Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 377 Intel's Concerns
On January 6, Xu Shenxue, who has always been very low-key and even a little mysterious in the public eye, appeared at Shenzhen University.

Of course, it is not the main campus, but the United Technology College jointly founded by the school and Zhiyun Group.

In the auditorium of United Technology College, Xu Shenxue attended the artificial intelligence forum held that day.

At the meeting, Xu Shenxue gave a brief speech as a special guest, but he did not talk about the technology itself... after all, he did not understand the technology.

He talked more about the importance of technology to people!
Talk about the changes and help that artificial intelligence technology has brought to people's lives, and imagine the future of artificial intelligence technology.

"In my opinion, within the next ten years, our artificial intelligence technology will be able to develop to a fairly mature level, and weak artificial intelligence technology will be perfected."

“Artificial intelligence technology will be applied to all walks of life and become a part of people’s daily lives!”

“And the various smart terminals that people use in their daily lives, such as mobile phones, computers, tablets, smart glasses or watches, will generally be equipped with various AI applications and have certain machine learning capabilities!”

"Of course, there are also various robots, such as our Zhiyun general-purpose robots, service robots, industrial robots, and vehicles, airplanes and other means of transportation that are also equipped with artificial intelligence technology!"

"In the future, artificial intelligence technology will be integrated into people's daily lives and become a part of their daily lives!"

"In industrial production, scientific research, and even artistic creation, artificial intelligence technology will also appear on a large scale!"

“It will be everywhere and become part of our society!”

"Of course, this kind of artificial intelligence is not like what is described in science fiction novels or movies, with human emotions, autonomous consciousness, and robots rebelling... Because our human technology is still a very long way from reaching this level... Maybe by the time we set foot in the South Gate Star System, we may not be able to create this kind of strong artificial intelligence!"

"Because this is no different from creating a new life, and we humans have only managed to create a whole new species!"

"The artificial intelligence of the future will exist in the form of weak artificial intelligence. It will help us complete various repetitive and boring tasks without innovation, and help us complete some dangerous, extreme and harsh environments!"

"It will be our best helper!"

Xu Shenxue has always been an advocate of artificial intelligence technology and has promoted artificial intelligence technology and robotics technology in many public occasions.

After all... Zhiyun Group itself is a global leader in artificial intelligence technology and robotics technology, and other companies are still far from Zhiyun Group's technology.

It's natural to brag about your own children more.

Just like many years ago, Xu Shenxue often advocated the smart device ecosystem and smart home concepts centered on smartphones; at the same time, he also advocated the importance of semiconductor technology on many occasions, raising the importance of advanced chips to the same level as strategic materials such as food, water, oil, coal, and steel.

Because Zhiyun Group itself does these things, various smart terminals with mobile phones as the core and semiconductor businesses are the core businesses of Zhiyun Group.

This also led many people to think that Xu Shenxue was just bragging about whatever his own company did...

This is somewhat wrong to blame Xu Shenxue... In fact, many times, Xu Shenxue would only do what was needed, and then promote it in order to succeed.

After all, at the beginning...Xu Shenxue just wanted to make a mobile phone!

Then, in order to protect itself and avoid being strangled, it gradually entered various fields of the consumer electronics supply chain, followed by chip design, and then semiconductor manufacturing.

In the end, he found that in order to maintain the business security of his own Zhiyun Group's core products, namely various smart terminals headed by mobile phones, he had to even develop semiconductor equipment and consumables by himself...which was outrageous.

Who can understand his suffering?
Of course, ASML, TSMC, Qualcomm and a large number of other Western semiconductor industry manufacturers said: I don’t understand!

ASML is now forced to suspend the research and development of EUV lithography machines. Although DUV lithography machines are also very profitable, each one costs tens of millions of US dollars, but no one is willing to give up making more money, right?

The price of an EUV lithography machine is over 100 million US dollars.

Furthermore, the lithography machine market in the Chinese region has basically been snatched away by Gulf Technology under Xu Shenxue... Relying on the cost-effectiveness of domestic lithography machines, Gulf Technology has seized a large number of lithography machine orders from domestic semiconductor manufacturers such as SMIC.

Not to mention Zhiyun Microelectronics, basically all the lithography machines that can be used are from Gulf Technology.

At the same time, Zhiyun Microelectronics is the world's second largest semiconductor manufacturer, second only to the Six-Star Semiconductor Division in terms of scale... In fact, in terms of logic chip production capacity, Zhiyun Microelectronics is already the world's number one, with higher revenue.

However, its storage chip production capacity is not as good as four stars.

However, most of the semiconductor production capacity is not in logic chips, but in storage chips!

The storage chip production capacity of Zhiyun Microelectronics is temporarily inferior to that of Sixing, which also leads to the fact that the total production capacity of Zhiyun Microelectronics is temporarily inferior to that of Sixing's semiconductor manufacturing department.

However, logic chips are more expensive, especially the foundry costs of advanced chips are very high. Even for internal orders within Zhiyun Group, the price is not low. Therefore, in terms of revenue, Zhiyun Microelectronics is the world's largest chip manufacturer.

In terms of revenue, Zhiyun Microelectronics ranks first.

In terms of production capacity, the Six-Star Semiconductor Department ranks first.

As for TSMC... it ranks third, mainly because TSMC is mainly engaged in logic chip foundry business, while there is relatively little foundry in the storage chip industry, and basically all the production is done in the factories of major semiconductor manufacturers themselves.

This is the case for storage chip manufacturers such as Zhiyun, Sixin, and Micron.

Of course, in the field of chip foundry, TSMC is still the undisputed number one.

Zhiyun's chip production capacity and storage chip production capacity are for its own use, while most of its logic chip production capacity is for its own use and a small part is outsourced. This results in Zhiyun Microelectronics' external foundry business being far inferior to TSMC.

Of course, even so, Zhiyun Microelectronics' external foundry business can still rank second in the world... basically covering all domestic advanced chip foundry needs, especially the two core processes of 28-nanometer process and 14-nanometer process.

Photolithography machines and chip manufacturing are also related to the field of chip design... Therefore, American chip manufacturers such as Intel, Qualcomm, Apple, and AMD are also facing fierce competition from Zhiyun Group's chip business.

Xu Shenxue was engaged in semiconductors, and he directly opened up the industrial chain by linking one thing after another. This made many foreign high-tech companies in the semiconductor industry very uncomfortable: not only did they lose Zhiyun, a super big customer, but they also faced fierce competition from Zhiyun.

Due to the importance of semiconductors, Xu Shenxue has spared no effort in promoting the semiconductor industry in recent years in order to attract more help.

The semiconductor industry is a large industry, and it is not feasible to rely on Xu Shenxue alone to fight it.

The promotion of artificial intelligence technology at the United Institute of Technology this time is actually a similar situation.

The coverage of artificial intelligence technology is very broad, and there will be more and more applications in the future, but Zhiyun Group cannot do everything.

If an industry wants to develop, it needs more people to participate so that the entire industry can grow and develop.

And who has benefited the most from the development and growth of the entire field of artificial intelligence?

It’s still Zhiyun Group!

Because artificial intelligence requires hardware support, training a big data model requires massive computing resources. At the same time, if it is a big data model such as generative AI, its operation also requires massive computing resources.

Zhiyun Group sells chips... Its APO series graphics cards are essential hardware for AI training and generative AI operations. It can even be said to be the only option at present.

Just by selling APO series graphics cards, Zhiyun Group will be able to generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue in a few years, with super high net profits.

In its previous life, Nvidia achieved success overnight, with a market value of more than 3 trillion US dollars.

After the explosion of generative AI, the world has been developing various AI technologies, but other companies are burning money, only NVIDIA is making money, and making huge profits, with super high gross profit margins.

Therefore, in the early stages of the development of artificial intelligence, the companies that can really make a lot of money are actually semiconductor companies that provide computing power, including AI chip design companies and AI chip manufacturers.

Unfortunately, Zhiyun Group is a manufacturer engaged in AI chip design and manufacturing!

So I don’t know whether other people can make money by doing AI, but Zhiyun Group can definitely make a lot of money.

This is also the reason why Zhiyun Group is preparing to open source some artificial intelligence models in the near future. Xu Shenxue even promoted artificial intelligence in the university's technology forum... He wanted to completely detonate the AI ​​market and stimulate the sales of AI chips. After returning from the United Institute of Technology, Xu Shenxue returned to calmness and did not show up outside in the near future.

However, the outside world was in an uproar because of Xu Shenxue's remarks advocating artificial intelligence!
After all, Xu Shenxue's influence is so great that many people follow him. Even if they are not technology enthusiasts, ordinary people probably know the title of Xu Shenxue, the world's richest man.

Now Xu Shenxue says that artificial intelligence will be widely used in the future within ten years and become a part of people's daily lives.

This sounds a bit unrealistic... After all, current artificial intelligence technology is still a very advanced technology. Although Zhiyun Group has launched many products based on artificial intelligence technology, it has not yet become a part of people's daily life.

Although Zhiyun robots are very powerful, the intelligent driving developed by Zhiyun and even the future autonomous driving are also very powerful, and some image recognition technologies, voice assistants, etc. are also very good.

But... these things are still quite far away from ordinary people, and it is difficult for a large number of ordinary people to feel the existence of artificial intelligence technology.

After all, most of Zhiyun Group's artificial intelligence products are relatively expensive. The Zhiyun robot and the Hailan SLMC equipped with intelligent driving cost three or four hundred thousand yuan each. How can ordinary people afford it?

But now Xu Shenxue says that in a few years, artificial intelligence technology will become a part of people's daily lives... This sounds exaggerated to many people.

I admit that artificial intelligence technology is very powerful, but it is impossible to popularize and apply it on a large scale in just a few years. This is unrealistic!
Although many people have doubts about this, since Xu Shenxue said so, it still attracted a lot of attention.

Just when the outside world was once again excited about artificial intelligence, Xu Shenxue attended the product launch conference of Zhiyun Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Zhiyun Group, in a low-key manner.

He did not host the press conference, but just watched from the audience.

The press conference was hosted by Fu Zhengyang, senior vice president of the group, head of semiconductor design business, and general manager of Zhiyun Semiconductor.

At this press conference, Zhiyun Semiconductor released a new generation of CPU products with X86 instruction set using 6000nm process technology: the WZ series.

Its flagship model has surpassed the level of Intel's I7 flagship chip of the same generation in terms of hardware performance.

This is actually not easy. Zhiyun Semiconductor's initial WZ2000 series chips were about two generations behind Intel in performance. It continued to catch up afterwards, and this year it surpassed Intel!
This catch-up, in addition to efforts in the field of chip design, is also inseparable from the efforts of Zhiyun Microelectronics. They have better controlled the leakage rate in the 12-nanometer process, and can increase the main frequency at the same transistor density and the same power consumption, which means higher performance.

The WZ6000 series chips manufactured using this technology have a natural advantage in performance!
Of course, this is also due to the fact that Intel's progress in advanced process technology has not been smooth. Zhiyun and TSMC have started to play with the 10-nanometer process, while Intel can only make modifications to the 14-nanometer process.

However, in terms of technological improvements in the 14-nanometer process, there is still some gap between them and Zhiyun Microelectronics' technological improvements in the 14-nanometer process.

Especially on the key indicator of leakage rate.

Zhiyun Microelectronics has very strong technical accumulation in this field. Since the 28-nanometer era, it has always been ahead of other semiconductor manufacturers. The LP process of that year was the most excellent low-power process at that time.

How does low power consumption come about? It is achieved by reducing the leakage rate.

Subsequently, Zhiyun Microelectronics made further improvements on the 3nm and nm processes, especially doing a lot of work on D transistors.

By the time of the 12-nanometer process, it can be said that Zhiyun Microelectronics has made great achievements in leakage rate control in the field of chip manufacturing, which is more reliable than Intel.

It is rumored that Intel, unable to make technological progress on the next generation process, which they call the 10-nanometer process, but wanting to maintain the continued increase in chip performance, has planned to go into a high-speed spin mode... by reducing the transistor density within the chip to reduce the leakage rate, thereby obtaining a higher clock speed and then a performance improvement.

This is actually going the opposite way in the development of chip technology...because if the chip transistor density is reduced while maintaining performance, the chip area needs to be made larger.

This means more additional costs.

After all, the size of the wafer is fixed. Within the fixed area of ​​the silicon wafer, the difference in chip cost between producing 100 chips and producing 200 chips will be huge.

But for Intel, this is also a helpless move... Advanced technology has been slow to make breakthroughs, and if it wants to maintain the performance of chips, it can only rely on this high-speed model.

So when Intel's people saw that Zhiyun Semiconductor released the WZ6000 series chips, whose performance was even more powerful than their own newly released chips, the company's top executives were worried.

In addition to releasing the WZ6000 series chips, Zhiyun Semiconductor also released a number of other chip products.

Including X86 server CPU using nm process.

A new generation of APO chips with the same process and the APO4500 graphics card that uses this chip...an extremely powerful AI training card. Compared with the previous generation APO4000 graphics card, the performance has been improved by about %, but the power consumption remains unchanged, which means that when using this chip for training, the electricity cost is further reduced.

Of course, this graphics card is also very expensive, costing 80,000 yuan per piece.

Then there is the APO computing power card with lower configuration and lower power consumption for personal workstations, namely APO4700U. This graphics card core can be used in ordinary desktop computers, but don’t be fooled by the fact that it has a U, because it is actually a professional computing power card, which is different from a gaming graphics card.

Of course, if you really want to use it to play games, that's fine, but it's expensive... more than 30,000 yuan per piece.

In addition to these chips, Zhiyun Group also released a new generation of YunBook equipped with WZ6000U series chips at this press conference.

That means 17 YunBook models, ranging from inches to inches, all launched simultaneously.

In recent years, Zhiyun Group has changed its previous practice of launching PC products at a spring press conference and instead moved the press conference to January.

At the same time, it released X86 high-end mobile chips, YunBook, and some other PC products.

In this way, PC products can be marketed in cooperation with X86 chips, making marketing easier and attracting greater attention.

At the same time, it is also to avoid too many smart terminal products stealing the limelight from each other during the spring conference.

After all, in today's spring conference, Zhiyun Group is going to release A series mobile phones, C series mobile phones and SX series mobile phones, which is already very crowded, and then there is a tablet computer and a smart watch...so it is easy for them to steal the limelight from each other.

There is no way around this. Zhiyun Group has a lot of smart terminal products, and such important smart terminal products cannot be released alone at any time.

Not all products belong to the S series, and only one product can support the most important autumn press conference of the year.

If other products are released randomly, they will easily sink to the bottom of the sea and no one will pay attention to them.

Therefore, even though the spring conference in March was quite crowded, Zhiyun Group still chose to launch a large number of new products at this conference!

After all, the spring press conference is the second most prestigious press conference in Zhiyun Group, and there are still a lot of people paying attention to it.

It is better to release products at a spring conference, where they compete with each other and distract consumers' attention, than to release them at normal times and have no one pay attention to them.

After the PC and semiconductor product launch conference in January, Xu Shenxue once again took the stage and promoted the wide application scenarios of artificial intelligence technology in the future.

Xu Shenxue promoted artificial intelligence technology twice in a short period of time, especially judging that artificial intelligence technology would be widely used in a short period of time, which attracted a lot of speculation.

What on earth is Xu Shenxue trying to do!

Everyone knows that you have artificial intelligence technology, but you can't brag about it every day... and you don't sell your artificial intelligence technology. Are you really planning to enter all walks of life and add AI to everything?
However, only the senior management of Zhiyun Group knew that Zhiyun Group was laying the groundwork for the subsequent release of generative AI and the subsequent open source of some AI models.

By the summer, Xu Shenxue will give the world a small shock: while releasing generative AI, he will also open source some AI models... so that people can truly feel the shock of artificial intelligence technology: look, AI can write articles and draw pictures...

Strictly speaking, this kind of generative AI technology is the AI ​​technology that people can access... As for top-level stuff like System X, ordinary people can't even know about it, let alone use it.

However, robot AI and Hailan Automobile’s AI... are too expensive and too far away from ordinary people.

Therefore, generative AI has become the best way for people to access AI: everyone can use it!
This will attract widespread attention, especially from major technology companies and Internet companies.

With the attention of these companies, it will be easier to sell chips!

APO4500 has already been produced, and it is expected that production capacity will be greatly increased by summer, and it is just waiting for a large number of technology companies to place large-scale orders.

Otherwise, do you think Zhiyun Group is so kind as to allow you to open source your AI model?

He was selling shovels next to the gold mine!
(End of this chapter)