚几年。

Totally. Okay. So that is the origin that you can't make this up origin of spread spectrum technology. That's act one. Act two, we stay in World War two around the same time, but a few years later.

有一位年轻的MIT博士毕业生，奥古斯特，曾为盟军从事著名的密码破译工作，先后任职于贝尔实验室和新泽西普林斯顿高等研究院——在那里他与爱因斯坦、冯·诺依曼、图灵等科学巨匠共事。不过今天的主角并非这三位，通过排除法你大概能猜到我们要说的是谁。没错，正是信息论之父、计算机科学奠基人之一、数字信息与比特概念的发明者——克劳德·香农。要知道，在香农之前，'数字'这个概念根本不存在。

There is a young PhD grad, PhD grad from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the August, who was working on code breaking for the allies, very famously, at Bell Labs and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he intersects with luminaries like Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, Alan Turing. We're not talking about any of those three folks, but by process of elimination you can probably figure out who we are talking about. We're talking about Claude Shannon, literally the father of information theory, one of the fathers of computer science, and the inventor of the concept of digital, of the bit of information. Like Yep. Digital did not exist before Claude.

战争期间的所有研究最终凝结成他战后发表的杰作《通信的数学理论》，这部著作定义了信息论这个新兴领域，为世界开启了数字时代。再加上我们提到的爱因斯坦、图灵、冯·诺依曼等人的贡献，以及贝尔实验室战时在晶体管方面的研究，这些力量共同铸就了人类与数字计算机的现代纪元。这就是我们第二幕要讲述的好莱坞式故事——克劳德·香农与计算机的诞生。

So, during the war, all of this effort culminates in what he publishes after the war, his his masterwork, A Mathematical Theory of Communication, which defines a bit the newer field of information theory, ushers in the digital era for the world. And combined with the other folks who we mentioned, Einstein, Turing, Von Neumann, and Bell Labs work on transistors during the war. These things come together to create the modern era of humans and the digital computer. Yep. So we've described like the Hollywood part, we described here in Act two, Claude Shannon, you know, birth of computing, all that.

或许值得简单聊聊信息论。大卫，我能占用片刻吗？当然可以。好的。这些年来我无数次听人提及信息论或通信理论，每次打开维基百科页面，看到的总是满屏复杂数学公式。

And it's worth maybe sharing a little bit about information theory. Can I take a second, David? Of course. Alright. So I had heard people reference information theory or communications theory dozens of times over the years and every time I'd open up the Wikipedia page I'd see a bunch of complicated math equations.

人们总会迫切想知道：这到底是什么？为何被奉若圭臬？对我而言，有个关键概念堪称顿悟时刻——所有通信都必须通过介质进行，不存在凭空传递的信息。你需要某种方式将信号从发射端传至接收端。

And you quickly want to get to like, okay, but what is this? Why does everyone keep describing it as so important? And I think there's a pretty key concept that was an moment for me, which is all communication must happen through a medium. There's no communication that happens through nothing. You need some way to send signal from a transmitter to a receiver.

而通信方式、信号传输手段都受制于介质特性。具体来说，以对话为例：在嘈杂房间里，你的信息必须足够响亮且清晰；而在安静环境中，即便带着杂音的讯息也能被理解。

And the method by which you communicate, the way you send signal is governed by that medium. And so what I mean by that in particular is, let's use the analogy of conversation. Well, if you're in a super loud room then your message needs to be very loud and it needs to sort of not be very noisy. It needs to be a super clear, super loud message because there's a lot of noise in the room. Whereas if you're in a really quiet room then you can have kind of a message with a bunch of noise.

想象某人说话时伴有静电杂音——只要传播介质（即所处空间）本身噪声不大，这完全可行。这就引出了信息噪声与介质噪声之间的精妙关系。香农的伟大发现在于：任何介质都存在理论上的信号传输极限，该极限取决于介质噪声水平与你所描述信息本身的熵（随机性）。举例来说，大卫，如果你有99%把握我要说的是'我刚吃完早餐'...

Imagine someone talking but there's a bunch of static. Well, that's okay if the medium itself, the room that you're communicating in, doesn't have a lot of noise itself. So there's this relationship between how noisy a message can be and how noisy the medium is that you're communicating in. And I think this is this very interesting moment where what he basically deduces is there is a theoretical limit to the amount of signal that you can pump through any given medium based on how noisy the medium is and based on the level of entropy or randomness in the message that you're trying to describe. So when I say entropy, let's say David you're expecting me, you think there's a 99% chance that I'm coming to deliver the message to you, I just had breakfast.

那么在极度嘈杂的环境中，即便我抱病咳嗽着说出这句话，由于符合预期，低质量介质也能完成任务。但若你完全无法预知我要说的是'你被解雇了'还是'我刚吃早餐'，就必须在信号增益良好的纯净环境中传递。这就是信息论的精髓，更准确说是香农-哈特利定理所揭示的信号与介质关系。

Well, if it's in a really loud noisy room and you know there's I'm sick and I'm coughing and I tell you I just had breakfast, because you were expecting it, it's fine if it's in a really garbage medium. But if you have no idea what I'm about to tell you and it could be everything from like, hey, you're fired to I just had breakfast and you have no idea, like we need to have that in a pretty pristine environment with really nice volume or gain on the signal. So that's sort of the high level concept of of information theory and more specifically of Shannon Hartley theorem describing the the relationship between signal and medium.

确实精彩绝伦。现在故事来到第三幕，这部分会稍长些，因为要涉及高通公司。主角是1933年出生于美国马萨诸塞州新贝德福德的欧文·马克·雅各布斯。这个渔港小镇在捕鲸时代曾是全美最富庶的城镇——记得我们在讲标准石油还是伯克希尔时讨论过？

Yeah. Super super cool stuff. The so where this all comes together in act three of our story here, is gonna be a little longer because we're getting getting to Qualcomm as part of this, is one Erwin Mark Jacobs, an American born in 1933, as we mentioned in scrappy New Bedford, Massachusetts, which used to be, I believe, the wealthiest town in America during the whaling era as we discussed during Standard Oil or Berkshire? I think was Berkshire actually that

应该是伯克希尔。因为在雅各布斯出生前45年，哈撒韦制造公司就创立于

we said. It was Berkshire because forty five years before Irwin Jacobs was born in New Bedford, the Hathaway manufacturing company was started

新贝德福德。

In New Bedford.

在新贝德福德。没错。在它与伯克希尔合并之前，当然，还有与马芬合并之前。

In New Bedford. Right. Before it merged with Berkshire and before, of

即便到了1933年，新贝德福德也已不再是捕鲸时代的那个新贝德福德了，可以这么说。所以欧文的故事堪称美国传奇。他成长于一个非常普通的中产家庭，位于这个国家一个极其艰苦的地区。他父亲做过各种工作，最终经营起一家名为波士顿牛肉市场的本地餐馆。

course, with Muffin. Even by 1933, New Bedford was not the New Bedford of the whaling era, shall we say. So Irwin is a pretty amazing American story. So he grew up in like a very middle class family in this super scrappy area of the country. His dad worked a bunch of jobs and ended up running a local restaurant called the Boston Beef Market.

欧文在求学期间就展现出数学和科学方面的非凡天赋。他本想攻读数学和科学，如果当时知道大学里有工程学的话，可能也会选择这个方向。但他的高中辅导员 famously 告诉他，在新贝德福德学数学和科学没有前途。平心而论，这位辅导员可能没说错。不过欧文从小成绩优异，辅导员鼓励他去世界闻名的康奈尔酒店管理学院学习，掌握酒店管理知识后回来经营家族企业波士顿牛肉市场。

Erwin was highly gifted in math and sciences as a kid going through school. He wanted to study math and science and probably would have wanted to study engineering if he like knew it existed in college. But his high school guidance counselor famously told him that there's no future for math and science in New Bedford. Frankly, high school counselor was probably right. So Irwin though had very good grades growing up and the guidance counselor encouraged him to go to the world famous Cornell School of Hotel Management so that he could learn the hospitality management business and come back and work in the family business at the Boston Beef Market.

而他确实这么做了。

Which he did.

他确实去了酒店管理学院。

He did go to the School of Hotel Management.

这位工程天才，这位无线通信行业的美国先驱，这就是他最初选择的大学专业。

Engineering genius, this like American pioneer of the wireless and communications industry, that is what he went to college for.

后来他将自己在康奈尔酒店管理学院度过的一年半时光——之后转学电子工程——归功于这段经历真正帮助他先创立了第一家公司Linkabit，随后又创立高通，让他从学术界转型成为企业家。因为在那里他实际学习了商业会计等实用知识，发现自己其实也很热爱这些。是的，很神奇。在康奈尔酒店管理学院待了一年半后，他了解到工程学，恍然大悟：原来可以用数学和科学赚钱。

And he would later credit the year and a half that he spent in the hotel management school at Cornell before transferring to electrical engineering. He would credit that year and a half with really helping him start first Linkabit, his first company, and then Qualcomm get out of academia and become an entrepreneur because he actually learned about like business accounting, the real world applications and found that like he kinda loved that too. Yep. Amazing. So after a year and a half at Cornell in the hotel management school, he learns about engineering and was like, oh, you can make money with math and science.

这实际上是有市场需求的。也许在新贝德福德没有，但在美国其他地方有。于是他去找康奈尔的院长，讲述了这个故事：'您好先生，我是康奈尔大二学生，想从酒店管理转到电子工程。'院长说：'哦，你是说电子工程酒店管理吧？'他回答：'不不不。'

This is actually, like, in demand. Maybe not in New Bedford, but, like, in the rest of America. And so he goes to the dean at Cornell, he tells this story and he's like, hello sir, you know, a sophomore at Cornell, I would like to transfer from hotel management to electrical engineering. And the dean's like, oh, you mean electrical engineering hotel management, right? He's like, no no no no.

是从酒店管理转到电子工程。

Hotel management to electrical engineering.

不，我要选更难的那个。

No, I wanna do the harder one.

想挑战高难度的事。当院长从震惊中缓过神来后，他勉强同意了，或许带着一丝怀疑——这其实多虑了，因为欧文又是这一连串天才中的一位。他毕业后前往麻省理工学院攻读博士，仅用三年时间就在1959年取得学位，师从不是别人，正是克劳德·香农本人。这位信息论之父战后回到麻省理工担任教授。

Wanna do the hard stuff. After the dean like picked himself up off the floor, he allowed it perhaps with a degree of suspicion, which he need not have because Irwin is another genius in this string of geniuses. He would graduate, go on to a PhD at MIT, which he would do in three years, finishing his PhD in 1959, studying under none other than Claude Shannon himself, who after the war returned to MIT as a professor.

这相当有趣，因为我们讲述的许多故事里都蕴含着巨大的天才成分。毫无疑问，英伟达的欧文·雅各布斯和詹森，还有史蒂夫·乔特，都是天才。而且

It's pretty interesting because so many of these stories that we tell, there's an an immense element of genius. No question. Erwin Jacobs and Jensen at at NVIDIA and Steve Jot, geniuses. And also

当时全球可能只有十个人懂这些，而他们就在其中。

There were like 10 people in the world who knew this stuff at the time, and they were among them.

没错。这也是历史上最不可思议的天时地利，因为若非师从信息论之父克劳德·香农，欧文·雅各布斯几乎不可能成为后来的那个他。

Yeah. It's it's the most incredible right place, right time in history too because without studying under Claude Shannon, the father of information theory, it's extremely unlikely that Erwin Jacobs becomes the Erwin Jacobs he went on be.

完全同意。而如果没有后来海蒂·拉玛的启发，他也不会创立高通。太神奇了。年轻的欧文才华横溢，博士毕业仅三年——要知道他五年前还是康奈尔大学酒店管理专业的学生——香农和麻省理工就立即邀请他留校任教。他随后在麻省理工执教五年，期间开设了全球首个面向学生的数字通信课程。

Totally. And then without what's gonna come later in Hedi Lamar that he would start Qualcomm. Amazing. So Irwin is so young Irwin is so talented that after he finishes his PhD in three years, you know, mere like five years removed from being a hotel management major at Cornell, at Shannon and MIT, ask him to stay on as a professor at MIT, like immediately, which he does. He spends five years teaching at MIT during which he teaches the first course like for students on digital communications in the world, I believe.

知道吗？就是把香农的理论传授给麻省理工培养的实践型工程师。没错。他和一位同事合写了数字通信领域的第一本教材，至今仍在使用。这本书堪称数字通信理论的圣经，现在亚马逊还能买到，由欧文提炼香农的思想编写而成。他在那里教了五年书。

You know, like applying Shannon's theories to like disseminate amongst like practical engineers being trained at MIT Yep. He and a fellow faculty member write the first textbook on digital communications that is still in use today. You can still, like, it is the bible of digital communication theory. You can buy it on Amazon and written by Irwin distilled, you know, from the father himself of Claude Shannon. He spends five years teaching there.

1964年，他休假前往加州喷气推进实验室（JPL），参与美国太空计划及卫星通信研究。在那里，他命运般地结识了另一位麻省理工电子工程博士——意大利犹太移民安德烈亚（后改名为安德鲁）·维特比。维特比1957年获得麻省理工博士学位，当时也在JPL工作。两人迅速成为挚友，以至于欧文结束休假回到波士顿后不久，接到康奈尔前教授的电话，邀请他去新成立的加州大学圣地亚哥分校（UCSD）组建电子工程系。欧文想：'我很喜欢加州，还有好友安迪在那儿，干吧。'

And then in 1964, he takes a sabbatical and heads out to California to do a sabbatical at JPL, at Jet Propulsion Labs working on The US space program and communications with satellites in The US space program at the time where he intersects, fatefully, with another recent MIT electrical engineering PhD grad, one Andrea or Andrew, as it was anglicized, Viterbi, a Jewish immigrant from Italy who got his PhD from MIT in 1957 who was working at JPL and they become fast friends. So fast friends in fact that when Irwin returns back to Boston, to cold, snowy, bleak Boston near his upbringing in Massachusetts, after his sabbatical. Irwin then gets a call shortly thereafter from one of his former professors at Cornell that a new engineering school in San Diego is being started, the new UC San Diego and there's an opportunity for Jacobs to come out and start the electrical engineering department at UCSD. He says, well, I really enjoyed my time out there. I've got this great friend Andy, let's do it.

换作是我也会做同样决定。于是欧文举家迁往UCSD，期间继续为国防承包商、JPL和美国太空计划做咨询工作。

I would make the exact same decision. So he and his family, Erwin and his family move out to UCSD and while he's out there he continues doing his contracting work with defense contractors and JPL and The US space program.

当时这算是单打独斗。他用自己的名义接项目，还没正式成立公司，就是欧文个人接些咨询活。

And this is sort of one off at the at this time. I mean, he's like doing it under his own name. He hasn't really started a company. It's just kind of Erwin doing contracting.

确实。作为UCSD首位电子工程教授，这是他的全职工作。但由于毗邻JPL和NASA，他每周会花一天左右时间参与太空项目。有次他和安迪以及一位UCLA教授在NASA艾姆斯研究中心做咨询，返程飞机上大家都在感叹...

Totally. He is like the first, you know, like electrical engineering professor at UCSD, that's his full time job. But because he's in such close proximity to everything going on at JPL and NASA and the like, he's doing that on kinda like one day a week ish. And one day he and Andy and another professor from UCLA are up at NASA Ames in Mountain View doing consulting work up there. They're flying back and they're all kind of lamenting.

他们觉得，我们正在做的事情超级酷。我们赚的钱比学术界多，我们在帮助国家，我们参与了太空竞赛。但要平衡我们做的所有这些事确实有点难。

They're like, this is super cool that we're doing this. We're making more money than academia. We're helping our country. We're participating in the space race. But it's kinda hard to like balance all this stuff that we're doing.

是啊。

Yep.

然后他们就说，嘿，如果我们三个联手成立一家公司，类似空壳公司，专门管理我们接的这些咨询工作。这样效率可能会更高。也许可以雇个助手帮忙之类的。大家都觉得这主意不错。但你知道，我们并没打算真的搞成一家正经公司。

And they're like, hey, what if the three of us band together and form a company, kind of a shell company to just kinda manage this consulting work that we all get. We could probably get some efficiencies here. Maybe hire an assistant, help us out, that kind of stuff. And they say, great. You know, we don't intend this to be a real company.

我们不打算生产任何产品。这纯粹是为了管理咨询业务。他们半开玩笑地决定给公司起名叫Linkabit（连接一点），这名字带着浓浓的学术圈幽默感。

We're not gonna make any products or anything. This is just to manage our consulting. They sort of tongue in cheek decide to call it Linkabit. Like linking a bit. A very like academic joke.

那么Linkabit的第三位合伙人是谁呢？这位最终和其他两位不太合拍，很快就退出了。他叫Len Kleinrock。我第一次读到这个名字时——

So who is this third partner in Linkabit? He ends up not kinda gelling with the other two, leaves shortly thereafter. His name is Len Kleinrock. And I read that the first time and I was like,

我听过这名字。很熟悉。我猜99%的听众不知道这人，但像你我这样整天研究科技史和互联网历史的人，这名字应该如雷贯耳。

heard that name before. Know that name. And I'm gonna guess 99 of listeners haven't heard that name, but if you're you and me and all we do all day is study tech history and, you know, the history of the Internet, that name should ring a bell.

没错。刚开始读这段历史时，你会觉得Len真倒霉，错过了创立高通的机会。但其实他混得不错，因为他没创立高通，却创立了互联网。

Yeah. Well, you know, at first you you read this history and you're like, man, bummer for Len. He missed out on founding Qualcomm. Well, he actually ended up okay because instead of founding Qualcomm, he founded the Internet.

他确实是DARPA的ARPANET项目的奠基工程师。

He literally was the the I think the founding engineer on the ARPANET project at DARPA.

参与ARPANET项目的人很多。

Many people were involved in the ARPANET project.

我猜是ARPA的人？不确定...

Guess that ARPA? I don't know if

那是ARPANET。没错。ARPANET作为DARPANET的前身，也就是互联网的雏形。莱恩和他当时在UCLA带的一名研究生，大约在次年，就在这一切发生的同时，他们发送了ARPANET上的第一条信息。这是有史以来第一次从UCLA到斯坦福的互联网传输。

it's ARPANET. Yeah. ARPANET, which was the precursor to DARPANET, is the precursor to the Internet. Len and one of his grad students at the time at UCLA, like the next year, right after this has happened, this is all happening at the same time, they sent the first message on ARPANET ever. Like the first internet transmission ever from UCLA to Stanford.

他是互联网核心奠基人之一。所以他后来发展得不错。可能没赚到大钱，但必将名留青史。相当了不起。安迪和欧文则主要继续在圣地亚哥从事NASA和美国海军的国防项目——毕竟圣地亚哥本就是美国海军重镇。

He's one of the core founding fathers of the Internet. So he ended up doing okay. He probably didn't make as much money, but he will be remembered in history. Pretty amazing. So Andy and Irwin, they're mostly continuing to work on NASA and Navy defense projects in San Diego because of course San Diego is a US Navy town.

他们大部分工作集中在卫星通信领域。如果你了解卫星通信就会知道，可用带宽极其有限。是的。通信效率必须做到极致。

And most of what they're doing is working on satellite communications. If you know anything about satellite communications, the bandwidth that you have available to you is very very narrow. Yep. And you need to be very very efficient with your communications.

这至今仍是事实。当今新兴太空经济领域的公司面临的工程挑战完全不同。因为如果给卫星上传代码后发现漏洞，要获取足够带宽并确保在正确时间窗口更新卫星代码，成本极高且耗时漫长。所以运作方式仍类似三四十年前的计算机。

And that's still true to this day. I mean, any company in the sort of emerging space economy, it's a totally different engineering problem than you're used to today. Because if you ship code up to your satellite and you find a bug, it's like very expensive and very slow to go get enough bandwidth and actually make sure you have the right time window to update the code on the satellite. So it still kinda works the way that computers worked thirty, forty years ago.

没错。所以他们...其实不是他们主动选择。这是军方项目。他们接触到这个后，不断尝试寻找利用有限带宽通道的最佳方案，最终采用了二战时期海蒂·拉玛和乔治·安泰尔发明的老式扩频专利技术。

Yep. And so they're you know, it wasn't them. Like, this was the military. There was this. They got exposed to this trolling around to find the most best, most efficient ways to use this narrow bandwidth channel that they had, and what ends up getting used but this old patented spread spectrum technology from the World War two era invented by Hetty Lamar and George Anthea.

时机也恰到好处，因为Linkabit公司正值八十年代初，那时...

And the the timing is perfect because the time of Linkabit is this sort of early eighties where that

七十年代初。

Early seventies.

哦，Linkabit是七十年代初。对，六十年代末。Linkopit成立多年之前

Oh, Linkabit's early seventies. Yeah. Late sixties. Years of Linkopit before

噢，没错。Linkopit历史很长。你们可能不知道，我有些精彩爆料等着呢。好吧。

Oh, Oh, yeah. There's a long Linkopit is involved. Oh, we you might not know. I've got some good surprises for you. Alright.

他们在这方面越做越深。欧文在这个过程中发挥着他酒店管理般的才能，发现自己乐在其中。他们开始吸纳更多教授和研究生加入Linkabit，逐步组建起这个国家最顶尖的信息论与无线信号专家军团。

They start doing more and more of this. Erwin's exercising the like hotel management sort of side of his brain as he's doing this. He finds that he really enjoys it. They start bringing on other professors, other grad students into Linkabit to kind of build this sort of like army of the greatest, you know, information theory and wireless signal minds in the country.

全部用于国防合同。

All for defense contracting.

几乎全部用于——我不认为他们那时在做任何商业项目。我想全是NASA和国防相关。没错。而且几乎全是卫星工作。于是他们开始组建公司，最终在1971年，事情多到欧文决定从UCSD休个长假，花一整年时间专门整顿公司。

Almost all for I don't think they were doing any commercial work at this point. I think it was all NASA and defense. Yep. And almost all satellite work. And so they start building the company that eventually in 1971, there's so much going on, Irwin decides he's gonna take a sabbatical from UCSD and spend a year just organizing the company.

结果他再也没回过UCSD，因为在那一年里他们萌生了一个想法——我相信就是这一年，或许之前就有过隐约的念头——你看，他们拥有这么多技术人才，为这些主要由国防承包商竞标的项目提供咨询。他们突然意识到：等等，那些家伙赚走了大头，真正有技术含量的工程活都是我们在干。如果我们自己投标一些合同呢？作为以产品为导向的服务承包商，我们很可能比当项目分包顾问赚得多得多。

He ends up never going back to UCSD ever because during that year they get the idea, I believe it was during this year, maybe they'd start to have inklings of it before that, you know, it's really nice they've got all this technical talent, they're consulting on these projects that defense contractors mostly are the prime bidders for. They're like, wait a minute, Those guys are making all the money. We're doing all the differentiated, like, engineering work here. What if we started bidding on some contracts ourselves? We would probably make a lot more money as like a kind of product, like, you know, contract focused services company ourselves rather than just as a sub consultant on these projects.

这个经验至今仍适用。如果能直接成为政府大合同的主承包商，经济收益远胜过给那些主承包商当分包。

If and that that lesson persists to this day too. If you can pull off being the prime contractor to the government on a a big contract. That's the economics are much better than if you get subcontracted by one of the primes.

天啊，要是能当主承包商...我是说当年的那些主承包商——那些国防领域的巨头，如今依然是行业霸主。雷神、洛克希德、波音这些公司，那可都是躺着赚钱的。当然他们开始尝试了，但主承包商之所以能延续至今是有原因的。Linkabit那时不可能——也永远不会成为主承包商。

So well, and, like, oh, man. If you can be a prime I mean, the primes back then, primes being prime defense contractors, they're still the primes today. Like, that is a gravy train that, like, yeah, Raytheon, Lockheed, Boeing, all these companies. So, of course, they start doing this, but, like, there's a reason the primes then are the primes now. Linkabit is not gonna be a prime then or ever.

所以他们必须转型到商业领域。这简直像是为《Acquired》节目量身定制的历史桥段。你知道Linkabit接的第一个商业合同项目是什么吗？要是知道答案你绝对会惊呼不可能。

So they need to if they're gonna do this, they need to move into the commercial sphere. So this is this is like one of these just like so good. It's it's like history was like made for acquired. Do you know what the first like contract project that Linkabit did was if you knew, you would just be like No.

我不知道。

I don't.

我现在笑得合不拢嘴。他们听说——记住他们的专长是卫星通信——听说有个地区零售商...

Smiling so wide right now. So they hear about remember, their expertise is in satellite communications. They hear about a regional retailer.

等等，他们不会做了沃尔玛的卫星网络吧？

No. Did they do Walmart's satellite network?

没错！就是他们做的。什么？没错。他们听说这个中西部地区零售商有个古怪的创始人，不知为何想每天从总部向所有门店广播自己的讲话。

Yeah. They did. What? Yeah. They hear about this eccentric founder of this small Midwestern regional retailer that for some reason wants to beam himself talking every day to all of you know, from HQ to all of the local stores of this local outlets of this retailer.

Linkovitz的第一个项目是为沃尔玛打造卫星通信系统。

Linkovitz's first project is doing the satellite communication system for Walmart.

太疯狂了。听众们，没听过我们沃尔玛专题的人可能不知道，沃尔玛在很长一段时间里都是全球最具创新力的零售商——基本上直到亚马逊崛起为止。其中一个例证就是七十年代末到八十年代初，他们斥资数千万美元建立了私人卫星中继系统，因为当时互联网带宽根本无法满足他们的需求。

That's wild. Listeners, for anyone who didn't listen to our Walmart episode, Walmart was for a very long time the most innovative retailer on the planet. I mean, until Amazon, basically. And one of the illustrations of this is in the late seventies and then continuing into the early eighties when they actually lit it up, they invent they invested tens of millions of dollars into building a private satellite relay because the bandwidth available on the Internet was insufficient for them at the time.

那时候根本没有互联网，只有ARPANET。全靠电话线路支撑。

Oh, there wasn't. It was just the ARPAD. It was the line rack doing it.

公共广域网——或者说广域网的前身——根本不足以传输他们收集的门店数据。他们需要每日每周汇总经营数据，而且还有...

Phone lines. The the the public WAN effectively or precursor to WAN was insufficient to, you know, send the store data that they had actually been collecting and wanna tabulate their results on a daily or weekly basis, but also this like

没错。山姆还想通过卫星直播周六例会呢。精彩吧？等等——

Yeah. Sam wanted to broadcast out the, you know, the Saturday Yeah. Meetings. So great. Wait.

本期节目后面还会聊更多沃尔玛的故事。别换台，字面意思上的。

There's more Walmart to come a little later in the episode. Stay tuned. Literally.

天啊，你自己倒先笑场了。

God. You just crack yourself up.

我知道。这段估计正片里会剪掉。我们偶尔会收到《Acquired》的评论，说一个主播挺正常，另一个就像...

I know. It's this is fine. We'll probably cut this from the actual episode. We get occasionally, get these reviews for acquired or, like, comments that, like, one host is, like, really normal and the other host is just, like

被自己的笑话逗得前仰后合。

Laughs at his own jokes.

像个疯子。不过我觉得至少他们记住了...

Crazy person. And I'm like, well, you know, at least they remember

我们就是我们。什么都不会改变。七年过去了，我们依然如此。是的。

We are who we are. Nothing's changing. At seven years in, we're not. Yeah.

我向你保证这不是演戏。问我妻子就知道了。好的。接下来他们涉足的领域是因为他们进入了视频行业，他们现在与沃尔玛合作卫星视频业务，进行双向通信，他们为有线电视系统开发了付费电视的视频加扰系统。在Linkabit的多址接入有线系统解决方案出现之前，只要你稍微懂点技术或者会摆弄内六角扳手，就能免费收看HBO或任何早期的付费电视频道。

I promise you it's not an act. Ask my wife. Okay. So the next thing that they get into is because they're in they're in video, they're they're they're in satellite, they're in video now with Walmart and they're doing these two way communications, they build the video scrambling system for pay TV on cable systems. So it used to be before the Linkabit solution for multiple access cable systems, if you like were even mildly technical or could like play around with like a Allen wrench, you could get HBO or any of the early pay TV channels for free.

是的。那里的流行语是‘通过隐匿实现安全’。

Yeah. The the the catchphrase there is security by obscurity.

没错。他们只会

Yeah. They would just

试图，你知道，找一个消费者不太可能通过拆开机顶盒、移动某根线之类的方式发现的巧妙设计

try and, you know, find one clever thing that consumers weren't likely to figure out by unscrewing their box and, you know, moving one wire or something and

雅各布斯、维特比和Linkabit的所有智囊团，他们解决了这个问题。HBO采用了他们的方案，然后所有其他大型付费电视频道都跟进使用。

Jacobs and Viterbi and all the the brain trust at at Linkabit, they they solved that problem. And they HBO uses them and then all the other all the other big pay TV channels.

我觉得这就是HBO开场动画的灵感来源。

I think that's the inspiration behind the HBO opener by the way.

是的。那个加扰

Yes. The the scrambled

因为它就像在解扰，然后为你呈现内容

because it's like descrambling and now bringing you this

太棒了。这就是欧文和安迪的杰作。整个七十年代他们都在做这个。1980年，这家公司被一家东海岸的无线电技术公司Macom收购了，我记得是这么发音的。它原本叫Macom，后来经历了八十年代那种奇怪的品牌重塑。

So great. That's Irwin and Andy right there. So in 1980, they do this for the whole decade of the seventies. In 1980, the Linkabit, the company gets acquired by a East Coast radio technology company called Macom, I think is how it was pronounced. It used to be actually Macom and then it, you know, this like weird eighties branding stuff.

他们把品牌改成了m斜杠a横杠c o m，我想是微波通信的意思。总之，他们在1980年以2500万美元的价格卖掉了这个业务，这

They changed the brand to m slash a dash c o m, microwave communications, I think. Anyway, they sold the business for $25,000,000 in 1980, which

算是早期的漂亮胜利。

like Nice early win.

对一些前学者来说还不错。1980年的2500万美元，

Not bad for some former academics. $25,000,000 in 1980 dollars,

而且那时候他们已经有好多员工了。我记得有超过一千人。

like And and they had a lot of people at this point. I think there was, like, over a thousand employees.

在被收购前它就在往这个规模发展，但在被Matcom收购后的五年内确实增长到了那么大。最终大概有1500人吧。这真的是个超大的生意。你能想象吗，很多其他零售商开始用卫星网络，很多有线电视频道也想用这些技术。

It grew within it was on its way there, but then it grew over the next five years within Matcom to that big. So I don't think it was it grew to 1,500 people eventually. Like this is a big freaking business. Like you can imagine the things we're talking about like a lot of other retailers started using, you know, satellite networks. A lot of other cable TV, you know, channels wanted to use these.

他们还在开发其他产品。基本上他们犯了个大错——卖掉公司。要知道他们没听过《Acquired》播客，没学到那些经验教训。

And there were other products that they were building. Like this is a huge, like basically, they made a big mistake selling the company. You know, they they hadn't listened to Acquired. They didn't have all the lessons.

但如果不卖公司，就不会有后来的高通。

They wouldn't have had Qualcomm if they didn't sell the company.

这倒是真的。所以当时卖掉Linkabit绝对是正确决定。他们在Matcom待了五年，后来Matcom领导层变动——毕竟是个东海岸科技公司嘛。于是1985年他们都离职了，闲了几个月，心想：我们赚的钱远超梦想，参与了很多酷项目，但还年轻，无线通信行业才刚起步。

Well, that's true. They made absolutely the right decision in selling Linkabit then. So they stay with Matcom for five years and then there's a leadership change at Matcom and like this is an East Coast technology company. So they all leave in 1985 and they sit around for a couple months and, you know, they're like like we made more money than we ever like dreamed we would. We got to be part of so many cool things, but like we're still young and like the wireless communications industry is kinda just getting started.

没错。那可是1985年，当时蜂窝电话行业已经存在了。

Yep. And this is 1985. So the cellular telephone industry exists at this point.

才刚起步呢。你知道我们现在用5G，大家都记得iPhone 3G那个第二代手机，而初代iPhone用的EDGE网络其实是2G的小升级。那时候还是1G时代。

It had just started. We had the you know how we we're on five g now, and everybody remembers the iPhone three g, that that second phone, and the edge network that that the first iPhone launched with was two g. It was a little advancement on two g. This was one g.

这是第一代（1G），模拟信号的时代。那时蜂窝网络还没有数字化，完全是模拟通信。

This was one g, which was analog. No digital yet in in cellular. Was analog cellular.

蜂窝技术当时还是一项创新。我的意思是，这种理念——不同于传统远距离通信，我们通过建立蜂窝基站，让你只需与最近的基站通信，再由基站中转——这种将整个地理区域蜂窝化的概念在当时是全新的。有趣的是如今我们甚至不再思考'蜂窝'这个词的含义，但在那时却是最新的技术突破。

And cellular had just been an innovation. I mean, this notion that rather than, you know, communicating over long distances, we were actually going to put cell towers so that you only needed to communicate with your local tower and that that could be relayed and you had this sort of cellularification of all the geography that you needed to cover. That was new. And it's funny how today we don't even think about what the word cellular means, but that was the most recent innovation at the time.

没错。欧文和安迪他们不仅是顶尖学者——就像我们故事里说的，属于世界上最杰出的头脑——同时，特别是欧文，还是出色的商人和市场分析师。他们在Linkabit开发产品时就敏锐意识到这个市场即将兴起。

Yeah. It's great. So, you know, Irwin and Andy, like they are first rate academics, you know, as hopefully we've told the story here, like, among the most brilliant minds in the world. But they're also, like, especially Irwin, like, incredible business people, market analysts, like, they're very aware, like, the products they developed at Linkabit. They're aware that this market is coming.

他们如此敏锐的原因在于：技术上蜂窝网络已经存在，但当时全是车载电话。因为这套系统本质上就像早期的鱼雷装置——其实就是个高功率FM无线电发射器，需要接在汽车上。功率需求大得离谱。

And and the reason they're so aware, like, technically it exists now cellular, it's all car phones at this point in time because the way it works is it was essentially it was just like the torpedoes back in the day. It was essentially a FM radio broadcaster that you would wire up into car. Super high power. You needed, like, a lot of freaking power.

必须装在汽车里使用，因为当时没有足够...

You had to put it in a car for what you're talking about and because you couldn't like, there was not a battery available to

需要靠内燃机持续运转来...

You needed a running internal combustion engine to

维持设备运作

make this thing work.

对。终端设备需要这样。而且带宽极其有限，八十年代初这些系统要价数千美元。即便如此，消费者对车载电话的需求还是疯狂至极。

Yes. On the end Yes. On the end points. And bandwidth was super limited, and, like, these systems were thousands and thousands of dollars in early eighties dollars. And despite all that, the consumer demand for car phones was insane.

当时等候安装的名单能排好几年。那些新兴运营商由于信道使用效率低下——就像老式鱼雷系统那样——根本无法满足所有需求。我记得我当律师的父母八十年代就有车载电话，你父母有吗？

Like, into like, this was just like, you know, there were wait lists years long for consumers to get car phones installed and the fledgling carriers at the time, like they only had so much bandwidth they could fit because literally it's, you know, there's no efficient use of channels. It's just like the torpedoes back in the day. Like they couldn't keep up with all the demand. I remember when my parents who were lawyers, like they had car phones in the eighties. Did your parents have one?

没有。但我叔公有一部。不过有意思的是：当你调频收音机时，从99.1调到99.3再到99.5，但不能设成99.2或99.4，因为间隔太近会产生干扰。虽然这个比喻不完全准确（我做了些简化），但你可以想象：用这种模拟方式与附近基站通信，究竟有多少可用频段？

No. My great uncle had one. But it is interesting thinking about, you know, when you're listening on an FM radio, you have 991 and then you click up on the dial and it says 993 and then you click up and it says 99.5, and you can't even have point 2.4, point six because that's too close. There would be interference. So you start thinking about, and this isn't exactly right, I'm going to oversimplify this a little bit, but you start thinking about, well geez, how many slots are there to communicate in this analog way with a cell tower near me?

一个基站能处理多少部手机？100部？200部？500部？无论如何，它都无法规模化。

What can a cell tower handle? 100 phones? 200 phones? 500 phones? Either way, it's not gonna scale.

最多也就一百多部吧。对，对。想想看有多少广播电台，数量也就差不多那样了。

Not like much more than a 100. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you think about how many radio stations there are. Like, there's not much more than that.

所以你看，Linkopet那帮人，所有懂行的一看就明白，他们知道这个行业还处于萌芽期。我们看到惊人的需求，我们确实是顶尖的，我们知道有更好的方法来实现。我们知道可以数字化处理，知道能做得更好，也知道如何做到最好。于是在1985年7月，他们和安迪、欧文以及其他五位Linkabit最优秀的工程师共七人创立了新公司。

So, you know, the Linkopet folks, everyone in handy, they they see this, they know and they're like, oh, this industry is in its infancy. We see this amazing demand. We are literally the best, we know there's a better way to do this. We know you can do this digitally, we know you can do it way better, we know how to do it the best. So they found a new company in July 1985 with seven, seven in total, Andy, Irwin, and five other of the best Linkabit engineers.

他们在欧文家开会，决定创办这家新公司，并命名为高通。

They meet at Irwin's house and they decided to start this new company and they name it Qualcomm.

高质量通信。

Quality communications.

这是Quality communications的缩写，我做调研时完全没想到。但后来恍然大悟——高质量通信。没错。了解这段历史后，一切就说得通了。

Which is short for quality communications, which I had no freaking idea when we did the research. But then you're like, oh, duh. Quality communications. Yep. And then when you know all this history, makes sense.

他们就是最高品质的代名词，他们懂得如何实现高质量通信。这是家通信公司，能提供别人无法企及的品质

Like, they are the highest quality, you know, but they they know how to do quality communications. This is a communications company and they can provide quality that nobody else

能... 太多公司都这么命名了。这些品牌变得家喻户晓后，你甚至不会去想原名含义。完全同意。

can There's so many companies named this way too. These things become these household brands and then it's it's like you don't even think about what the original meaning was. Totally.

完全同意。因为当时行业还处于早期，想想建设蜂窝电话网络需要什么——巨额资本支出。就像我们之前在Acquired节目里聊过的有线电视行业历史，铺设电缆需要巨大投资。现在是要实地建基站塔，安装基站设备，制造这些价值上千美元的移动电话。

Totally. Because like the industry was still so early and and and you think for a minute about what is involved in building out a cellular telephone network, there is enormous CapEx. Like, you know, laying like cable, we've talked a little bit about the cable industry history on acquired. Like, that required enormous CapEx. Like, this is like literally putting towers in the ground, putting base stations on them, building these thousand dollar mobile phones.

参与其中需要大量资金投入

It requires a lot of money to participate It's in

资金和一系列能力问题，因为不仅当你考虑为信号塔购置地产、搭建信号塔并在塔上安装基站时，你还需要弄清楚这些信号塔的通信协议是什么？它们与手机通信的技术方法是什么？如何确保手机配备所有正确的硬件？这不仅仅是天线，还包括非常专业的芯片。于是你就会想，好吧。

money and it's a bunch of competencies because not only when you are you thinking about the real estate for the tower and putting in the tower and putting the base stations on the tower, well then you need to figure out, well, how are those towers what's the protocol? What's the technical method that it's communicating with phones and making sure that the phones have all the correct hardware? And it's not just antennas. It's very specialized chips. And so then you're like, okay.

那我们是否需要自己制造手机？是否需要建立消费者品牌？是否需要向消费者营销？我们需要成为自己的运营商吗？还是向运营商销售产品？这里有一种试图一口吞下整头大象的方式。或者你也可以说，好吧，我们只打算做其中一小部分，因为我们有改进这一点的想法。

Well, do we need to then make phones, and do we need to build a consumer brand, and do we need to market to consumers? Do we need to be our own carrier? Do we sell to carriers? There's a way to sort of, like, bite and try and eat the whole elephant here. Or you could say, okay, we're just gonna try and be one small part of this because we have an idea for how to make this better.

但如果你只做其中一小部分，并发明手机与信号塔通信的技术方法，就需要让一大堆利益相关者接受你的方案。运营商、负责频谱许可的政府机构、手机制造商、芯片制造商、基站制造商。所以这里有一个非常有趣的——

But if you're just doing one small part of it and inventing the means by which the the technical method that the phones communicate with the towers, there's a bunch of stakeholders that you gotta get on board with your thing. Carriers, the government in terms of licensing spectrum, phone manufacturers, chip makers, base station makers. So there's this really interesting Where

确实面临

do get

关键抉择，公司此时正处于这个阶段，他们认为自己可以做得更好。他们有一个具体的改进方案（我们稍后会讲到），但他们真正在思考的是：究竟要吞下这头大象的多少部分。

crux that they're at at this point of the company where they're saying, we know we can do this better. We have a specific idea about how to make this better, which we'll get to in a second, but they're really trying to figure out how much of the elephant to try to eat themselves.

这个故事——希望这期节目前45分钟的内容足够精彩。我们很享受讲述这段疯狂的二战好莱坞往事，以及所有相关的技术背景。高通的企业史，正如比尔·格利在这本书的推荐语中所说，是市场进入战略中最辉煌的执行案例之一，没有之一。其宏大程度堪比英伟达。

And this story, you know, this hopefully, this first, you know, forty five minutes of the episode was interesting. We had you know, fun telling this, like, crazy World War two Hollywood, you know, history of all the technical aspect that comes to this. The business history of Qualcomm, just like Bill Gurley said on the blurb of this book, it is one of the most brilliant strategic executions of entering a market, period. You know, like, writ large ever. Like, is on par with NVIDIA.

如果

If

不，老实说更卓越。看起来也更艰难。因为如果作为投资者，你事先向我推销这个想法，我会立刻拒绝。因为我看到15根不同的针，每一根都必须完美穿过，这是一个完全依赖路径的故事。

not Yeah. Honestly, more brilliant. It seems more difficult. Because if you were to pitch me this idea a priori as an investor, I would tell you immediately no. Because I see 15 different needles, all of which you must thread perfectly, a story that's entirely path dependent.

所以你必须先完成前一步，才能进行下一步，而每一步都像在穿针引线。成功的可能性微乎其微。

So you're not gonna get one thing until you get the previous thing, and that was a needle that you were threading. So the likelihood of success is unbelievably low.

然而今天我们却在讨论高通。他们在创立之初就明确两点：第一，这是个巨大的机遇，他们最终希望将自身专业知识应用于将地面手机网络带入数字时代，并在这个即将蓬勃发展的行业中打造主导型企业；第二，他们知道自己目前力有未逮。因此他们实际采用了与Linkabit相同的起步方式。

And yet, here we are talking about Qualcomm. So they knew two things at the outset of founding. One, this is a massive opportunity that they eventually wanted to pursue, was bringing their expertise to bringing cell phone, terrestrial cell phone networks into the digital era and building the dominant gorilla company in this soon to be massive industry. And two, they knew they couldn't do it yet. So they actually started in the same fashion that Linkabit did.

他们决定通过承接咨询工作来自主创业。没错。他们接手的首批咨询项目之一就是与休斯公司合作——你知道的，就是那家国防巨头，霍华德·休斯创立的那个，相当厉害。项目内容是向联邦通信委员会提交移动卫星网络提案。心想：好吧，正好可以借此了解消费者移动电话服务市场。

They're like, okay, we're gonna bootstrap up by doing consulting work. Yep. So one of the first consulting projects they do is with Hughes, you know, like one of the defense primes, Hughes like Howard Hughes, like pretty awesome, On a proposal to the FCC for a mobile satellite network. Like, alright. Well, we'll learn about consumer mobile, you know, telephony services.

先进入市场，我们再研究卫星网络。

Enter the market. We'll work on the satellite network.

我们说的是《侏罗纪公园》里那种卫星电话。对。

And we're talking like Jurassic Park sat phones. Yes.

明白吗？那个...那个完全就是

You know? That that That is exactly

笨重的大块头，价格昂贵，但当你真正需要时，有个卫星电话网络确实很管用。

Like big honking thing, super expensive, but like when you really need it, it's nice that there exists a sat phone network.

是的。在推进这个项目时，他们同时研究：既然我们是优化卫星通信信道效率的专家，该如何应用扩频技术实现多路接入——让多个通话同时使用相同信道。他们采用了一种名为CDMA（码分多址）的技术。

Yes. So while they're working on this, they're like working on like, okay, how can we like we're the experts at, you know, optimizing satellite communication channels for efficiency. They come up with an application of spread spectrum to use multiple access multiple conversations access the same channels at the same time Yep. That they call that they they use a technique called CDMA, code division multiple access.

初次听到这个术语时感觉完全是天书，毫无意义。你得盯着维基百科词条琢磨半天才能拆解每个部分。我们分段解释：多址接入——这还算直白。不同于电视广播那种单向传播，我们要让多个终端通过同一通信媒介相互交流。

Which the first time you hear this phrase sounds like complete jargon, like meaningless, and and then you stare at the Wikipedia article for a while to try and unpack each one. So we'll break it into parts. Multiple access. Well, that's that's fairly straightforward. Rather than being broadcast, so like a TV network, we have multiple endpoints that all wanna communicate with each other using whatever the same communication medium is.

所以不同于所有人挤在单一模拟频段上（在我们讨论的模拟时代这显然行不通）——比如我想用923频段打给你，你想用923打给鲍勃，我妈要用923打给我爸——很快就会导致信号相互碰撞。单一模拟频段的多址接入根本不可行，必须划分频段，每人分配独立频率，这确实是技术发展的主流路径。

So rather than using one single frequency to all sort of trial pile on there at the same time, which of course wouldn't work in that analog world that we were talking about, I wanna call you on 923. You wanna call Bob on 923. My mom wants to call my dad on 923. You quickly get into a situation where, like, everything's just colliding with each other. So multiple access on just single analog frequency doesn't work, you gotta divide up and say everybody gets their own frequency, and that's sort of the the the way that the way the world evolved.

你刚才提到码分。在深入之前，我们能先讨论另一种划分方式吗？

So you mentioned code division. Yeah. Before we get to code division, can we talk about a different type of division?

当然可以

Yes. We certainly

可以。所以在讨论CDMA中的CD（码分）之前，我们先说说多址接入这部分。很多人试图通过同一媒介进行通信。之前我们讨论的方式是每人分配独立频段，那被称为

can. So before we get to the CD in CDMA, code division, let's so we we've got the multiple access part. Bunch of bunch of people trying to communicate using the same medium. Well, the things that we were talking about before, everybody gets their own frequency, that was

频分多址

called

FDMA，频分多址接入。这是划分无线电波以实现多路通话的直观方式。电信行业的运作逻辑——记得我在节目开头说过这本质上是层层叠加的魔术——这就是其上的新演进。如果我们将模拟信号改为数字信号传输呢？

FDMA, frequency division multiple access. So a pretty straightforward way that you might divide up the airwaves in order to have multiple conversations. And the way the telecommunications industry works is remember I opened the episode by saying it's basically a layered set of magic tricks. This is sort of the the next iteration on top. And if you say, okay, rather than sending analog signals, what if we were sending digital signals?

比如我和大卫通话时存在大量静默间隙，约半数对话实际是空白。如果观众席有两人交谈，你们多数时间也处于静默状态。因此我们不需要始终占用整个频段。若改用数字信号传输，实际上我们可以将信息分割成数字数据包。

So if I'm talking to David, there's a lot of sort of pauses. About half the conversation is actually empty air. And if two folks out in the audience are talking to each other, a lot of your time is actually empty air. So we don't both need the entire frequency all the time. And if we are communicating using a digital signal instead of an analog signal, then actually we can parcel up the information into digital packets.

只需轮转不同数据包的发送时段

And just rotate the time of when different packets are being sent.

没错。举个粗糙的例子：假设在晚宴上，我可以在房间里先讲30秒，然后停下，另一组人接着交谈30秒。当然这太粗糙且间隔过长。在时分网络中，基本逻辑是：这几毫秒传输我的数据包，下几毫秒传输你的，再下几毫秒传输别人的，在20组对话间循环轮转。当这些数据包被另一部手机重组时——

Right. So, you know, the very crude example is if we're at a dinner party, I can have my conversation for thirty seconds in a room and then, you know, I pause and I stop talking, a different conversation can happen for thirty seconds. Of course that's too crude and that's far too long. In a time division network what you'd basically do is say, I get some digital packets for these milliseconds, then the next milliseconds you get your digital packets, then the next few second few milliseconds someone else gets their digital packets, and we'll keep round robining it between the 20 conversations that that we're all having. And when it gets reassembled on the other side by some other phone or something

多亏晶体管和数字技术，这个过程快到令人毫无察觉

Thanks to transistors and digital technology, this can all happen fast enough that, like You don't you don't even notice.

是的。你只会觉得信号可能有点压缩感，不如面对面交谈清晰，但不会有奇怪的断续或静默。尽管我们都在共享同一频段的不同时隙，实际听起来仍很流畅。

Yeah. You're you're like, oh, the signal maybe sounds a little compressed. It's not as good as if we're talking to each other actually face to face, but there's no, like, weird blips or pauses in the conversation. Even though we're all borrowing different time slots on the same frequency, it actually sounds pretty smooth to me. Yep.

这就是迭代演进的下一个发明

So so that's the next iterative invention.

当时欧洲遥遥领先于美国。欧洲已准备实施这套时分多址的数字标准用于移动通信技术，这主要由欧洲基础设施巨头爱立信推动。

Where Europe was way farther ahead than The US. Europe was basically ready to implement this time division multiple access digital standard in Europe for European cell phone technology. And that was driven by Ericsson, the big European infrastructure provider.

所以我觉得需要暂停一下来反思，从20倍、30倍到50倍的巨大创新——通过数字化信号和时分多址技术，让多人能同时使用同一频段，而非仅限于一人独占。这就是从频分多址(FDMA)到时分多址(TDMA)的演进。

So so I think like just to pause and reflect, big innovation going from maybe twenty, thirty, 50 x, like you you get a lot more capacity by saying instead of just one person gets a frequency at any given time, you now get a whole bunch of people who can use that frequency because the signal's digital, because of time division. This is the movement from frequency division multiple access FDMA to time division multiple access or TDMA.

实际上他说的是30到50倍，现在可能差不多，但当时只有3到5倍。更准确的类比应该是分时共享——就像老式计算机在大型机上通过电传打字机分时操作的模式，这正是当前技术的本质。

And it's actually, he said thirty fifty. Maybe now that kinda is, but, like, back then it was three to five x. Really, think the right analogy is, like, it is time sharing. Time sharing is what it is, and it's kinda like the old computing model of, like, time sharing on a teletype on a mainframe. That's what's going on here.

没错。现在说到高通公司，他们当时正在考虑卫星通信项目。别忘了欧文曾师从克劳德·香农，因此他始终在思考如何以最高效的方式逼近理论极限——在特定介质中特定时间内传输最大信号量。

Yep. And so over to Qualcomm. So they they're they're thinking about doing this this satellite communication thing. And remember, Erwin studied with Claude Shannon. So he's always thinking about what is the most efficient way to use all the way up to the theoretical limit of how much signal can be communicated in a given medium at a given time.

他审视TDMA技术后认为：应该存在更高效的方案，而卫星网络正需要这样的突破。

And he's sort of looking at TDMA and they're like, I think there's something even more efficient than this, and we need something more efficient than this for this satellite network. And

这些人都活跃在互联网初期。如果你了解互联网或分组交换网络原理就知道——分组交换不是分时共享。

these guys were all around the beginning of the Internet. Yes. And like, you think about if you know anything about how the Internet works And packet switching networks generally. Packet switching, it's not time sharing.

不，它是。每个人都尽可能将数据压缩成数字包发送，经过多次路由后抵达终端解码。只要协议正确，拆包重组时就能完美还原原始编码信息。

No. It is. Everybody compresses their data as much as they possibly can into a digital packet. They fire it off and it bounces around a series of places until it hits the other side, gets decoded, and hopefully the protocol is written correctly where as you're sort of opening your packets and sequencing them all in the right way, it seems perfect in how the message was originally intended to be when it was encoded in the first And

你提到了关键解码。这些人恍然大悟：直接用编码技术！让所有对话同时通过所有信道传输，最大化频谱利用率。只需在每个数字对话前附加识别码，后端就能重组——本质上和互联网工作原理相同。

you said the magic word decoded. And that's what these guys figure out. They're like, duh, we'll just use code. And then like everybody will send all the conversations all at the same time, all across all the different channels, will maximally efficiently use all the spectrum allocated and we'll just append a little code to the beginning of each digital conversation, and it'll get reassembled on the back end. Just basically the same way the Internet works.

对，进一步解释：现在所有消息都经过数字编码。电信业常用晚宴比喻——FDMA模式像各自在房间单独交谈效率低下；TDMA像5-10人轮流发言；而码分多址则是：所有人可在任意房间用专属语言交流。

Yeah. So to break that down further, so you've got this really interesting situation now where all messages are encoded digitally. And I keep like going back to this analogy that they use in the telecommunications industry of the dinner party. So rather than the sort of frequency, the FDMA model of everybody's in their own room having their own conversation, that's not super efficient, or TDMA, which is you put five or 10 people in a room, but they need to wait their turn to have their conversation. Well, co division basically is, as the analogy goes, is while everybody can communicate in whatever room they want.

接收方只需识别对应语言，就能自动过滤无关噪音。

They're all just communicating in their own language, and the person that they're communicating to understands that language. They can sort of listen and and disregard noise that's coming in

比如我预期接收你今天早餐的信息，那么这个空间里其他噪音都与我无关。

from if I'm expecting your message to be I had breakfast this morning, then like I don't care how much noise is in this space.

你不在乎占用多少空间

You don't care how much space

我只需要确认你是否说过那句话。

I either know you said that or you didn't say that.

没错。就好比我忽略所有西班牙语，只捕捉听起来像描述某人早餐状态的英语。这当然是过度简化。深入来说，本质上是通过编码处理每个数据包。比如我的编码是10010，你将信息包编码后叠加这个序列，最终得到一个能与其他信号堆叠的复合信号。

Right. You're like, I'm disregarding all the Spanish and I'm just listening for English that sounds something sort of like describing someone's state of breakfast. And that's an oversimplification. If you really wanted to sort of dig into it, what you're basically doing is you run any given packet through like literally an encoding. So maybe my encoding is 10,010, so you detect, so you encode whatever the packet of information is, you run it through, sort of add it to one zero zero one zero, and then you end up with this signal that you can sort of stack on top of other messages.

想象数字信号如同叠层的波浪——所有消息的波峰波谷彼此交织。接收端通过解码算法，像剥洋葱般逐层分离出原始消息，丢弃不符合目标编码（比如我虚构的10010）的部分，最终重组出特定发送者（比如本）的信息。

So imagine a digital signal like a digital wave where all of our messages are layered on top of each other. So the top of the peaks of some of the wave are extra high and the troughs are extra low for others, and when it all arrives all together on the other side, the other side knows how to decode all of our messages. So it individually subtracts all of our messages which are layered all on top of each other off the very same digital signal until it basically has all of our messages spread apart. It disregards any of the ones that doesn't match the code that I'm looking for, that I'm listening for, and it says I'm I just care about the message that came from Ben, which was 10010 or whatever code I just made up. That's It reassembles it.

这就是CDMA的核心理念。

The the shtick for CDMA.

这些天才早在1986年就凭借工程嗅觉和商业头脑，在Qualcomm涉足移动通信业多年前，就以美国专利4901307锁定了陆地蜂窝网络的码分多址技术——史上最具价值专利之一。

And what these guys do, just this brilliant, like, they saw it, they had the background, they had the engineering. They they're like, everything. Right place, right time, and the business sense. They developed this and they freaking patented. In 1986, well before, years before Qualcomm gets actually directly involved in the cellular industry at all, they patent the method and technique for co division multiple access applied to terrestrial cellular networks in 1986 in US patent number 4901307, which is one of the most valuable patents in history.

难以置信。他们以超长线布局，精准穿越无数技术关卡，而这只是开端。

Yep. Unreal. Like, literally, they played such a long game and they threaded needle after needle after needle, and that was just the first.

其价值在于：CDMA首次实现全频段共享——所有人可随时在任意可用频段发射，接收端自会解码。更妙的是低功耗特性，这对电池续航至关重要，因为...

And and when you think about why that is so valuable, when you really distill down what the CDMA patent is, it was the very first time that you could say, well, rather than thinking about one one specific frequency, just imagine you have all the frequencies available to you and everybody can all the time broadcast their message on whatever the next available frequency is, and we have the technology to just figure it out on the other side. Oh, and by the way, you don't even need to do it with super high power, so it's good for battery life and and that sort of thing because since it's encoded

总不能用内燃机给这玩意儿供电吧

an internal combustion engine to power this thing.

对吧？接收方知道目标特征。就像大宅院里众人用不同语言窃窃私语——这是最大化介质利用率的终极通信方案。

Right? The other side knows what it's looking for. So this is the equivalent of there's a bunch of people whispering in a gigantic house to each other all in different languages. So it's this like way more efficient way to use a given medium to have the absolute maximum amount of conversations or signal transmission in that medium.

好的。高通成立于1985年，专利于1986年颁发或申请。

Okay. So Qualcomm founded 1985, patent issued 1986 or applied for in 1986.

值得记住这一点，所以它会在2006年2月到期。

Which is worth remembering so it'll expire in 02/2006.

不，没错。没错。展望未来。埋下伏笔。

No. That's right. That's right. Looking ahead. Foreshadowing.

高通直到1989年才进入无线行业。在此期间发生了什么？这就是下一个沃尔玛。哦，这太棒了。你简直编都编不出来。

Qualcomm doesn't enter the wireless industry until 1989. What happens in the interim? This is this is the next Walmart. Oh, it's so good. You literally just can't make this stuff up.

于是他们被邀请竞标另一个合同，初创的高通公司，来自一家叫Omninet的公司，他们认为高通的人非常适合实现他们的想法。他们想建立一个移动卫星网络，专门连接美国公路上的商用半挂卡车。并将它们与零售商和其他在美国大量运输货物的公司的配送中心联网。这正合他们的专长。高通和欧文都觉得，太棒了。

So they get approached to bid on another contract, fledgling Qualcomm does, from a company called Omninet, which has this idea that they think the Qualcomm folks are gonna be perfect to implement. They want to make a mobile satellite network specifically to connect commercial semi trucks on the roads in America. And network them up to the distribution centers for retailers and other people who companies who ship a lot of things in The US. This is right in their wheelhouse. Qualcomm and and Erwin are like, great.

我们要竞标这个合同。他们赢了。他们开始与Omninet合作，并成功实现了。最早的客户之一当然是沃尔玛，他们在自己的专有卡车车队上实施了这一技术，进一步巩固了相对于美国几乎所有其他零售商的技术优势。

We're gonna bid on this contract. They win it. They start working with Omninet and they make it work. And one of the very first customers is, of course, Walmart, which implemented on their own proprietary fleet of trucks, building further their technical advantage over just about every other retailer in America.

而到了这个时候，他们已经放弃了卫星合同。对吧？他们有点像是，嗯。

And at this point, they've walked away from the satellite contract. Right? They they sort of like Yeah.

他们想要休斯的卫星项目，但那实际上从未实现。

They want the Hughes satellite thing that that actually just never happened.

所以他们开发了这项技术。申请了专利。然后他们觉得，哦，但这里没钱可赚，因为那个合同，嗯。

So they developed this technology. They patent it. They were like, oh, but there's no money here because the the contract Yeah.

联邦通信委员会说，是啊。卫星。《侏罗纪公园》里的那种电话，成不了气候。

The FCC was like, yeah. Satellite. Jurassic Park phones, not gonna be a thing.

没错。所以他们转而专注于这个Omni网络。

Right. So instead, they're focused on this omni net.

所以他们专注于这笔交易。在这方面。而且他们从Linkofit之前的业务中已经积累了大量商业关系，包括与沃尔玛等许多大型企业和零售商的合作。我记得施耐德卡车运输公司

So they focus Deal. On this. And they also have, like, a lot of the business, you know, relationships already from the previous iteration of what they were doing at Linkofit, including with Walmart and many of the other large companies and retailers. I believe it's Schneider trucking

是的。

Yep.

实际上成为了他们的首个客户。于是他们着手开发这个产品，很快就明确这将成为过渡期的主打产品。高通与Omninet在1988年合并，并因此获得了350万美元的融资。

Becomes one of the actually the first customer I think for that. So they work on building that. It becomes pretty clear like this is gonna be the interim main product. Qualcomm and Omninet merged in 1988. They raised $3,500,000 in funding as part of that.

他们在1988年将产品以Omnitrax之名推向市场。可能有人听说过，这个产品长期隶属于高通，后来我记得是被剥离给了私募股权。1989年，Omnitrax运营的第一年就实现了3200万美元的收入。

They bring the product to market at the 1988 as Omnitrax. People might have heard of it. It was part of Qualcomm for a long time before I believe it ended up getting spun out to private equity. And in 1989, in the first year of business for Omnitrax, they do $32,000,000 in revenue. In 1989.

按通胀调整后差不多相当于现在的1亿美元。

Which is something like it's like inflation adjusted a $100,000,000.

这是笔巨款，说明市场对这个产品需求旺盛。

It's a lot of money, and there's a lot of demand for this product.

在产品推出的第一年。

In the first year of the product launch.

第一年。

Year one.

现在这里面有很多环节。比如，SaaS收入不是应该...

Now there's a lot of cogs. Like, isn't SaaS revenue

不。

No.

对，对。我们正在讨论这个。

Yeah. Yeah. We're talking about.

这里面涉及很多齿轮般的复杂环节，因为他们从实践中认识到——这也是公司合并的原因之一——最初就像Linkabit时期那样，记得沃尔玛曾是Linkabit卫星系统的客户。沃尔玛非常乐于自行整合和实施技术，但大多数其他客户并非如此。所以他们四处奔走，向货运公司、零售商等推销这套系统，而多数客户的反应是：'这很酷，但我们不想自己运营调度中心和消息系统。'

And there's particularly a lot of cogs because one of the things they learned from doing this and one of the reasons the companies merge, they first, kinda like the Linkabit days, you know, remember Walmart was their customer for the Linkabit satellite, you know, thing. Walmart is very happy to integrate and implement technology themselves. Most other customers are not. So they go around and they're like, you know, pitching this to trucking companies and retailers and the like. And and most of them are being like, well, this is like cool, but we're not gonna operate our own dispatch centers and messaging.

我们尽量保持最小规模的IT部门。

We try to have as small an IT department as possible.

是啊，技术相关的事。

Yeah. Is technology stuff.

你是要我们完成所有这些工作，然后只丢给我们这堆技术吗？

Are you asking us to do all of this work and just handing us this pile of technology?

没错。所以欧文就说：'如果我们直接为你们运营，提供完整的全栈解决方案呢？我们不是卖技术，而是卖解决方案。'

Yeah. So Erwin is like, well, what if what if we just operate it for you and we provide a whole full stack solution? We don't sell you a technology, we sell you a solution.

这就像所有企业级公司的套路——当一家公司跨越鸿沟成为企业级时，他们的网站就不再显示产品、价格、关于我们，而是统统改成'解决方案'。

Which is like every enterprise company that you ever you know a company has become enterprise y when they cross the chasm and their website no longer has like products, pricing, about, and it changes to solutions.

对，解决方案。于是他们在商业层面发现了'解决方案'的价值。

Yeah. Solutions. So they they they make the business discovery of solutions.

我们都该说：'这是次极度稀释股权的融资事件。高通在表明我们急需资金来为Omnitrax开发项目（这个Omninet客户）筹资，以至于最吸引我们的方案是出售公司50%股权。所有人通过直接与客户合并被稀释50%股权，只为获得几百万美元继续推进项目。这跟现在截然不同——如今你进行种子轮融资时，出售5%、10%、20%股权就能...（我还没见过多少种子轮能...）'

We all should say, like, this is a tremendously dilutive financing event. This is Qualcomm saying we need money so badly to fund the development of Omnitrax for this this customer, Omninet, that the most attractive option for us is to sell half the equity in our company. So everyone gets diluted 50% by merging with the customer themselves in order to get just a few million dollars to continue funding this effort. It's a pretty different time than today where you go raise a seed round and you sell five, ten, 20% of your business for two I don't know too many seed rounds that

如今5%的股权稀释很常见，但

are happening for 5% dilution these days, but

我敢打赌你

I bet you

但他们确实这么做了。

but they were.

确实如此。想想他们当时的处境真是疯狂——所有人都盯着欧文，而他却说'嘿，这确实是我们获得所需几百万美元的最佳途径'。有些人对此相当不满。完全可以理解。你也能想象到，这不像是个简单的想法。

They were. And so it's a it's a very it's crazy to think the position that they were in where everyone was looking at Irwin and he was like, hey, think this is literally the best path forward in order for us to get the few million dollars we need to get. I think some people were pretty bitter about this. Totally. And you could imagine too, it's not like an idea.

他们已经做了大量工作，这事本将水到渠成。他们即将上市，距离赚取经通胀调整后的1亿美元只差几年时间，却不得不放弃公司一半股权。

Like, they had done a bunch of work already. This was going to happen. They were going to go to market. They were just a couple years away from making a $100,000,000 in inflation adjusted dollars, and yet they had to give up half the company.

没错。他们离实际赚到1亿真的只差几年——业务以3200万为基础，连续五年每年翻番。哇，简直太厉害了。现在协议既成，他们就想'好了'。

Yeah. They literally were a couple years away from making actual 100,000,000 because the business doubles every year for like five years from a $32,000,000 base. Like Wow. Freaking awesome. So now that this is in place, they're like, alright.

我们既有可支配的现金流，又有能用来融资、借款和募股的业务基础，可以追求原始专利里那个真正的大构想。还有个绝妙之处在于：最初其实还有其他知道码分多址技术的人，本可能抢先申请专利。但当时没人相信这能实现，因为需要在基站和终端配备极其复杂的处理系统。

We have both a cash flow spigot that we can use and now like a base of business that we can finance and like borrow against and raise equity against to pursue the real big idea in our original patent. And, you know, here's here's the other just, you know, brilliant thing. What happened originally was not in fact, there were other people who knew about Code Division multiple access. You know, other folks could have been in a position to patent this and pursue it. But at the time, nobody believed it could actually work because you needed such sophisticated processing power on both the endpoints on the base stations and the endpoints to actually make this work.

这想法听起来简直疯狂至极。

Like, it sounded completely freaking crazy.

必须实时处理。人们通话时不能有可察觉的延迟——首先要进行模数转换，把声音转为数字信号，分割成数据包，用每个用户独有的编码标记，通过无线电传到最近的信号塔。

It needs to happen in real time. I mean, people need to have conversations without a perceptible delay, and you are cutting a you're you're first doing the the analog to digital encoding where you're taking their voice and you're turning it into a digital signal. You're cutting it up into a bunch of packets. You're encoding those packets with every user's unique code. You're sending it over the airwaves to your most local cell tower.

信号塔会经由其他基站将信号传输给通话的另一方，整个流程再逆向完成。

That cell tower is relaying it across variety of other cell towers to where the other person on the end of the conversation is having the call, and then the whole pipeline is happening in reverse

在手机上。在手机上。所以这就是关键，就像，你

On the handset. On the handset. And so this is the thing, like, you

可能会相信

could believe

你可以在基站端、基础设施端进行这种处理。但是，比如，在汽车里，由内燃机驱动的设备，或者在汽车里——或者天啊，不是汽车，像Zack Morris那种老式手机，有人会拿在手里的那种——在1986年，能在这样的设备上实现这种功能简直是天方夜谭。但高通那帮人，他们懂摩尔定律。没错。那时候大多数人还不了解这个。他们就说，

you could do this processing on the on the base stations on the infrastructure side. But, like, the idea that, like, in a car, like, something powered by an internal combustion engine, like, in a car or or heaven forbid, not a car, like a mobile phone, like a Zack Morris phone that, you know, somebody would hold in their hand that you could do this on something like that was crazy in 1986. But the Qualcomm guys, they know about Moore's Law Yep. Which, like, most people didn't know about at that time. And they're like, yeah.

我很确定再给摩尔定律一两个周期，你懂的，再推进几步，我觉得我们或许能做到。

I'm pretty sure you give it one or two more, you know, turns of the crank on Moore's Law here and, like, I think we could maybe do this.

我们聊过太多这样的例子了，我是说在《Acquired》节目里，尤其是去年，很多成功都源于准确预测

There are so many things that we've talked about in the last I mean, on acquired generally, but especially in the last year where their success came from correctly forecasting

摩尔定律。

Moore's Law.

预测产品上市时摩尔定律会发展到什么程度。没错。所以知道

Where Moore's Law would be at the time that they ship their product. Yeah. So knowing

某件事现在虽然做不到。但等我们几年后真正推出产品时，它就会成为可能。这太神奇了。真酷。

that something was possible today. Shipping. Like, it's not possible today, but when we're gonna ship this, which is still gonna be several years in the future, it will be possible then. It's amazing. So cool.

而且，当时真正明白这个的人少之又少。想想真是疯狂。

And, like, the fact that it's just like, there were so few people that knew that then. And, like, crazy.

好了听众们，现在正是感谢我们《Acquired》新合作伙伴Sentry的好时机。拼写是s-e-n-t-r-y，就像站岗的哨兵。是的。

Alright, listeners. This is a great time to thank a new partner of ours here at Acquired, Sentry. That's s e n t r y, like someone standing guard. Yes.

Sentry帮助开发者调试错误和延迟问题，几乎涵盖任何软件故障，并在用户不满前修复。正如其官网所言，它被超过400万软件开发者认为‘相当不错’。

Sentry helps developers debug errors and latency issues, pretty much any software problem, and fix them before users get mad. As their homepage puts it, it's considered, quote unquote, not bad by over 4,000,000 software developers.

今天我们要探讨Sentry如何与被收购生态中的另一家公司Anthropic合作。Anthropic曾使用过时的基础设施监控方案，但在其庞大规模和复杂度下，他们转而采用Sentry来加速问题发现与修复。

So today, we're talking about the way that Sentry works with another company in the acquired universe, Anthropic. Anthropic used to have some older infrastructure monitoring that was in place, but at their massive scale and complexity, they instead adopted Sentry to help them find and fix issues faster.

没错。AI领域崩溃可能造成巨大影响。当运行模型训练等大型计算任务时，单个节点故障可能波及数百甚至数千台服务器。Sentry帮助他们检测故障硬件，避免连锁问题。原本需要数天调试的重大问题，现在几小时就能解决，让他们快速恢复训练任务。

Yep. Crashes can be a massive problem in AI. If you're running a huge compute job like training a model and one node fails, it can affect hundreds or thousands of servers. Sentry helped them detect bad hardware so they could quickly reject it before causing a cascading problem. Sentry enabled them to debug massive issues in hours instead of days so they could get back to their training runs.

如今Anthropic依赖Sentry实时追踪异常、分配错误并分析故障，覆盖其研究团队使用的所有主要语言，包括Python、Rust和C++。Anthropic团队表示：‘Sentry为开发者提供了调试问题所需的完整信息平台。’

And today, Anthropic relies on Sentry to track exceptions, assign errors, and analyze failures in real time across all the primary languages used by Anthropics research teams, including Python, Rust, and c plus plus According to the Anthropic team, Sentry gives our developers one place where they have all the information they need to debug an issue.

Sentry还有个有趣的新动态：本月推出了名为SEER的AI调试器。这个AI代理能整合Sentry的问题上下文和代码库，不仅猜测问题根源，更能针对具体应用提供可直接合并的修复方案。

And one other fun update in the world of Sentry is that as of this month, Sentry now has an AI debugger called SEER. SEER is an AI agent that taps into all the issue context from Sentry and your code base to not just guess, but root cause gnarly issues and propose merge ready fixes specific to your application.

我们非常兴奋能与Sentry合作。他们的客户名单令人惊叹，包括Anthropic、Cursor、Vercel、Linear等。若想像13万家组织那样快速修复代码——从独立开发者到世界级企业——请访问sentry.i0/acquired了解更多。Sentry为Acquired听众提供两个月免费试用，只需告知是Ben和David推荐即可。

We are pumped to be working with Sentry. They've got an incredible customer list, including not only Anthropic, but Cursor, Vercel, Linear, and more. If you wanna fix broken code like the over 130,000 organizations using Sentry from indie hobbyists to some of the biggest companies in the world to find and fix broken code fast. You can check out sentry.i0/acquired to learn more, and they are offering two free months to all Acquired listeners. That's Sentry, sentry,.i0/acquired, and just tell them that Ben and David sent you.

1988年9月，所有条件都已具备：他们拥有融资能力，看到摩尔定律带来的技术可行性路径，持有专利——当时唯一能实现该技术的团队，再加上绝佳的市场时机。

So in September 1988, all these factors, you know, they've got the financing capabilities to take a swing at this. They see a path with Moore's Law to it being technically feasible. They've got the patent. They're literally the only ones that can do this. And then the market timing.

1988年9月，美国蜂窝电信工业协会（CTIA）及其关联机构电信工业协会（TIA）发布了性能要求规范，计划将美国蜂窝网络从模拟1G升级到数字2G。

So in September 1988, the US Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association or CTIA as most people know it, and then its related entity, the TIA, the Telecommunications Industry Association, they released performance requirements, the spec for performance requirements for the planned upgrade of The US's cellular networks from the analog one g networks to the new digital two

网络标准。而美国这边刚起步，欧洲已经

g networks. And this is just The US Europe has its

遥遥领先。没错，GSM、爱立信、TDMA，这些技术正在欧洲蓬勃发展。

own Europe's already well on its way. Yep. GSM, Ericsson, TDMA, it's all happening here in Europe.

是的。

Yep.

高通的人当然热切期待这份规范的发布，他们一看就说，天啊，这写得简直不能更完美了。

The Qualcomm folks, of course, they eagerly anticipate the release of this spec and they look at it and they're like, oh my god. This could not have been written better.

它就是

It's written

为我们量身定做的。一个梦想。他们意识到两点：其一，TDMA显然是领跑者，爱立信等公司也想在美国推行，因为他们在欧洲已经成功了。

for us. A dream. It's written for us. They realize two things. One, of course, TDMA is the the front runner and Ericsson and all that to, like, you know, do The US too because they're successfully doing it in Europe.

而且不仅在欧洲实施，在美国采用也合理，因为建立全球标准很有意义，而且这相当可信。比如，我必须相信我们要转向数字技术——这我能接受；另一个要相信的是，通过分割不同时间窗口，可以在同一频率上同时进行多路通话。

And and not only is it it being done in Europe, it makes sense to adopt in The US too because kinda nice to have a global standard and because it's quite believable. Like, okay. One big thing I have to believe is we're switching to digital. I can believe that. Another big thing I have to believe is that you're able to use the same frequency for several conversations at once through cutting up, you know, different time windows.

好吧，这个我也能信。但天啊，你们还想同时发明多少新东西？再进一步就感觉需要盲目信仰了。

Okay. I can believe that, but gosh, how much new stuff are you trying to invent all at the same time? Anything further than that feels like I gotta take a leap of faith.

得证明它确实可行，而爱立信已经通过试点验证了这点——这技术真的能用。

And show me it can work, and Ericsson's well on the way to, like, pilots proving showing it works. This actually works.

它们是大公司，有过成功先例，是人人信赖的合适供应商。

They're big companies. They've succeeded before. They're the right vendors that everyone trusts.

所以当CTIA发布规范时，高通的人肯定乐开了花。他们发现由于TDMA的容量限制，根本无法达标——即便最佳实现的TDMA也无法满足美国要求的压缩标准。

So the spec that the CTIA publishes, the Qualcomm guys, this must have just been, like, beaming ear to ear. They realized that TDMA, because of the capacity limits of TDMA, it's not gonna meet spec. Like, you get the best implementation of TDMA, it's not gonna allow for enough compression to actually meet the spec that The US wants to hit.

这里我要提到——我一直等着说这个：当时美国标准机构准确预测了手机在美国的巨大普及，所以设定了极高的网络容量标准。后来他们调整是因为1980年有个趣闻——垄断电信业百年的AT&T委托麦肯锡公司预测手机市场规模，麦肯锡...

So here this is a I've been I've been, like, waiting to bring this thing up. So at this point in history, The US standards body is correctly forecasting the incredible popularity of cell phones in The US. So they they're setting a really high bar for the amount of phones that need to be able to use this network. And the reason that they have since changed their tune is in 1980, this is a fun bit of trivia, AT and T, who has been the incumbent for a hundred years on all things telecommunications commissioned McKinsey and Company to predict McKinsey. Cell phone

一切总是要回溯到麦肯锡身上。

It all goes back to McKinsey always.

总是如此。为了预测美国在二月份的移动电话使用情况，快进二十年后的未来，这家咨询集团认为蜂窝电话将是一个小众市场。

Always. To predict the cell phone usage in The United States in the year February, so flash forward twenty years in the future, the consulting group argued that cellular telephony would be a niche market.

啊，是的，当然。

Ah, yes, of course.

他们预测到二月份时会有90万人订阅蜂窝电话网络。

They forecasted 900,000 people would be subscribed to a cellular telephony network in the year February.

我个人觉得我自己就有90万部手机连接。

I think I have 900,000 cellular connections personally.

如你所知，这个数字偏差超过100倍。实际订阅人数是1.09亿，而非90万。这确实说明在1980年时，这一点极不明显。当时世界上最聪明的人——既有AT&T领域专家，也有麦肯锡精于商业模式的思考者——都严重误判了这一趋势。为了说明这个误判有多大，AT&T最终以126亿美元收购了麦考蜂窝（Macaw Cellular），成为AT&T无线，也就是我们今天熟知的AT&T，从而在移动通信领域迎头赶上。

So as you know, that number was off by over 100 x. There were 109,000,000 people, not 900,000, 109,000,000 subscribed in the year February. So it does make the point that in 1980, it was super not obvious. Like, you had some of the smartest people in the world both in domain depth at AT and T and just good business model thinkers at McKinsey wildly misforecasting this. And to illustrate how big the miss was, AT and T eventually bought Macaw Cellular for $12,600,000,000 to become AT and T wireless, which is the AT and T we actually all know today, and catch up in mobile telephony.

所以这份2G标准撰写的时候，正是行业内许多人开始意识到：'糟糕，我们几年前对这个东西潜力的判断是不是完全错了？'

So that this like two g spec that was written is is right around the time that a lot of the people in the industry are starting to realize like, uh-oh, were we super wrong in what we all thought just a few years ago the potential of this thing was?

这就像开场引用的埃德温·兰德那句话——创造力是环环相扣的行为，每一步都暗示着下一步。这就是他们穿过的下一根针，倒下的下一张多米诺骨牌：TDMA未能达标。他们某种程度上预见到了这点，因为他们了解需求，也知道TDMA无法满足。所以就有了这个新方案。这很酷。

So that's like, you know, back to the original Edwin Land quote starting the episode of like creativity, like one act following another, you know, enabled by it suggested suggesting the next. Like, this is the next like needle they thread, you know, domino that falls of TDMA didn't hit the spec. And they could kind of foresee this, you know, because they knew what the demand was and they knew TDMA wasn't gonna be able to do it. So here's the next. This is cool.

我没想到会谈到地缘政治，但要知道美国有庞大的官僚体系和监管机制——眼前这一切就是明证。不过有个惊人的...

Like, I didn't expect to get into kinda geopolitics on this, but the one great that know, The US has like a ton of bureaucracy and regulation, like all of this being like, you know, case in point. But one incredible

我认为这最终花了五年时间

I think this took five years to eventually

哦，这些标准机构之类的，这完全不是自由市场。但美国流程与欧洲流程的一个关键区别——正是这个区别改变了一切——是美国政府表示，行业协会可以制定规范，这些规范可以成为官方标准，但不是强制性的。而在欧洲，它是强制性的。嗯。

Oh, and like these standards bodies and like all like this is not the free market like by any means. But the one difference in The US process for all this versus the European process, and it was the difference that made all of the difference was the US government said, the industry associations, you guys can set the specs and all that and that can be official. But it's not mandatory. So like in Europe, it was like mandatory. Like Mhmm.

DSM所基于的TDMA就是强制性的。就这样。还有很多其他国家也是强制性的。而美国的态度是：这是行业标准，我们建议所有移动运营商遵循它。但如果你想另辟蹊径，只要符合性能规范，你可以使用任何技术。

The TDMA which DSM was based on like mandatory. That's it. And plenty other countries, you know, mandatory. And The US was like, this is the industry standard and like we recommend that any mobile carrier follows it. But if you wanna do your own thing, like as long as it meets the performance spec, you can use whatever technology you want.

重要的是，标准机构与政府机构是脱钩的。FCC负责分配频谱，但这些标准机构本质上只是行业组织

And importantly, standards bodies are decoupled from government agencies. So the FCC allocates spectrum, but these standards bodies are literally just industry

它们是行业协会。对。

They're industry associations. Yeah.

它们必须存在，因为所有不同的制造商、运营商和相关公司之间需要大量协调，必须有个标准。否则创新无法发生，因为没人知道该基于什么来构建，也无法有效协作。

And they need to exist because there's so much coordination between all the different manufacturers and carriers and companies involved that, like, you need to have a standard. Otherwise, the innovation doesn't happen because no one knows what to build against and no one can sort of effectively collaborate enough.

所以当这个标准出台后，高通立刻派欧文和安迪去华盛顿，他们到DC问：‘我们想确认一下，即使这个其他技术是标准，如果某个移动运营商想用不同的技术，只要符合规范就行对吧？这不违法吧？’对方回答：‘是的，就是这样。’

So once all this, you know, the the standard comes out, Qualcomm immediately like goes to Washington like Irwin and Andy, they go they go to they go to DC and they're like, hey, just to make sure, we just wanna like be crystal clear, can you confirm to us that even though this other thing is the standard, if a given carrier, mobile operator, wanted to use something different, as long as it used a spec, like, that's cool. That's not illegal. Right? And they're like, yep. That's the case.

他们说：‘好的，谢谢。我们会再来的。’这就是他们接下来的关键一步。

They're like, okay. Cool. Thank you. We'll be back. And so that was like the next needle they thread.

他们毫不气馁，心想：‘太好了，我们可以向个别运营商推销CDMA技术了。’于是他们开始了销售进程，这时是1989年初。

They're totally undaunted. They go and they're like, great. We can go pitch individual carriers on using CDMA as a technology. So they start a sales process. This is now the beginning of 1989.

他们开始路演，四处推销这种新颖的CDMA标准，对抗TDMA行业标准。这引发了后来维基百科条目中被称为‘无线圣战’的事件——我前几天还发推提过。这里充满了电信极客的狂热争论。

They start a road show. They go out pitching this new novel CDMA standard versus the TDMA industry standard. And this starts what is known literally, tweeted this the other day. In the Wikipedia entry for all this, this is like canonically known as the holy wars of wireless. And there's so much telecom nerdery.

而且它

And it

这确实是神圣的战争，名副其实的圣战。

really is holy It really is holy wars.

因为这关乎信仰。当时很多人都不相信CDMA技术能成功。

Because it's about belief. So many people were just like, I don't believe you that CDMA will work.

要知道，当时真正相信它能成功的只有高通的人。就像唐·瓦伦丁那样——他们并非预知未来，而是凭借丰富经验坚信：只要没有政府强制推行标准化监管，最终经济规律会胜出。CDMA相比TDMA的优势太多了：语音质量更好，还有一长串...

And, you know, it was literally only the Qualcomm folks who thought it would work. And not just, you know, I'm reminded of the Don Valentine, like, knew the future based on all they didn't know the future per se, but based on all their experience, they were very very confident that it would work and it would win despite the seemingly overwhelming odds because they knew a secret, which was that at the end of the day, as long as there was not government enforced standardized regulation, they knew that economics would win in the And there's so many benefits of CDMA versus TDMA. We've covered some of them. You know, one one of the other ones is that like the voice quality is actually much better than TDMA. Like it's all like there's a whole litany

安全性也强得多。这技术最初是为政府卫星通讯研发的。最关键的是，运营商能用相同基础设施服务更多用户，成本直接降低。所以你...

of Security is much better. I mean, it was originally created for the government to beam stuff up and down to satellites. Another huge one is it literally if you're operating a cell network and you can have more subscribers per unit of infrastructure is literally cheaper. So you're you're gonna

没错。

Yeah.

这是种低成本技术。

It's a lower cost technology.

重点来了：其他优势都像是锦上添花，但有个决定性优势让他们稳操胜券——运营效率能提高3到5倍。

This is the thing. So there's one benefit that actually matters. All the others are like nice to have on a feature spec. There's one benefit that is gonna allow them to be super sure they're gonna win, which is that it is, an order of three to five x more efficient to operate.

可惜他们最初宣传的是40倍。

Unfortunately, they originally pitched 40 x.

对，确实。

Yeah. Right.

这成了行业对比的基准标准。

That's that's the standard that everyone was benchmarked.