Riding the wind of rebirth

Several officials looked troubled, and Zhou Zhi quickly said, "AXA Fund has sufficient intellectual property reserves for clearing platforms and settlement centers, and Clover Group can provide nonlinear computing power systems and graph databases. If we just want to put together a usable settlement system, we can do it in three months, but this system is destined to be crude and has too many 'international characteristics,' which will inevitably conflict with domestic regulatory systems and accounting subject settings. To become a 'RMB settlement system' that meets financial supervision, it will definitely need to be greatly transformed."

"Are you willing to give us this system?" An official was overjoyed. Creating a system from scratch is vastly different from modifying an existing system, provided, of course, that the other party is willing to give it to them.

“We can license all the relevant patents to the People’s Bank of China for free, for a period of twenty years,” Zhou Zhi said. “Actually, it won’t take that long. Given the current speed of information system upgrades, this system will probably not last more than ten years before it is replaced by a new system.”

"But the costs of hardware and communication..."

“We can take responsibility for these,” an official noted in his notebook, then said, “but we need to set up an expert group and conduct an initial investigation to ensure that what you’ve said today is feasible.”

“Then let’s set the location in Zhangjiang.” The old man said to the person next to him, “Make a note of it, and arrange a time for us to go and see Lao Hu’s place, and also take a look at Comrade Xiao Zhou and Xiao Miao’s computing power system.”

"It just so happens that Jinan Group's five-axis machining center is entering the acceptance phase," the secretary-like man said in a low voice. "Why don't we wait until it passes acceptance and then inspect it together?"

"This five-axis machining center seems to be related to your Clover Group as well?" the old man asked, looking at Zhou Zhi.

Zhou Zhi nodded: "Yes, Clover Group is responsible for the underlying instruction system, and Xiao Miao is responsible for the design software and control program. Unlike all current five-axis control systems, this is the world's first five-axis machine tool machining center that integrates nonlinear complex curved surface workpiece design, automatic conversion of linear process documents, and automatic output control. It has opened up the design-conversion-programming links. The latter two steps are completely calculated and completed by the system software itself, which greatly saves processing time and reduces the difficulty of process design."

"That's quite an achievement." The old man nodded. "You've finished manufacturing that propeller from the Ship Propulsion Research Institute?"

“I’m not too clear on the specific progress. The machining center has now been taken over by Jinan Group, but I can call and ask.”

"Then let's ask them right away." The old man was very concerned about this issue.

The staff brought over Zhou Zhi's mobile phone; everyone's communication devices had been taken away earlier.

Zhou Zhi dialed Xu Anran's number, but didn't dare to talk for long. He asked a few questions, listened for a while, and then hung up: "They said the workpiece has been processed and fully meets the process design requirements. The processing precision is even higher than that required by the shipbuilding research institute."

"Although the machining accuracy is not as advanced as the world's most advanced level, thanks to the non-linear design tool, the surface fitting accuracy of the workpiece has surpassed the current fitting accuracy of all complex surface machining in the world, raising the world level by an order of magnitude! We have controlled the fitting error to within one four millionth, while the non-linear surface fitting error of the most precise five-axis machine tool from the German company Condon is about one five hundred thousandth."

Those present weren't engineers, but they all roughly understood that comparing one in four million to one in five hundred thousand was practically a generational difference. "That's wonderful!" The old man lightly punched the sofa with his fist. The many dramatic events Li Laosan had described earlier hadn't stirred his emotions, but hearing this news clearly excited him.

“However, Director Qin and his team still haven’t been able to build the prototype propeller.” Zhou Zhi quickly explained, “The main problem is the machining dimensions. The platform we’ve designed is primarily for establishing the engineering route. In traditional craftsman’s terms, it’s like ‘building a standard-sized one to practice with.’ Therefore, this five-axis machining center can only process workpieces of standard size right now. This spiral sword is much smaller than the prototype, my cousin said…”

The secrecy regulations flashed through Zhou Zhi's mind in an instant. He then realized that the people in front of him definitely knew a much higher level of secrecy than he did, so he quickly said, "My cousin said... Director Qin is very happy. This kind of small propeller is most likely used in some kind of projectile weapon. At least my cousin thinks that the prototype equipped with the small propeller looks very similar. He also said that compared to conventional propellers, after adopting the new propeller, the cavitation of the torpedo... no, the prototype, the prototype's cavitation is reduced by 90%, the trajectory is negligible, the noise is reduced by 70%, and the endurance is also increased by 20%."

“With the small ones here, the big ones won’t be far behind.” The old man couldn’t help but smile. “Besides, the small ones have their uses too; they can be useful in so many ways.”

As he spoke, he actually stood up, walked over to Zhou Zhi and Mai Xiaomiao, and extended his hand: "Thank you for your great contributions to the country!"

"No, no..." Zhou Zhi's mind was buzzing for a moment, so short-circuited that he didn't know how to answer. He could only instinctively say the sentence he often used in his childhood essays: "This is what we should do!"

After completing the report, Zhou Zhi and his two companions rushed to Shanghai without even having a chance to visit the elders in the capital.

Zhangjiang in Shanghai is now known as "China's Silicon Valley". Under the leadership of Hu Changfeng, Huahong Group started with IC card chips, Chinese character cards, MP3 rendering chips and VCD chips, and has continued to develop storage chips.

Today, Shanghai's memory chip production has monopolized 65% of the global supply, and this trend continues to grow. It has also driven down the global memory price by 60%. This strong competitive advantage has directly squeezed the survival space of many mechanical storage equipment companies and greatly promoted the rapid transformation of mobile devices.

In the previous Zhou dynasty, for a considerable period of time, mechanical storage devices, namely hard drives, magnetic tapes, and disks, existed for a very, very long time.

For example, 3-inch and 5-inch hard disks, which have long been obsolete in China, were used in Japan until 2025, which is quite incredible.

However, mechanical hard drives and magnetic tapes, as well as pointer disks, are clearly not suitable for mobile environments. Therefore, China's great achievements in memory chips have also driven a "memory revolution" in mobile devices from another perspective.

The most obvious characteristic is that in this time and space, laptops, digital cameras, digital camcorders, and high-capacity mobile flash memory became popular at least five to eight years earlier. The storage chips used in these devices were almost entirely produced in Asia, with China, Japan, and South Korea taking more than 90% of the market share, and China accounting for the vast majority.

Huahong and Clover thus became among the top-tier information technology groups in China in terms of profitability. (End of Chapter)