Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 542 Valley Dog's Dilemma and Cooperation
The virtual world of Demon Blade.

The lush green forest swayed in the wind, and the sound of horses' hooves came from afar. Suddenly, a horse, its body fiery red as if it were emitting flames, came galloping from the wide road through the forest.

On the horse sat a young man dressed in a white robe, so handsome that it was hard to tell whether he was male or female.

As the horse galloped, the young man suddenly frowned and then leaped into the air from the horse's back. Immediately afterward, a fiery red longsword appeared in his hand from who-knows-where.

The fiery red longsword was swung down from the air, instantly unleashing a forty-meter-long red blade of light... The explosive red blade of light flashed forward, snapping large swathes of trees in half.

"Hmph, which blind fool dares to rob me?" The young man, who had unleashed a blade of light, stood on the main road and stared at the seemingly empty space in front of him. "Why don't you come out now? You two little punks, trying to play the stealth ambush game with a low-level invisibility technique!"

"The old man's Heavenly Eye Technique has reached the ninth level; he saw you from a great distance!"

As soon as he finished speaking, two people dressed in black robes and wearing masks appeared on both sides of the road ahead. One of them spoke in a low, hoarse voice: "As expected of the Fire Dragon Madman, you've managed to stack the Heavenly Eye Technique to the ninth level. But even without an ambush, we brothers will make you die here today!"

Then he rushed forward, and a long spear appeared out of thin air in his hand. The spear barrel was sky blue, and the spearhead was flashing with a cold blue light!
The other man in black robes did not step forward. Instead, he produced a black longbow, nocked an arrow, and a black streak of light shot out faster than the man in black robes who had rushed forward, instantly reaching the man in red robes.

The man in red robes blocked the black light with his long sword, his expression changing slightly: "Brother Hei Yun, no wonder you dared to intercept me, so it was the two of you!"

At that moment, the man wielding the spear charged forward: "Die!"

Seeing this, the man in red robes also rushed forward, and soon the two were locked in close combat, with red blade light and blue spear light flying everywhere, occasionally interspersed with a black light.

The entire scene was filled with a chaotic flurry of colorful lights!

A few minutes later, the man in red robes suddenly leaped out of the battle: "Just you wait, I'll get my revenge sooner or later. Tomorrow I'll storm your Black Cloud Peak and lie in wait for your gang members!"

One of the men in black robes sneered, "If you have the guts, come on over! Black Cloud Peak welcomes you!"

The man in the red robe ignored him, flicked his hand, and a large red horse appeared out of thin air beside him. In a flash, the man mounted the horse and galloped away, disappearing in no time!
"People in the top ten of the combat power rankings are indeed difficult to kill. Even the two of us combined couldn't take them down."

"If everyone in the top ten of the power rankings is as strong as him, wouldn't we be unable to stand firm in the public peak competition? It would probably be impossible for us to break into the top ten."

"What's there to be afraid of? These people only entered the game two months earlier than us. We entered the game later, so our levels are harder to catch up with, and our skill levels are also a bit lacking. But when it comes to spending money, who's afraid of who!"

"I'll gather materials in the next couple of days to synthesize this Frostfire Spear to the ninth level, and then upgrade my protective gear. Once I'm decked out in top-tier gear, I'm not afraid of a damn thing!"

"In this peak competition, we must show our Black Cloud Peak's might no matter what, so that it will be easier to recruit new members later!"

"Those big gangs are too famous, they've snatched up all the new players. Right now, we don't have enough players in our gang, and we're not completing enough gang quests. When will we ever be able to raise our gang level to level five?"

"If we don't upgrade our guild level to level 5, our guild-specific skills won't be able to level up. The level of our guild war-specific skills is too low, making it too difficult to compete in guild team battles. We are being countered by too many attributes."

At the same time as this ambush took place, in other parts of the Demon Blade virtual world, many people were also discussing the upcoming public peak tournament!
The Demon Blade has officially announced both in and out of the game that its first public peak tournament will begin in one week.

The first phase of the competition is an individual event, open to all players. After multiple rounds of competition, the top 100 players on the in-game power rankings will be re-established.

All participating players will receive generous rewards based on their final rankings, including limited-edition rare mounts, limited-edition rare weapons and equipment, exclusive titles, and other rare item rewards, as well as a large amount of in-game currency!
Most importantly, this competition is called an open competition, which means that it will be broadcast live to the public through official channels, and the competition scene will be projected directly into the 'Zhiyun Virtual World', open to all virtual users in the four major regions of the world.

In addition, the game's official team will also broadcast the event globally on TikTok and other live streaming platforms... Of course, this live stream will only be a regular video and audio broadcast, and you won't be able to watch the game in a virtual space in a truly immersive way.

However, in order to allow ordinary people to watch the live broadcast of the game using computers, mobile phones and other devices, Magic Blade and Zhiyun Virtual World will also output movie-level 3D game footage. Users can watch it with 3D glasses for a better viewing experience!
In order to gain greater influence for this virtual gaming competition, both the Virtual Business Unit of Zhiyun Group and Magic Light Technology attach great importance to it.

Zhiyun Group aims to enhance the influence and appeal of virtual games and the entire virtual world, thereby selling more virtual devices, stimulating more internet companies to invest in the virtual industry, and providing more virtual content.

Magic Light Technology's goal is much simpler: to acquire more gamers and make more money... This is not something that easily caught the eye of Zhiyun Group. As one of the first game companies to cooperate with virtual game open competitions, Magic Light Technology attaches great importance to this.

After all, for Zhiyun Group, these virtual game tournaments are just one of many advertising and promotional strategies in the virtual industry, and not even one of the more important ones... Zhiyun Group has carried out large-scale advertising and marketing campaigns on a global scale to promote virtual devices and the virtual world, and virtual game tournaments are just a small part of it.

However, for Magic Light Technology, this is a crucial step in their journey to truly go global by clinging to the coattails of Zhiyun Group!
Moguang Technology alone couldn't have achieved such a massive influence... At most, they could just hold a tournament within the game and release some regular live stream footage for promotion.

However, its influence is limited, confined to virtual users and potential players interested in virtual games.

However, if they could collaborate with Zhiyun Group on promotion and marketing, their influence would instantly increase several levels... They could even predict that after the competition started, it would spark a wide-ranging discussion around the world, and even people who had never experienced the virtual world would pay attention and participate in the discussion.

Zhuyun Group has this kind of influence...

Even if the virtual game wasn't Magic Blade, but some other virtual game, it would still have a similar impact!
After all, this is Zhiyun Group. Even people in the primitive tribes of Africa know that it is a super powerful top multinational high-tech enterprise!

They're using all sorts of cutting-edge technology!

From early smart terminals to today's robots, virtual devices, and artificial intelligence technology that permeates numerous terminal devices and plays a huge driving role.

Aside from the smart terminal business being a bit 'ordinary', everything else is a unique, cutting-edge technology that other companies can't even copy!

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Across the Pacific Ocean, in Google's robotics lab, technicians stared intently at the robot walking ahead, many of them quite nervous!
This robot is over one meter tall and looks somewhat similar to the humanoid bipedal robot launched by Zhiyun Group.

However, its movements were extremely slow, making one worry that it would fall over at any moment...

"The conventional motion model no longer poses a major problem. Our robot can now perform regular walking, and the robotic arm can also perform some common movements."

An Indian-looking technician said, "But the accuracy is too low. To perform high-precision actions, the requirements for data acquisition and instantaneous data processing speed from the sensors are too high. The sensor modules are okay, we can barely make them, it's just that the power consumption is a bit high, but the data processing is too complicated, our underlying algorithm can't do it yet!"

"like this……"

As soon as the words were spoken, the test robot in front of them began to operate its robotic arm, attempting to pick up the items on the table, but it failed after several attempts!
"This kind of robot is far from meeting the standards for commercial use!"

"We still need to make further progress in the fields of hardware and algorithms. On the hardware side, we use Zhiyun's PX4 chip, which is a very good 7-nanometer general-purpose terminal computing chip. In terms of performance, it is second only to Zhiyun's own EYQ chip, but the computing power is still not enough!"

"Furthermore, we lack ZY series chips. We previously tried to disassemble ZY34 chips from robots and Hailan cars... but we lack the corresponding development software and data interface for this chip, so we cannot use it!"

"Out of desperation, we had to use more PX4 chips for data processing, but as you can see, the results are far from ideal!"

"Although in theory, after using a large number of PX4 chips, its overall computing power is no weaker than that of Zhiyun Robotics' early products in terms of pure computing power, the data processing speed is still too slow!"

"Simply using a general-purpose terminal computing chip like the PX4 chip cannot replace the unique role of a dedicated big data processing chip like the ZY chip!"

"Therefore, we still need a dedicated data processing chip, and this is something we cannot solve for the time being!"

“Our company’s semiconductor design department lacks relevant chip design experience, and although Intel, Qualcomm and AMD have expressed their intention to cooperate, they have been slow to come up with mature design solutions.”

"Intel's 'High Speed ​​Data Processing Chip Project,' also known as the 'HSC' project, was launched two years ago, was suspended last fall, but has now been restarted!"

"However, they stated that the development costs for this chip project would be extremely high, with an initial plan requiring over five billion US dollars in R&D funding, and they demanded that we bear at least 50% of the R&D costs!"

"However, their experience in the field of high-performance GPU chips is too shallow, and high-performance GPU chips are the technological foundation of a series of artificial intelligence computing chips. Intel is not good at this!"

"Next up is AMD's AH chip project. This project is more feasible, after all, they are already the most technologically advanced company in the field of high-performance GPUs besides Zhiyun Semiconductor. Their new generation of computing power graphics cards launched this year is quite good. The hardware level is said to have reached the level of APO4600, but the optimization is not good. The existing supporting software cannot bring out its hardware level!" AMD has been working on computing power graphics cards for a long time, and the results in the last two years have actually been quite good. At least the hardware level is actually quite good, and it can reach the level of APO4600 graphics cards... The problem is that this graphics card seems to have similar performance to APO4600 graphics cards, but it uses a 7-nanometer process GPU core, plus TSMC's 2.5D packaging process.

AMD's computing power, achieved with a 7-nanometer process, barely matches the performance of Zhiyun's 12-nanometer process graphics cards... This alone demonstrates the vast gap between AMD and Zhiyun Semiconductor in the field of computing graphics cards!

Of course, this is also related to the gap in packaging technology between TSMC and Zhiyun Microelectronics. Zhiyun Microelectronics' advanced packaging has been iterated several times, from the first generation 2.5D to the second generation 2.5D, and then transitioned to the first generation 3D packaging of the APO4600 graphics card and the second generation 3D packaging of the APO5000 graphics card.

With the iterative advancement of packaging technology, it becomes possible to stack more high-speed memory on chips and maintain higher communication speeds.

For high-performance graphics cards, communication speed is a critical performance indicator!

Besides being inferior in hardware, the lack of ecosystem support is even more indescribable... Currently, AI engineers worldwide are all using GPU development software from Zhiyun Group; nobody uses AMD's development software!
Furthermore, it lacks the support of corresponding artificial intelligence models!
The AI ​​model with the largest global market share is GTAI, which is free and open source from Zhiyun Group... and this GTAI only supports Zhiyun Group's APO graphics cards!

Without ecosystem support, AMD graphics cards simply cannot be sold!
Not to mention other people who have purchased and used it, even AMD itself uses APO graphics cards from Zhiyun Group to deploy GTAI artificial intelligence!

Unfortunately, their own graphics cards don't support GTAI!

There are no other mature and usable artificial intelligence models available on the market for them to use.

The global success of Zhiyun Group's APO graphics cards, which have forced a large number of American companies to purchase them at high prices, owes a great deal to the open-source artificial intelligence model GTAI!
We are now in the age of artificial intelligence. A large number of internet companies, as well as a large number of manufacturing companies and other high-tech companies, have successively applied the artificial intelligence deployed by the companies themselves. And the artificial intelligence models used are basically the same as GTAI... there are no other artificial intelligence options.

It's not that there aren't other AI options. Google has actually released its own AI model and made it open source. The problem is that the performance gap is too big, so nobody uses it. Google's own internet business doesn't even use its own AI model; instead, it uses the GTAI open-source model.

GTAI only supports APO graphics cards!

So this puts AMD's computing power graphics cards in an awkward position... they've been created, but nobody uses them!

Because using Google's open-source AI model with an AMD graphics card... the performance is too poor, and it has no market competitiveness whatsoever. If there were any other options, no company would do such a thing... not even an American company!

The reason they're still maintaining R&D is purely because of various subsidies... They only have this one seedling left, so they can't not support it. Even if it's useless, they still have to continue providing subsidies to keep it afloat.

Otherwise, if one day Zhiyun Group stops selling APO graphics cards, then there will be no alternative!
Many American companies now believe that it is precisely because of AMD's computing power and GPUs, and Google's open-source AI model, that Zhuyun Group has been forced to continue selling APO GPUs, maintain GTAI's updates and iterations, and keep it open source.

Therefore, computing power, graphics cards, and artificial intelligence models are things you may not need, but you can't be without... otherwise, others can hold you hostage in no time!

Therefore, it is essential to provide annual subsidies to maintain AMD's computing power and graphics card development, as well as to support Google's artificial intelligence model research and development.

Of course, providing a small subsidy to maintain the development progress is acceptable... but don't expect large-scale procurement and use; shareholders' money doesn't fall from the sky.

Why not use the better, more cost-effective GTAI+APO graphics card bundle from Zhiyun Group instead of the outdated Google Open Source AI and AMD graphics card? Does this mean there's no competition in the market?
Xu Shenxue from Zhiyun Group was well aware of this, which is why he opened up the sale of APO graphics cards and promoted GTAI open source... The best form of blockade is not to stop selling, but to dump them!

They have been suppressing them by dumping their products and hindering their independent research and development capabilities. After a few years of continuous technological iteration, it will be impossible for them to catch up even if they want to!
That will be the time when we truly face a bottleneck!
Now, let's just dump it all on the open!
However, some things are sold openly, while others are kept secret and not sold.

Especially the ZY series chips... Zhiyun Group has never intended to sell these chips to the public, nor has it ever disclosed the technical principles of these chips. It has only simply revealed that they are a data processing chip specifically for artificial intelligence.

Even now, the outside world still doesn't understand the technical principles behind this chip... Zhuyun Group doesn't disclose it to the public, making it very difficult for outside technical personnel to figure it out.

Some researchers in Europe and America even fantasized about using a simple and crude method, polishing it layer by layer, and observing the transistors of the ZY chip with a high-resolution electron microscope.

They didn't dream of completely copying it, but instead tried to understand the technical principles of the chip... and then design one themselves.

Unfortunately, this is a chip with hundreds of billions of transistors. With current human technology, it is too difficult to understand the technical principles inside by polishing and observing under a microscope. Let alone chips of this level, even chips from ten years ago cannot be replicated by polishing.

There are too many transistors, and they are currently 3D transistor structures, making them extremely difficult to polish and observe.

Reverse engineering modern chips is an almost impossible task!

You can imitate the corresponding functions, but you can't reverse engineer them!

This is also why companies like Intel, Qualcomm, and even AMD have encountered numerous difficulties when trying to imitate and copy the ZY chip from Zhiyun Group... They simply cannot copy it!

Without the ZY chip, developing robots or virtual reality devices based on artificial intelligence technology becomes extremely difficult...

That's true for the hardware part, but there's also the more important software part, which is the core algorithm part of artificial intelligence!
Right now, Google and its team can't even create generative AI that's relatively low in technical content, like GTAI... As for the underlying AI algorithms used in various terminals within the Zhiyun Group, which have never been made public, that's even more difficult.

The artificial intelligence technology of Zhiyun Group, the so-called large-scale generative AI, including its own Yun AI and the open-source GTAI, are only the most superficial technological applications.

The real core technology is actually artificial intelligence that runs directly on the terminal, that is, artificial intelligence used in robots, virtual devices, low-altitude drones and other equipment.

This kind of underlying AI algorithm can achieve high-performance AI by relying on only a small amount of computing power in the terminal, a few APO graphics cards or EYQ chips, plus ZY chips... The difficulty here is enormous.

However, Google's technology in this area is far behind... This is also the main reason why the Google robot in front of them cannot achieve a series of high-precision movements.

Even if the robot's hardware meets the required standards, it still won't work.

A senior executive at Google sighed helplessly as he looked at the silly, slow-moving robot in front of him, which had almost no chance of being commercially viable.

In the field of artificial intelligence, Google has been chasing for so many years, but still can't catch up, which is very frustrating!

If Google is in such a state, then other businesses like fruit are in even worse shape!
The fruit industry also has large-scale artificial intelligence research and development projects. They are preparing to develop smart electric vehicles, virtual equipment, and also have robot projects.

However, all three of these products require top-tier artificial intelligence technology!
However, Apple's AI technology research and development capabilities are not as good as Google's.

Therefore, their artificial intelligence technology relies primarily on buying!
Of course, Google and Facebook are also on a buying spree!

These days, the startup scene in artificial intelligence technology is incredibly hot!

As long as someone develops a decent and valuable artificial intelligence algorithm, even if it only has some reference value, companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook will spend a lot of money to acquire your startup!
Well, there's also Zhiyun Group on the side driving up prices... Zhiyun Group is also buying up all kinds of artificial intelligence technologies globally. They don't necessarily use the acquired technologies themselves; some are used as references, while others are purely bought and shelved: to prevent others from using them!
These world-leading companies are snapping up startups and technologies in various artificial intelligence fields around the world, which has led to a very hot AI startup scene.

As soon as entrepreneurs achieve even a little success, these top companies will spend money to acquire them!
Even so, no company in the world has been able to challenge Zhiyun Group's absolute advantage in the field of artificial intelligence technology!
In the hardware field of chips, other companies can still struggle!
However, in the field of core underlying algorithms, other companies can't even compete!
It's not that they're too weak, it's that Zhuyun Group is too strong!

With the support of Xu Shenxue's research system quota, Zhiyun Group's artificial intelligence technology has long surpassed the heights that this era should have reached!

However, while Google may not be able to compete with Zhiyun in artificial intelligence technology, it is attempting to challenge Zhiyun Group in areas such as robotics and virtual devices... Nevertheless, the necessary collaborations will still occur.

This is especially true in the emerging virtual content industry, which has seen significant growth in the past year.

The virtual content project team under Gugou Company began to communicate and contact the virtual business unit under Zhiyun Group, preparing to carry out in-depth strategic cooperation in the field of virtual content.

The prospects for the virtual content industry are huge... While Google may not be able to make virtual device hardware, it can certainly make virtual content, represented by virtual games.

After all, Zhiyun has made its entire virtual content development kit available for free. Not to mention large companies like Google, even ordinary startups can do it.

As a world-class internet giant, Google still has a significant advantage in the virtual content industry!

When Google and Zhiyun Group were discussing the virtual content industry and preparing for in-depth strategic cooperation.

The first Virtual Game Open Summit, jointly organized by Zhiyun Group and Moguang Technology, has officially launched!
(End of this chapter)