Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 224 AI Model Export Restrictions
This winter, companies under Xu Shenxue are all making various large-scale investments, and the focus of investment is still on the semiconductor industry chain.

The investment is often tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars, which is scary to look at.

Such a huge investment naturally requires sufficient funds.

The funds mobilized by a series of companies in the Zhiyun Technology system are Zhiyun’s own profits, and only a company of Zhiyun Technology’s size can support such a huge investment.

Zhiyun Microelectronics has invested tens of billions of dollars in multiple large-scale wafer fabs, Huaxing Technology has invested more than 2 billion dollars in the screen field, and Weiku Industrial has received more than 2 billion dollars in strategic investment in a large-scale foundry production base.

This is just a part of it. In fact, Zhiyun Technology has invested in many areas, and many of them seem to have little to do with mobile phones and smart devices at present.

For example, in order to prepare for the development of facial recognition technology in advance, Xu Shenxue has invested hundreds of millions of dollars and acquired many overseas companies... 3D facial recognition technology is actually a comprehensive project that requires technical support from many aspects. In order to speed up the research and development, Zhiyun Technology is developing various technologies on its own while spending money to acquire various technologies and patents.

It is mostly for the purpose of acquiring patents... Even many patents are not actually needed by Zhiyun Technology, but they will still be acquired in order to establish a patent blockade to prevent competitors from obtaining them.

Xu Shenxue hopes that when 3D facial recognition technology is launched in the future, he will still be the only company in the world and will be able to monopolize it for many years.

Therefore, in its layout of 3D face recognition technology, Zhiyun Technology is not only developing the technology itself, but also blocking the way for other manufacturers.

In addition to facial recognition technology, Wanjin Technology is also promoting the research and development of screen fingerprint technology.

In Xu Shenxue's opinion, the best mobile phone unlocking solution is not facial recognition or fingerprint recognition alone, but a combination of both... Zhiyun Mobile Phone will do its best and provide both to consumers, so that consumers can use whichever they like.

Similarly, in order to build the originality of future under-screen fingerprint technology, Zhiyun Technology's investment department is also buying around the world...packaging and acquiring almost all startups, patents, and especially patents related to under-screen fingerprints.

But it's hard to monopolize this thing, at least the four-star ones won't pay attention to you...

In fact, many mobile phone manufacturers have already started the research and development of under-screen fingerprint. Why?
Because Zhiyun has been too strict in holding on to patents in ordinary fingerprint technology, in the past two years, only Apple took advantage of the early action and directly took home the world's second largest fingerprint technology manufacturer at the time. However, other mobile phone companies are in trouble.

Due to patent blockade, a large number of mobile phone manufacturers are unable to use capacitive fingerprint technology.

How to do?
Take another path.

Taking Samsung as an example, they are developing iris unlocking technology and under-screen fingerprint technology.

Other manufacturers are no exception, many are developing under-screen fingerprint technology...even Apple is no exception.

They see this technology as the best opportunity to break through Zhiyun's blockade in the field of fingerprint technology.

In the current field of identification and unlocking, people are working on capacitive fingerprint, under-screen fingerprint, and pupil unlocking.

As for facial recognition, there is actually... but it is basically concentrated in the field of 2D facial recognition. The security of this thing is too poor. In Zhiyun Technology, this so-called 2D facial recognition technology is used as an additional function of the photo album to organize and classify the albums, but it has never been considered to use this thing in the field of unlocking.

If Zhiyun uses this thing on a mobile phone to unlock the phone... it will make global news headlines, the negative kind.

If a group of people successfully unlock a Zhiyun phone with photos, Zhiyun Technology’s stock price and sales will plummet.

Because in the eyes of many people, Zhiyun phones are high-tech and safe... You can unlock a Zhiyun phone with just a photo, which is definitely a nuclear bombardment-like blow to the Zhiyun phone brand.

Therefore, it is impossible for Zhiyun Technology to develop 2D facial recognition, even though Zhiyun Technology's technical reserves in this field are far ahead of other mobile phone manufacturers.

In the future unlocking field, Zhiyun Technology has placed its focus on 3D face recognition, while also supporting under-screen fingerprint recognition.

Let's take a two-pronged approach and pursue unification of the world!
In response to this demand, Zhiyun Technology has also made huge investments in the field of identification and unlocking.

Then there are other miscellaneous investments, such as various glass materials and ceramic materials, trying to find a better fuselage material for the future.

Then we will also focus on the research and development of wireless charging technology and 5G technology.

It is worth mentioning that wireless charging technology, 5G technology and glass and ceramic body materials are all highly related.

Because if you use wireless charging technology and 5G, you can no longer use a metal body... the signal attenuation will be too serious and the signal will be very poor.

At this time, materials such as glass or ceramics that do not cause electromagnetic signal attenuation are needed as the body material.

These are all types of technology research and development that are directly used on mobile phones, and they are all relatively superficial things.

In addition, Zhiyun Technology has a large number of deeper R&D projects, such as the many underlying technologies behind cloud computing and big data, and the most popular one is the related R&D of artificial intelligence technology.

The artificial intelligence 'Xiaoyun' caused a sensation around the world as soon as it was launched, and directly stimulated the wave of artificial intelligence.

Later, Fruit was not willing to lag behind and worked overtime to come up with a SIRI voice assistant.

Later, after detailed comparative tests, people discovered that the difference between the two was huge... It's hard to say specifically, but Xiaoyun is smarter and SIRI is a little silly.

The main reason for this is that Xiaoyun is not an ordinary voice assistant, it is a serious AI based on deep learning!

Even though the AI ​​on Zhiyun phones is actually just a super-strictly castrated version pushed to the market by Zhiyun Research Institute, it can still beat many voice assistants and big data models.

As for the real AI, Zhiyun Research Institute has never announced it to the public. That thing has been undergoing continuous secret large-scale training and is divided into multiple subsystems!
The first time outsiders saw real AI was when Xu Shenxue personally took this thing to give a report. The robot dog and drone controlled by AI combined with each other, giving everyone attending the report a shocking experience from the future.

The drone directly carries the robot dog under the control of AI, performs autonomous flight, then lands and releases the robot dog. The robot dog also plans its own route and identifies and performs the cleaning procedure. After the cleaning is completed, the drone starts again and returns with the robot dog.

Although the whole process looked very lame, especially the robot dog's extremely slow movements, and it always made wrong judgments like a mentally retarded person.

But it still cannot conceal the huge shock it brings to people!
Because this is almost a scene that could only appear in science fiction movies!

Xu Shenxue brought this scene into reality... The only problem is that the current algorithm is not good enough. At the same time, if mobile terminals want to directly run such complex AI, the hardware requirements are very high. At least the physique of drones and robot dogs cannot support it.

This is also the reason why Xu Shenxue brought a server with him!
In that demonstration, it was actually this server that provided computing power support. The drone or robot dog was actually just a mobile terminal... It had no computing power. All actions were transmitted to the AI ​​server behind via radio signals. The AI ​​server then calculated the results and transmitted them back to the terminal devices via radio signals. However, with the rapid development and iteration of current chip technology, the AI ​​local computing tasks that still require server support may only require a small chip in the future.

By the way, Zhiyun’s AI model has become a restricted export technology... Even some specific AI models have been listed as confidential projects and cannot even be made public.

In addition to AI models, the AI ​​chips developed by Zhiyun Semiconductor specifically for AI training have also become export-restricted technologies... although the outside world actually does not know that Zhiyun Technology uses special AI chips for training.

This thing is still highly confidential within Zhiyun Technology.

However, AI chips have also become a restricted export technology. Not only the technology, but even the products are not allowed to be exported.

In addition, in order to develop AI chips, Xu Shenxue also vigorously developed conventional civilian graphics card chip technology to reduce the overall cost of AI chips.

At the end of January, Xu Shenxue appeared in Zhiyun Semiconductor’s independent office building.

As the number of employees in its subsidiaries increases, Zhiyun Technology's demand for office space is also growing, and the Zhiyun Building is no longer enough.

After rapid construction of the previously purchased land, the two office buildings were finally renovated. Zhiyun Semiconductor, which was growing in size, was the first to move there and occupied one building exclusively.

Another subsidiary, Zhiyun Network, which is an APP mall, cloud storage, big data, and other miscellaneous software company, constitutes Zhiyun Technology's software Internet business and occupies another building.

Today, the main employees in Zhiyun Building are employees of the group headquarters, mainly from various project business groups, such as PCs, mobile phones and platforms.

As for another core research and development institution, the Intelligent Research Institute which is engaged in various artificial intelligence research and development, it was not located in the headquarters building from the beginning, but was previously established in another area. At that time, Zhiyun Technology was wealthy and powerful, so it directly bought the entire building.

Not only is there a single office building with more than 30 floors, but the building also has a very large podium that serves as a testing site for various types of tests.

Then there are two large server bases in other places where electricity resources are cheap... The main cost of training AI, in addition to hardware costs, is electricity costs, so it is more cost-effective to choose some places with cheap electricity costs.

This is the first time that Xu Shenxue has visited Zhiyun Semiconductor after its relocation.

After going upstairs, Xu Shenxue also saw through the window the construction site not far away...those were also the office buildings being built by Zhiyun Technology.

The entire headquarters area of ​​Zhiyun Technology is actually very large. There are six office buildings with more than 30 floors planned, and there are also a large number of podium buildings and some independent buildings.

In addition to the office area, there are also many employee dormitories that are also 30 stories high... The housing prices in Shenzhen are too expensive. In order to solve the accommodation problems of grassroots employees, Zhiyun Technology initially rented a large number of various apartments, but later found it too troublesome.

They simply created a piece of industrial land behind the headquarters and built a number of dormitory buildings on it.

So don’t be fooled by the fact that these dormitory buildings are 30-story residential buildings. In fact, they are all industrial facilities… They are not residential buildings in the conventional sense, the kind that don’t have property deeds, otherwise it would be difficult to operate!

In the Qianshan area, where every inch of land is valuable, if Zhiyun wants to build a dormitory building for its headquarters, the local authorities will quickly arrange the land for you...but if you want to build a commercial residential district as well, that's not so easy to do and will have a very bad impact.

Therefore, this residential area looks like an ordinary community, but it is actually a formal industrial building, which belongs to the factory dormitory model.

There are also many large canteens!
Zhiyun Technology, free food and accommodation!
If employees feel that the management of the apartment provided by the company is strict and the environment is not good enough, they can directly buy or rent a house outside. It’s up to you.

These living facilities of Zhiyun Technology are actually mainly provided to some grassroots employees with relatively "low" incomes.

As for middle and senior management... those who have made it to middle and senior management in Zhiyun Technology have already earned quite a considerable income and have basically bought large apartments. Very few of them live in this kind of apartment dormitories.

In fact, even ordinary employees have considerable incomes, especially those who have already started a family, most of whom buy houses and settle down outside... Some people say that since the rise of Zhiyun, the housing prices in Qianshan have been rapidly driven up.

Zhiyun employees are very rich, so they will naturally give priority to buying houses in communities near the company. This has driven up surrounding housing prices, causing them to rise sharply.

After arriving at Zhiyun Semiconductor, Xu Shenxue first inspected the AI ​​chip project.

Fu Zhengyang introduced to Xu Shenxue: "Our AI chip has been iterated for two generations. What you are seeing now is the third generation AI chip designed by us, which is expected to adopt a 32-nanometer process and will be produced by Zhiyun Microelectronics to ensure that the technology is not leaked!"

"Compared to the second-generation chip we are using, the overall computing power of this AI chip has been greatly improved, reaching about five times the computing power of the second-generation chip, but the power consumption is the same as the second-generation AI chip!"

Although AI chips are not well known to the outside world, they have always been an important project in Zhiyun Semiconductor, and a lot of resources have been invested in them.

Fu Zhengyang said: "However, the R&D investment in AI chips is relatively large, and the output is relatively small, which greatly increases the cost. Therefore, we have also accelerated the R&D of civilian PC graphics card projects to dilute the cost of AI chip projects as much as possible."

Recommend a very interesting new book "I have the ability to make money!"

On the rooftop, Lu Heng thought about how he had fallen from a wealthy second-generation to a dishonest debtor in the past thirty years.

In the 1990s, when business was booming, my young and knowledgeable father sold his house in Shanghai and moved south to develop...

Around 2000, my father thought the Internet was a bubble, so he pulled out in time and stayed away from it...

In 2010, my father withdrew his investment in Xiaomi, a small workshop...

In 2013, my father learned from his mistakes and started to speculate in Bitcoin. He sold Bitcoin during the bull market and made a small profit...

In 2019, my elderly father, through an acquaintance, paid for the construction of a pre-sale house of Evergrande...

Well, it’s good. Life is slowly returning to normal.

Lu Heng hung up the debt collection phone call, hung up the call from his ex-wife asking for child support, got drunk, and opened his eyes again. He was reborn in 2013, the high school graduation season...



(End of this chapter)