Riding the wind of rebirth

"So our system not only needs to achieve these functions, but also needs to relieve employees' burdens, freeing them from the tedious paperwork they previously had, so that they don't feel the increase in workload."

Zhou Zhi smiled and said, "But this problem should not exist in the base, because I guess if the base introduces this system, I can't say that it will make the comrades' work easier than two years ago, but at least it will greatly alleviate the current work pressure."

From the transportation of the rocket to the base, loading and unloading, testing, debugging, assembly to the final successful launch, the complexity of this project is definitely not less than the development of a large-scale software system. As someone who has been in charge of large projects, Zhou Zhi certainly knows how much workload the base needs to add to all comrades in the base in order to complete the functions of similar systems without the help of the system and ensure the safety of the launch mission. In other words, Chinese soldiers are good at fighting tough battles and have iron wills, and they just carried it through with manpower.

Zhou Zhi was moved by this and made a decision: "The military and the people are like one family. If the base needs this system, we can donate it to the base free of charge."

"Really? That's great!" Zhang Weichao couldn't help but be overjoyed. He had never expected Zhou Zhi to be so generous. Before, they had heard about the praise of Zhou Zhi from Qin Haifeng and Lu Hui, and wanted to discuss some practical issues in engineering management with Zhou Zhi. They didn't expect that this kid really had something in his mind, and was now so selflessly willing to contribute his management system.

However, Li Weigang was not as happy as Zhang Weichao. He smiled bitterly and said, "We know roughly what this system looks like. Blue Sky Sunshine used to have a close relationship with our unit, working on radar and communications. According to them, your system has high hardware requirements. Even if you are willing, Xiao Zhou, I don't know if the base can apply for enough supporting information equipment to match your system."

This is really a question that made Zhou Zhi speechless. The system needs to run on information equipment. What is the price of a computer now? At least six or seven thousand yuan. In order to implement every process in the system, it means that every working group in the base must be equipped with at least one device. It is best for each person to have one, so that the system can operate flexibly and efficiently.

The military has been living a tight life since the large-scale disarmament until now. Even though the treatment of rocket launch troops is much better than that of ordinary troops, it is hard to imagine that they should be equipped with so much equipment at once.

"Can we use the TS mode?" Mai Xiaomiao, who had been sitting obediently next to Zhou Zhi, suddenly spoke.

"TS?"

“Terminal Services,” Mai Xiaomiao further explained, “Hasn’t Clover’s computing power card already been developed? With a little modification, it can be developed into a computing power terminal. We only need to deploy another server and connect all the computing power terminals to the server through a network switch. In this way, we can cancel the local storage in the Clover Group’s QPM system and read data from the server. Can this greatly reduce costs?”

Mai Xiaomiao had never considered such a question before. Which of the internationally renowned IT companies is not wealthy and willing to invest tens of billions or even hundreds of billions in research and development, intellectual property mergers and acquisitions, equipment, and systems?

Even the Clover Group is taking the same path. They have no money and cannot afford the equipment, yet they still want to start an information technology revolution. Is this a joke?

But this idea is gradually changing for Mai Xiaomiao. As Zhou Zhi traveled around these days, she gradually realized that in this country, information technology groups as wealthy as Clover are the outliers. The vast majority of high-tech companies do not have much capital to support them. It is "normal" to wait for food to come in or even live beyond their means.

After realizing this situation, Mai Xiaomiao deeply admired Zhouzhi for being able to make Clover rise up in this land and become the most profitable local high-tech enterprise. It also made her change her perspective and re-examine the Chinese people's style and tradition of hard work.

There are many people and many things on this land that have touched her deeply, and she also wants to do her part for this land from the bottom of her heart.

"Computing power terminal..." Zhou Zhi thought about it carefully, this is indeed a way. In fact, such terminals do exist. For example, the computerization of several major banks currently all adopts the terminal mode.

A terminal is actually an input and output device. Compared with the computer host, it is a peripheral and does not provide any computing or processing functions.

A server can be understood as a computer, which is usually placed in the company's computer room and then connected to offices upstairs and downstairs, or even several kilometers away, through communication lines.

There is a device in the office. It has a monitor as an output device, a keyboard as an input device, a signal processing device and a communication device, which constitutes a terminal.

To put it more easily, it is like the computer at home is placed in the living room, but the monitor and keyboard are placed in the bedroom. You can operate the computer in the living room in the bedroom. That's roughly what it means.

Terminals appeared much earlier than personal computers. They were originally used to replace punched cards for input and output of servers, mainframe computers and other devices.

Early computer terminals were generally electromechanical teletypewriters, but they were too slow for most applications, so from the early 1970s many computer companies realized that television input terminals were much better than punch cards and could make computers easier to interact with users and generate new applications.

Early terminals were also very expensive, costing tens of thousands of dollars or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they were just simple word processing terminals. The text on their screens was usually green or orange, and they used their own system network architecture protocol to connect to mainframe computers via coaxial cables.

With the continuous advancement of technology, more than a dozen terminal manufacturers have developed around the world. Their instructions are different, and eventually the so-called smart terminals were developed. The most widely used and familiar one among Chinese people is VT100.

The VT100 is a terminal introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1978. It was designed to be compatible with the company's PDP-11 and VAX minicomputers. With its affordability, reliability, and ease of use, the VT100 quickly became the industry standard for terminals. Its ASCII-based display and simple command structure made it a popular choice for programmers and computer enthusiasts.

Most mainframe computers run the UNIX system, which is a multi-user system that allows many people to share a device. Therefore, a mainframe can often connect to dozens or hundreds of terminal devices for everyone to use.

Although Zhou Zhi asked Clover to develop the computing power card not for the purpose of developing a terminal, it is fully capable of performing such a function.

Even because it has its own processor, as long as it is equipped with a small storage, the functions it can achieve will be much more powerful than ordinary terminals.

It can almost be used as a small computer without a graphical interface. (End of this chapter)