Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 252 Zhiyun Supercomputing and Self-developed PC
At Guangcheng University, Yu Taihe looked at the building of the 'Guangzhi Joint R&D Center' in front of him, took a deep breath and entered.

He just passed the entrance exam for the joint master's and doctoral program this year and is currently pursuing a doctorate degree. After school started this year, he followed his boss into the Guangzhi Joint R&D Center to do research.

Working towards a PhD!
He has graduated from college this year. Although he did well academically, he actually planned to work directly after graduation. After all, his family conditions are very ordinary. His father is just an ordinary worker, and his mother works as a farmer in her hometown and occasionally does odd jobs.

He also has a younger brother and a younger sister, and his younger brother and sister also have good academic performance.

His father was the only one who earned money to support the family, and the pressure of bearing the tuition fees for three siblings was very great. Yu Taihe had originally considered going out to work after graduation and earning a salary to relieve the pressure on the family.

However, his boss still values ​​him very much. His professional performance has always been excellent, and he has been working hard in some small projects since his junior year. So in order to retain him, his boss promised to take him to the joint research and development center to do research, so that he can get a good subsidy.

The joint R&D center established by Zhiyun Technology and Guangcheng University conducts various cutting-edge research. His boss Yue was able to join the center and lead one of the project teams due to his good academic ability.

Every time his boss talked about the research of the Joint R&D Center, he sighed and said: I have never done so much research in my life.

There is money and equipment, but as for manpower... there are a lot of students in the school.

Since joining the joint R&D center, his boss has published several important papers, and his academic achievements are more than those in the past ten years combined.

As a student that his boss values ​​very much, Yu Taihe was able to join the project team of the joint R&D center to do research work after school started this year.

Because of sufficient funding and the fact that his boss valued him highly, he treated him very well and received a living allowance of two to three thousand yuan a month, which was enough to meet his daily needs. He could even save some money to send to his younger brother for living expenses.

Because his younger brother has already gone to college this year, and his younger sister is also in her second year of high school.

Yu Taihe was thinking about going out to work and earning money to support his younger brother and sister's education... because his younger brother and sister were much better at studying than him.

His younger brother was admitted to the Tongcheng branch of Ancheng University, a 985 university, this year. This branch was just established last year and actually has only one professional department, the School of Microelectronics, which focuses on semiconductor process technology.

The Tongcheng branch was jointly established by Ancheng University and Zhiyun Microelectronics. The purpose was very simple and pure, which was to provide Zhiyun Microelectronics with top professional talents.

Because of the special nature of this branch, as long as you are admitted and your subsequent academic performance is not affected, it basically means that you will be able to work in the microelectronics company of Zhiyun Group after graduation.

That’s Zhiyun Group!

It is the top high-tech enterprise in the country, and even in the world. It is a super enterprise with a resounding and outstanding reputation around the world.

Some core projects under Zhiyun Group, such as smart terminals, semiconductor design, semiconductor manufacturing, and artificial intelligence, are the core of the core. Those who can enter the R&D centers of these projects are all gifted talents without exception.

At the same time, these R&D centers also mean a huge platform for displaying talents. As long as you have ideas and abilities, Zhiyun Group has plenty of funds for you to work on.

In other words, if Zhiyun Group cannot provide sufficient R&D funds for your project, then in this world, well, it’s a bit of an exaggeration to say the word world, but at least in China, there is no company or organization that can provide you with sufficient funds.

In a word, Zhiyun is not short of money. As long as you can convince the members of the R&D committee, hundreds of millions or even billions will be easy to get.

If you have sufficient academic qualifications and top-notch abilities, and can convince the bigwigs at the group headquarters, especially the boss Xu Shenxue, you may even be able to get tens of billions of R&D funds.

For example, the 22-nanometer process and 3D transistor projects currently led by Professor Liang Song really cost money like water, with the R&D and production line construction costs amounting to tens of billions.

This thing is not simply a laboratory research and development. In addition to laboratory research and development, what is more important is the actual production line investment. It is a comprehensive super-large project, and the final investment scale can reach tens of billions.

The competition among major wafer fabs in the research and development of advanced processes is extremely fierce, and each company is investing huge amounts of resources in research and development.

Zhiyun Technology is no exception!

In addition to the semiconductor manufacturing field, there are many other core projects with sufficient funding, and the salary and benefits of R&D personnel are also unique in the country.

All of this has attracted countless top students!

However, it is quite difficult to enter such top high-tech companies.

As for social recruitment, Zhiyun’s human resources department receives a large number of resumes almost every day, but the proportion of people who can get an interview opportunity is extremely small.

Someone has done statistics and found that if the basic educational requirements are met, such as a bachelor's degree or above, the admission rate is about 0.3%.

One thousand people sent out their resumes, but only three were finally accepted.

This refers to the one thousand people who meet the basic requirements, and does not include a large number of people who do not meet the hard requirements such as academic qualifications and who submit their resumes blindly.

In fact, if some hard conditions such as academic qualifications are not met, these resume emails will be directly filtered out by the human resources recruitment system developed internally by Zhiyun Technology and will not appear in front of HR at all.

This is referring to science and engineering positions. If it is a liberal arts position, the ratio will be even lower!
Because Zhiyun Technology is a typical high-tech enterprise, it has a huge demand for talents in science and engineering, especially in R&D. Therefore, in some areas where there is a shortage of talent, some requirements will be appropriately lowered, and sometimes 211 undergraduates may also be recruited.

However, there are not many positions for liberal arts majors. At the same time, some marketing and even many logistics positions also require a technical background. When Zhiyun Technology recruits talents for these positions, it also tends to choose senior talents with a science and engineering background.

There are actually very few social recruitments for pure liberal arts positions, because there are few pure liberal arts positions and there are also a lot of job seekers. Therefore, the admission rate for some pure clerical positions at Zhiyun Technology is even more exaggerated than the national examination. Basically, all those who can get in are from 985 or above, and many of them are masters or doctors.

The above is about social recruitment. Campus recruitment is relatively less difficult, but it is not easy either... because you have to compete with a large number of graduates from prestigious universities.

According to statistics on the employment directions of Peking University and Tsinghua University graduates this year, 22% of the newly graduated doctoral students chose to join Zhiyun Group, and 18% of the newly graduated master's students chose to join Zhiyun.

In addition to those undergraduate graduates who continue their studies, a considerable number of those who choose to work also choose to join Zhiyun Group.

Today, Zhiyun Group is far more attractive to senior talents than any other company or organization!

Because Zhiyun can give you dreams, generous treatment, and a decent social status.

It is extremely difficult to enter such a top high-tech enterprise.

Even if you study at a 985 university, it is hard to guarantee a place in Zhiyun Group, especially for students with ordinary majors, there is basically no hope.

At this time, some colleges jointly established by Zhiyun Group and universities often offer some recruitment preferences, such as the United Technology College of Shenzhen University, the Tongcheng Branch of Ancheng University, and the Semiconductor Major of Guangcheng University.

The students in these branches or colleges are basically specially trained to meet the talent needs of Zhiyun Group. Even many of the teachers who teach the students are honorary professors or visiting professors who are top engineers of Zhiyun Group.

During the internship, I was directly assigned to the R&D department of Zhiyun Group.

As long as you do well in your studies and perform well in your internship, you can basically enter the R&D department of Zhiyun Group.

There are many parents and high school teachers who can see this point, so in the past two years, some departments jointly run by Zhiyun Group and these universities have received a large number of applications from outstanding high school students, so their admission scores are quite high.

The microelectronics major in Tongcheng branch is a typical example. This is the country's top advanced process technology major and is directly linked to Zhiyun Microelectronics, the country's largest chip foundry.

Entering this major basically means you have one foot in the technical department of Zhiyun Microelectronics.

The scores of students admitted to this major are also quite exaggerated, basically belonging to the top batch of 985 universities.

But his younger brother managed to get in!

In terms of academic performance, his younger brother is better than Yu Taihe.

His sister is still in her second year of high school in her hometown, and her academic performance is also very good. According to the current situation, she is guaranteed to get into a 211 university and has a good chance of getting into a 985 university.

Yu Taihe and his two siblings are all good students and are well-known in the small circle in their hometown.

Although their parents were both born into peasant families, they were well aware of the importance of studying. They instilled in them the idea that studying can change one's destiny and help them get out of the mountains since they were young.

In addition, although her mother only has an elementary school education, she attaches great importance to cultivating the study habits of her two siblings.

Therefore, these three siblings developed relatively good study habits when they were young!

Of course, this is also related to the eldest brother Yu Taihe. As the eldest son, Yu Taihe knew early on that his family was poor and he became sensible early, so he was particularly sensible and precocious when he was a child, and he studied very hard.

This affected my younger brothers and sisters too!
When it comes to studying, parental guidance, family atmosphere, and guidance from older brothers are far more important than famous teachers from prestigious schools!
Creatures of the level of academic masters are never taught by famous teachers in famous schools, but are cultivated by their families!
After Yu Taihe started his doctorate, in order to reduce the burden on his family, he gave a considerable portion of his annual subsidy to his younger brother as living expenses.

However, this living allowance cannot be taken casually.

There are many students in Guangcheng University, and Yu Taihe is not the only one with excellent learning ability. After all, this is a 211 university, and the basic qualities of students are guaranteed. Although many of them let themselves go after entering university, there are also many people like Yu Taihe who choose to study hard.

Yu Taihe was able to surpass a group of classmates and get a direct doctorate degree, and was also taken by his teacher to join the joint research and development center, which is inseparable from his hard work.

After entering the joint R&D center, Yu Taihe quickly arrived at the project team office where his teacher was.

His teacher is engaged in computational materials science, and his latest research direction is new negative electrode materials for lithium batteries, which is a sub-project of Zhiyun Group's large new lithium battery project.

Of course, his teacher's project team is not the only one working on new negative electrode materials for lithium batteries. According to his teacher, there are currently at least thirty project teams in China working on negative electrode materials for lithium batteries.
Some are project teams within Zhiyun Group, some are project teams within HaiLian Auto, but more are project teams from various universities that have cooperated with Zhiyun.

When it comes to R&D, especially the R&D of some key projects, Zhiyun Group has always liked to cast a wide net to catch fish. Many project teams are launched simultaneously to explore different technical routes. In the end, as long as one project team succeeds, it will be a victory.

Such R&D costs are naturally very high, but as I said, Zhiyun is not short of money!
After Yu Taihe arrived at the office, he greeted a few senior colleagues who had arrived earlier and then started working in his office.

He is a newcomer who just joined the project team. He is doing some basic things and helping his seniors. He is still in the accumulation stage.

After a busy morning, after lunch, he was pulled into the laboratory by a senior student to help with experiments.

Taking advantage of the opportunity to help out in the laboratory, Yu Taihe also humbly asked questions and learned from others.

One of his 30-year-old PhD students also admired this junior fellow student, so he said a few more words: "This is a new type of silicon-carbon negative electrode material we are working on. In our previous experiments, we found that this new material has very good properties, so we are continuing to conduct in-depth research in this field to see how this new material works!"

"You, watch carefully and study hard. It will be good for you!"

"Our boss's research on silicon-carbon anode materials is not world-class, but it is also top-notch in China. If you can learn a little bit from my boss, it will be enough for you to graduate!"

Yu Taihe naturally nodded and accepted it humbly.

They were busy in the laboratory until after eight o'clock in the evening. Because the experiment was a critical time, they didn't have time to eat dinner.

After finally finishing the experiment, the senior brother who led the group said, "Okay, that's it for today. Let's go to the cafeteria downstairs to eat. We'll continue tomorrow!"

Upon hearing this, Yu Taihe also smiled.

The biggest benefit of joining this joint R&D center, in addition to the relatively high living allowance, is the food, which makes him particularly satisfied.

There are many dishes, the portions are ample, and you can eat as much meat as you want.

Best of all, it's free!
To be honest, Yu Taihe had never eaten such delicious food in his life. It’s not that he had never eaten delicious food before, but he had never tried eating delicious food for three meals a day... He would feel like he was losing out if he ate one bite less of this free meal!
Every time he had a meal, Yu Taihe couldn't help but sigh that the Zhiyun Group was really rich!
There are hundreds of people in the joint R&D center, but meals are still provided free of charge, including breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper and afternoon tea.

Then there is also an unlimited supply of cola, coffee, tea and other beverages!

Five meals a day, eat and drink whatever you can, as long as you can eat and drink it.

Of course, waste is definitely not allowed. If you are caught, you will be fined or even have your free meals revoked.

Of course, he also knew that compared to the small amount of money for food, the various equipment in the joint research and development center and the large amount of research and development funds were the big money. All the equipment in the joint research and development center was top-notch equipment. In the words of his boss: all the top-notch equipment that can be bought with money is there!
Many seemingly insignificant devices are often worth millions or even tens of millions.

He also heard that the joint research and development center will be allocated a separate supercomputer in the future.

Those who work on computing materials have to take their data models to run supercomputers every few days. Since the supercomputers belong to others, it is troublesome to run them and the cost is not low.

Therefore, the people at the joint R&D center thought about simply building their own supercomputer.

It has been delayed. I heard that it is because this supercomputer is developed by the group itself and it cannot be fully operational in a short time, so it has been delayed.

----

While Yu Taihe was working hard for his doctorate degree, the next day, many engineers were busy in a huge computer room of Zhiyun Cloud Computing Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Zhiyun Technology in Shenzhen.

They are conducting final tests on their first self-developed supercomputer before it is turned on for the first time.

Because this is the company's first self-developed supercomputer, Xu Shenxue attaches great importance to it and came here today to inspect it.

The person in charge of Zhiyun Computing Co., Ltd. is introducing the huge supercomputer in front to Xu Shenxue!
"Mr. Xu, this supercomputer was developed in cooperation with Liming Information Company. Liming Information Company is a leading supercomputer and server supplier in China, with rich technical accumulation in the field of large-scale supercomputers. We have also accumulated considerable technical experience in the use of self-developed chips, especially in small and medium-sized servers and workstations, and have developed our own supercomputer server system."

"Our two companies are conducting joint research and development, which is a strong combination, and the research and development speed is also relatively fast!"

"This supercomputer uses the ZS1A1 CPU from the ZS6 series of chips developed by our semiconductor department. This is a high-performance chip designed specifically for high-performance large servers!"

"The ZS1A6 chip uses a 3-nanometer process, has six cores, supports our self-developed multi-threading technology, can achieve four-way parallelism, has an L18 cache of 1.5MB, a main frequency of GHZ, and a power consumption of watts."

"And our supercomputer uses more than 17,000 CPUs in total!"

Xu Shenxue is naturally very clear about the ZS1 series chips. This is the first mass-produced chip developed by Zhiyun Semiconductor based on its self-developed SOP instruction set.

In recent years, Zhiyun Semiconductor has been designing its own instruction set for desktop-level CPUs and has launched the first version of the Zhiyun SOP instruction set.

Based on this instruction set, Zhiyun Semiconductor designed the first CPU!

However, it is not a general-purpose CPU for individual users, but a high-performance server CPU.

This is taking market issues into consideration!
Although some units had hoped for a long time that Zhiyun could develop a purely domestically produced PC, with everything from the CPU to the graphics card to the memory, flash memory or hard disk to the system, all of which were domestically produced.

However, it is not difficult for Zhiyun to get some spare parts. Memory and flash memory are readily available, and the system has also been developed into a so-called self-developed system based on the open source system.

The CPU and graphics card are a bit more difficult, but the difficulty is actually limited.

For example, when it comes to graphics cards, Zhiyun can even make you an AI chip. A mere PC graphics card is no big deal, not to mention that Zhiyun also has a lot of mature technology and experience in mobile AP graphics card cores.

As for the CPU, the design of the instruction set has gradually come out with the initial version.

But...will all the above-mentioned parts and even systems be useful after they are developed?

It’s useless in the short term… because there’s no ecological support!
I have tried to assemble some trials before, but only a few of Zhiyun’s own software can barely run on it. As for the others... don’t count on it, almost all software on the market cannot be used!

It’s not just because the system is self-developed, even the CPU instruction set is self-developed by Zhiyun, and there is simply no software outside that can support it.

This ecological problem is much more serious than the software problem!

Xu Shenxue went to see the prototype he had built before and tried it out himself. How should I put it? The hardware performance on paper was very good, but in reality it was unusable...

Especially the independent graphics card mentioned above, when the R&D personnel talked about the various hardware data, they were very fierce, directly comparable to the international first-class!
But in actual use, sorry, the character takes one step forward and three steps back, it's very laggy, and many games simply can't be opened.

why?
You thought these games were specially optimized for A or N cards, and there was no way your weird "unusual" graphics card could support the top performance of other people's games.

When Xu Shenxue was actually doing the operation, he was getting impatient... But he couldn't get angry, so he could only say: "This potential is still very good!"

Later, the graphics card project team went to work on the computer boot card!

At this stage, it is good enough to be able to develop a graphics card that supports basic graphics processing. As for high-performance discrete graphics cards, there is still a long way to go.

It's not that it can't be done. Zhiyun Semiconductor can even produce more powerful AI chips. A civilian graphics card is just a super low-profile version of an AI chip. It won't be a big problem to make it.

The problem is that the games on the market don’t support you…which is very embarrassing.

Anyway, the PC project has been plagued by various problems due to ecological issues.

Although various spare parts and even prototypes are available today, they are still not commercially available. They are only used for subsequent research and development, software adaptation, and other needs, and for various research and development work.

At present, many special enterprises and units have also participated in the optimization and adaptation.

The entire optimization and adaptation process will take at least another year to complete the adaptation of the most basic office software and meet the basic office needs of special industries.

As for the subsequent improvement of the entire ecosystem, that will take a long time... You can't force so many software manufacturers on the market to adapt to your new system as soon as possible. That's difficult, and you can only take it slowly.

There is still a long way to go before domestic PCs can be commercialized and used by the public.

However, now that the CPU instruction set has been developed, it cannot be left unused. Ordinary PC products cannot be developed in a short time, so Zhiyun Semiconductor simply launched the server CPU first.

At least if we make server CPUs, there will still be a market... Even if outsiders don't want it, Zhiyun Group, Liuhe Investment, and a large number of companies under Xiannvshan Holdings will provide a guarantee. In addition, there are a large number of special enterprises in the country that can help absorb part of the production capacity, so that the R&D investment will not be lost.

The design, development and tape-out costs of chips are very expensive!

Even if it is one's own semiconductor design department or one's own chip foundry that does the tape-out, the necessary costs are inevitable.

If the chip cannot be sold after it is developed, then we are at a loss!

Fortunately, there is still a great demand for supercomputers and various servers in China today, especially for the companies under Xu Shenxue, all of which are high-tech companies. They have a huge demand for large supercomputers, high-performance servers, workstations, etc., and spend a lot of money every year to purchase servers and even supercomputers.

At the same time, Zhiyun and Weiku have a huge number of data centers!
In China alone, there are more than a dozen large data centers to meet the needs of Zhiyun's various terminal products, and there are also many data centers overseas.

Because of its own huge needs, Zhiyun Group established Zhiyun Cloud Computing three years ago, which specializes in the research and development and construction of various data centers, supercomputers, servers, etc. within the group.

With a guaranteed business base, Zhiyun Computing has developed rapidly. In addition to meeting the internal needs of the group, their computing center even has surplus computing power to supply the market and provide cloud computing services to some enterprises.

Because the group, its affiliated companies and special units have an urgent need for domestically produced high-performance server CPUs.

Based on this situation, Zhiyun Semiconductor also launched the first generation of server CPU 'Zhiyun Super CPU First Generation', abbreviated as ZS1.

There are several models with different performance levels, namely A1-A6, which are used for entry-level workgroups, servers, mid-sized servers, and large servers respectively.

Several of these models have been used on a variety of servers and have been tried out within the group, with good results.

The ZS1A6 model used in the large supercomputer "Intelligent Calculation No. " is the top model among them.

Although there is still some performance gap compared to Intel's top products, it is not too big.

Zhiyun Semiconductor is not a small workshop. It is the number one semiconductor chip design company in China and one of the top three in the world. It has profound technical accumulation in the field of chip design.

The mobile phone SOCs we produce are all of world-class standard, and the technical difficulty of PC CPU is not more difficult than mobile phone SOC...it may even be simpler.

If Zhiyun Semiconductor has the patent authorization for X86, Zhiyun Semiconductor will be able to provide you with a top-level X28 instruction set CPU chip based on 86nm process in just a year or two!

Let me tell you something secretly, this project does exist within Zhiyun Semiconductor, but it is only used as a technical reserve and is not made public, let alone used commercially.

This thing is just in case!
We should be prepared to prevent the United States from going crazy one day and completely cutting off the supply of chips with the X86 instruction set. At that time, we cannot just watch the domestic X86 ecosystem collapse.

As for patents, who would care about patents in such an extreme situation!

This X86 is not just the Americans’ X86, it’s also our X86!

The entire computer network and Internet ecosystem are rooted in the X86 instruction set.

This kind of thing is only discussed when people are talking nicely. If you are not talking nicely, then we won’t talk about patents.

It is impossible to ban the X86 instruction set and then we would be foolish enough not to use it and watch the entire ecosystem collapse. There is no such good thing in the world.

It's just that such an extreme thing is unlikely to happen under peacetime conditions.

Therefore, the X86 chip project within Zhiyun Semiconductor is just a pre-research project. It will maintain low-volume research and development for a long time and just follow the technology.

The real PC chip project is still based on self-developed SOP instruction set chips.

Using server chips as a breakthrough point, we will first open up the market and commercialize the products, and then slowly move into the PC market.

Xu Shenxue had a relatively clear direction for the entire PC project, which was to create a small, limited market and serve as a backup without expecting to make money.

————

With the continued work of a large number of engineers, the final round of inspection of the entire supercomputer was soon carried out.

After the inspection was completed, the supercomputer was turned on for the first time under the watchful eyes of Xu Shenxue!
After the system was officially turned on, there were no earth-shaking changes. Only some indicator lights in the cabinet began to flash, and a large number of fans of various kinds began to run, making a low buzzing sound of fans running throughout the huge computer room.

The entire cooling system also starts to operate, transferring the heat generated by a large number of CPUs to the outside through the cooling system.

In the control room, engineers are monitoring numerous screens.

After confirming that there were no major problems with startup, various tests were started.

At this point, everything that can actually be seen has been completed, and the follow-up is a long and complicated debugging work to finally make the supercomputer usable.

After watching the supercomputer successfully start up and pass the test, Xu Shenxue left Zhiyun Computing Company with a satisfied expression.

He then returned to the company headquarters to preside over a meeting regarding the subsequent relocation of the company headquarters.

The headquarters park of Zhiyun Group has been completed in succession. A total of six super-high-rise office buildings and a large number of ancillary podiums have been built. The lower floors are used for special purposes, such as required office buildings or laboratories and other office spaces.

In addition, there are a large number of employee dormitories, high-end apartment buildings, kindergartens and even primary schools with super-large office areas.

The entire headquarters campus is large enough to accommodate more than 50,000 employees for work and life.

Some of the wholly-owned subsidiaries have already moved in, and now it is the turn of the group headquarters to move in.

This matter is relatively important and involves many troubles, so Xu Shenxue has to keep an eye on it personally.

(End of this chapter)