Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 459 YCL51 Superconducting Quantum Computer

After entering March, various mobile phone manufacturers have started to release mobile phones one after another.

From March to July, these four months are the key period for many mobile phone manufacturers to intensively release mobile phones.

In addition to Zhiyun and Fruit, other mobile phone manufacturers will also release their flagship high-end models during this period.

The reason for ending in July is simple, which is to avoid the two months of August and September in the second half of the year... Zhiyun Group's S series of mobile phones were released in August, and Apple's new flagship was released in September.

These two months every year are the most brutal time when Zhiyun and Fruit’s new flagship products compete most fiercely around the world. The overwhelming news reports about the new products of these two companies will completely cover up the voices of new products from other mobile phone manufacturers.

The threat from fruit is still relatively good. Now fruit phones are on the decline and are no longer as strong as in previous years.

But the crux of the matter lies in Zhiyun Group's S series of mobile phones, which are super popular with annual sales of more than 200 million units. Before the launch conference in August every year, all kinds of news about the new S series mobile phones will be flying all over the place, and after the official release, it will be a carnival in the global media.

The most important thing is that these media carnivals are not about Zhiyun Group paying for traffic... but rather the major media spontaneously reporting on the traffic in order to attract people's attention. Zhiyun Group's annual advertising and marketing expenses are actually very low, and it rarely advertises.

Because Zhiyun’s new S series mobile phones were themselves a huge guarantee of traffic at the time!

Faced with the extremely powerful Zhiyun S series of mobile phones, even Apple does not dare to compete head-on with Zhiyun in August, but chooses to postpone the release of new mobile phones by one month to September.

They tried to release a new mobile phone together with the Zhiyun S series in the same month, which resulted in a head-on collision... It was a bloody collision and sales were terrible. Later, Fruit completely gave up the idea of ​​releasing a new mobile phone in the same period to compete head-on with the Zhiyun S series.

Of course, they couldn’t release it in the first half of the year, nor could they delay the release for too long in the second half of the year, so they eventually fixed the release date in September… The one-month interval between the release of the Zhiyun S series avoided a huge head-on impact, while still being able to seize the main market in autumn.

Other mobile phones, even Zhiyun’s own A series and C series phones, do not have this courage.

This finally forced Zhiyun Group to release these two series of mobile phones at the spring launch conference. The early C series and A series were released in September, a month after the S series...but the outcome was not good.

This shows the huge lethality of Zhiyun S series mobile phones.

Every time a new Zhiyun S series is released, the huge wave it creates will drown out all competing products...not only will it harm other manufacturers' mobile phones, but even its own A series and C series cannot avoid it.

Therefore, among the twelve months of the year, August is the month with the fewest new mobile phone models released.

The Zhiyun S series is here, who dares to be presumptuous?
However, high-end flagship or main models of other mobile phone brands always have to be released, and the off-season and peak season must also be considered. Therefore, some models choose September or October, and some models choose March, April, or May in the first half of the year. Among them, the most models are released in the first half of the year.

In addition to market competition factors, there are other reasons why a large number of mobile phones are released in the first half of the year.

Another very important reason is: chip production capacity issue!

Except for the Zhiyun S series and new Apple phones, other models, including Zhiyun Group's own A series phones and Weiku Electronics' Little Blue MAX series phones, will not be able to obtain chips manufactured using the new process released last year until the beginning of the next year.

After Zhiyun Microelectronics and TSMC launched the equivalent 10-nanometer process last year, the equivalent 10-nanometer process production capacity of these two major chip manufacturers has long been occupied by S series chips and A series chips, and other chips have not been able to grab much production capacity.

By December, as the sales of S series phones and fruit phones decline and the production efficiency and yield of foundries improve, there will be sufficient equivalent 10-nanometer process production capacity for other chips.

The W1006 chip was only supplied to the public in January this year, and large-scale supply will not be available until after February.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 830 chip was developed in collaboration with Quadcore, but Quadcore's equivalent -nanometer process only completed technical verification last year and began large-scale production around January this year.

Finally, there is another problem. February is usually the Chinese New Year holiday... Not only is China's mobile phone market entering the off-season, but most importantly, all major factories are generally closed for holidays, causing production lines to stop... Major mobile phone manufacturers want to release new products for sale, but the factories won't produce them for you!

As for why it will also affect overseas brands such as Fruit and Four Star… Sorry, their production supply chain is also in China, and the factories in China are going to be closed for holiday!
Ninety-nine percent of the world's smartphone production capacity is in China!

The workers in China are all on holiday, and the global smartphone market is in a state of shortage.

It may seem exaggerated and funny...but it's true!

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On the one hand, it is to avoid the super bomb of the S series, and on the other hand, it is because of the chip production capacity issue, coupled with the impact of the Spring Festival holiday in February. This has led to a large number of high-end mobile phone models being chosen to be released in the first half of the year!

The most typical example is the Bluemax series from Wecoo Electronics. They expect to release the new flagship Bluemax 10 and Bluemax 10S in early March, and also expect to release Bluemax 10 Pro in October in the second half of this year.

The Little Blue MAX series is the core high-end flagship of Vico Electronics, with prices ranging from over three thousand to over four thousand, and annual sales of about 30 million. Vico Electronics attaches great importance to this series of mobile phones, so this phone will not be released until the second half of the year. It must be released in the first half of the year and then have a large wave of sales in August.

Not only the Little Blue MAX series, but also the four-star Galaxy series was released in March, and Warwick's P series was also chosen to be released in March.

Then there are high-end models from other brands, which are also chosen to be released in the first half of the year, including in April and May.

In the months from March to June, many new models will be released and the market competition will be very fierce.

However, no matter how fierce the market competition is in the first half of the year, it is better than competing head-on with the Zhiyun S series and Fruit phones in August and September.

How should I put it? Although the first half of the year was very lively, with many high-end models released and the competition seemed fierce... but in fact, it felt like a rookie fight: everyone was the same.

They are still somewhat confident in competing with each other...but facing the Zhiyun S series in the second half of the year, they really have no confidence at all!
A large number of mobile phone models were released intensively in the first half of this year, and Zhiyun Semiconductor's W006 chip has also entered an important period: the shipment volume of the new generation of W1006 chips will depend on how many mobile phones equipped with this chip are sold by major manufacturers in the first half of the year.

On March 1006, WeCool Electronics took the lead in launching the March mobile phone market war and released the world's first Blue MAX 10 and Blue MAX 10S mobile phones equipped with the W chip.

These two mobile phones continue to use under-screen optical fingerprint technology and rear fingerprint technology, while also using their usual water drop hole screen, and continue to go the large screen route. The Xiaolan MAX 10 has a 10-inch screen, while the Xiaolan MAX S further increases the screen size to inches.

A few days later, Zhiyun Group held a spring press conference, releasing three series of mobile phones: A17, S17X/S17XL, and C11, as well as new tablets and smart watches.

The heat of Zhiyun Group’s spring conference has not yet passed, and Apple also held a spring conference and released their inventory reduction products... They also learned from Zhiyun and launched an inventory reduction series at the beginning, first making a small-screen flagship, and later making large-screen inventory reduction products, which are basically the Apple versions of S17X and S17XL.

These two main competitors are always in a state of confrontation... No matter what you do, I will do the opposite!
Then, FourStar released their new Galaxy series, which uses Qualcomm 830 chip and uses FourStar Semiconductor's equivalent ten-nanometer process.

Soon after, Huawei also released their new flagship, which is equipped with a self-developed chip manufactured using Zhiyun Microelectronics' equivalent ten-nanometer process.

Just looking at the numerous press conferences mentioned above, you can tell how fierce the competition is in March!

The world's top five smart terminal manufacturers held spring conferences in March to release their mobile phones.

In fact, in addition to these five major smart terminal manufacturers, there are many other mobile phone manufacturers, such as OV and LG, as well as some other second- and third-rate mobile phone manufacturers, which also released new mobile phones during this period. However, the new mobile phones released are not top flagships, so they are not very popular, and there are very few mobile phone products that use the equivalent of ten-nanometer process.

The production capacity of today's chips using an equivalent 830-nanometer process, whether it's the Snapdragon 1006 or W chip, is still quite tight and in short supply. It's actually very difficult for ordinary manufacturers to get sufficient production capacity.

In March, major mobile phone manufacturers launched a large number of mobile phone products, which ignited the mobile phone market after the beginning of the year, stimulated consumers' purchasing desire, and stimulated China's smartphone supply chain to run at full speed, producing a large number of mobile phones to supply the global market.

Some people are happy and some people are laughing during this process!

At Sixing Electronics, the atmosphere in the conference room was extremely heavy, and many people were frowning.

The people who were reporting from above couldn't help but lower their voices by a few degrees.

"After the launch of our new flagship S9, sales in the domestic market remained strong and performed well in the US market. However, the performance in third-party markets such as Japan, Europe, ASEAN and South America was worse than expected, with sales about % lower than expected!"

"The main reason is the huge influence of Zhiyun A17 and Weiku Electronics' Little Blue MAX10. Both phones use the third-generation under-screen photoelectric fingerprint technology of Wanjin Technology, a subsidiary of Zhiyun Group, and have been very popular in the market!"

"In addition, Huawei's P series has gradually taken away the market share of our Galaxy series in the European market!"

"Due to various factors, our S9 sales failed to meet expectations!"

The many Sixing Electronics executives present looked at each other, and finally fell into a long silence...

We strive to achieve sales of 30 million every year, but we never achieve that goal... This seems to have become a curse for the four-star Galaxy series!
Due to the fact that the sales of the S9 series were lower than expected, the shipments of Qualcomm's 830 chip were also not ideal. We can only hope that other mobile phone brands equipped with this chip will achieve better shipments in the future.

Otherwise, this year's Snapdragon 830 chip might be surpassed by the Zhiyun W1006 chip.

But what makes Sixin happy is that although their own mobile phones are not selling well, their screen business is developing very well.

As one of only two manufacturers in the world that can provide high-end OLED screens, Samsung officially began to provide high-end OLED screens to Apple last year. It also began to provide OLED screens to other manufacturers and even some mobile phone manufacturers in China.

As smartphones gradually move towards OLED screens, the OLED screen market is now getting bigger and bigger.

The bulk of the market is certainly taken up by Huaxing Technology, which is controlled by Zhiyun Group, but Sixin has also captured a considerable share of the mid-to-high-end market.

In addition, a small portion of the mid- and low-end market share is taken by BOE, and Zhiyun Group also holds a lot of BOE shares. It is BOE's main strategic investor and has provided a lot of technical support.

These three major screen manufacturers have almost shared 96% of the mobile phone OLED screen market, and each of them has made a lot of money.

Of course, there are actually other screen manufacturers that also have OLED business, but their technology is not very good and their market share is also very low. The total market share is only three or four percentage points, and they are mainly concentrated in the low-end market, so not many people pay attention to it.

Of the three major screen manufacturers, one is controlled by Zhiyun Group, and the other is a strategic investor of Zhiyun Group, which shows the strength of Zhiyun Group in the screen industry chain.

Zhiyun Group has never been just a smart terminal manufacturer, it is also a giant that controls the core smart terminal industry chain!
It’s just that these things are not reflected in the financial statements, nor are they known to the public, so ordinary people don’t know much about them.

But people in the industry all know that Zhiyun Group is strong in the entire smart terminal supply chain.

If you add Fairy Mountain Holdings, Weiku Electronics, and other holding companies of Liuhe Investment, these companies under Xu Shenxue almost control the entire smart terminal supply chain, which is very powerful. Only with this kind of strength can Xu Shenxue force domestic supply chain manufacturers not to relocate abroad and invest in factories overseas. No matter how Sixing and Fruits try, these overseas factories cannot be established.

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March is a very busy month for smartphones.

However, after attending the spring press conference, Xu Shenxue no longer paid attention to these things. The various products in the spring press conference would naturally be managed by other responsible executives within the group, and Xu Shenxue would not have to keep an eye on them personally.

Xu Shen has a lot of things to learn, and it is impossible for him to focus on one thing for a long time.

On March 18, when the spring mobile phone war broke out outside, Xu Shenxue saw the prototype of a highly confidential superconducting quantum computer at his company's headquarters.

The superconducting quantum computer in front of them is quite large. It is a large cabinet that is two meters high, about one and a half meters wide, and more than three meters long. In order to facilitate the viewing of Xu Shenxue and others, this large-scale machine does not have an outer shell installed, so various densely packed cables can be seen.

There is also a very special part in the middle, a cylinder painted white, about 50 centimeters in diameter and 70 centimeters high...

At this time, Ye Xiangbo, vice president of Zhiyun Group, who is responsible for quantum computers and other cutting-edge technology projects, said to Xu Shenxue excitedly: "This is the first generation of commercial superconducting quantum computers we have developed, codenamed 'YCL51'."

"Zhiyun's fifth-generation superconducting quantum computer!"

"The core part of the whole system is our newly developed fifth-generation superconducting quantum chip. This chip is produced with the new MMK34 material as the core. It can achieve superconductivity at normal pressure of minus degrees, greatly improving the performance of the chip!"

"Boss Xu, look at this white cylinder. Our superconducting quantum chip and other core superconducting components made of MMK34 material are installed in this cooling cylinder to maintain a temperature below minus degrees!"

"Because the cooling temperature only needs to be minus 25 degrees, our refrigeration pressure can be greatly reduced. We don't need to use a large and expensive top-level industrial refrigeration system to maintain the temperature as in the past. If it is operated alone, we only need to use our customized commercial refrigeration system to maintain the temperature!"

"Of course, we did not consider the single-machine operation mode for the YCL51 quantum computer we designed. Instead, we plan to use multiple quantum computers to form a server array. Therefore, we will still use a large commercial central refrigeration system to maintain the temperature, but the refrigeration pressure will be much smaller, and the power consumption will be greatly reduced!"

A major challenge for superconducting quantum computers is refrigeration!
In particular, the superconducting temperatures of ordinary superconducting materials before were several hundred degrees below zero, which made refrigeration very troublesome and expensive. It often required industrial-grade high-end refrigeration equipment to reach this operating temperature, which was expensive and complicated!
However, the superconducting temperature of the MMK34 material is only minus twenty-five degrees Celsius... This temperature can be achieved with conventional commercial refrigeration equipment. The overall technical requirements are low, the energy consumption is low, and the final result is cheapness in terms of cost.

Ye Xiangbo continued to introduce: "Our fifth-generation quantum chip, under the framework of our new generation LX artificial intelligence control system, can control 10,000 quantum bits. This makes our quantum computer truly commercially available and can be used for calculations in specific fields. At the same time, due to its huge parallel computing power, it can also be used for training and running calculations in the field of artificial intelligence!"

"And with 51 qubits and our unique LC architecture, our YCL quantum computer's settlement results are error-free, meaning a conventional electronic supercomputer is no longer needed to correct the results."

Little-known fact: the calculation results of early quantum computers were limited by the small number of quantum bits, and the calculation results were prone to errors, requiring supercomputers to correct them.

The core instruction of a quantum computer is the number of controllable quantum bits. Like other companies, Zhiyun Group also found it difficult at the beginning. Later, it applied its own absolute advantage areas and directly used big data models, which is the so-called artificial intelligence, to control it, and then developed a very special LX architecture!

The principle of the LX architecture is actually very simple and crude. It forcibly uses artificial intelligence technology to optimize quantum algorithms, and then predict and control quantum, achieving a huge increase in the number of controllable quantum. This technical route actually belongs to the technical path of Li Da Fei Zhuan.

It’s actually easy to say, but difficult to do... If you want to do this, you must first have such awesome artificial intelligence technology as Zhiyun Group.

Therefore, the core technology of Zhiyun Group's superconducting quantum computer technology is not even the MMK34 material... Using MMK34 material only reduces the difficulty and cost of refrigeration technology.

In fact, the same can be done using previous superconducting materials, but the superconducting temperature of more than 130 degrees below zero will cause the refrigeration cost to become very high, which in turn will cause the cost of using superconducting quantum computers to become very huge.

The superconducting quantum computer technology in Zhiyun Group is centered on the LX architecture developed based on artificial intelligence technology... This thing is truly black technology!

Scientists from other companies can also think of using artificial intelligence to improve quantum algorithms and then predict and manipulate quantum. However, they cannot do it... because their artificial intelligence technology is not enough to support this idea.

Zhiyun Group's artificial intelligence technology is not comparable to those artificial intelligence technologies in the outside world that are still in a very primitive stage!

The LX architecture based on artificial intelligence technology and the quantum chip based on MMK34 superconducting materials...the combination of the two eventually led to the birth of the YCL51 superconducting quantum computer!

This is an effective fusion of artificial intelligence and superconducting technology!

Xu Shenxue walked around the computer. It looked unremarkable except for the densely packed cables and the white cylinder in the middle which was very conspicuous. There was nothing special about it otherwise.

But you can still feel the special beauty of top-level industrial equipment.

Looking around the world, only Zhiyun Group can make this thing... It represents the highest technological level of mankind in many fields!
Of course, Zhiyun Group alone cannot accomplish this goal; it still needs to rely on many cutting-edge technology industry chains in China.

Zhiyun Group produces many core components based on superconducting materials, but other components are developed and customized by other domestic research institutions.

However, after Zhiyun Group has mastered the most core parts, the technical difficulty of other components is not that high.

After looking around, Xu Shenxue asked, "So, this fifth-generation superconducting quantum computer is already usable?"

Ye Xiangbo said: "Yes, the YCL51 system is now practically applicable, especially if multiple units are combined to form a server array. It can be used for a variety of computing tasks, including artificial intelligence computing tasks!"

Xu Shenxue said: "In that case, let's get a batch of them and build a server for ourselves to use first!"

"As for the commercial release, we have to hold off for now. Our superiors have asked us to slow down the pace a bit and not export this quantum computer. Also, the LX architecture and MMK34 materials cannot be leaked for the time being."

"The LX structure is pretty good, but the material selection of MMK34 is still top secret. Now is not the time to announce it!"

Ye Xiangbo had anticipated this. He was well aware of how amazing the MMK51 material used in the YCL34 superconducting quantum computer he and his team had developed was.

It is not a good thing to announce this rashly... Once the MMK34 material is announced, it will cause an uproar and even cause economic turmoil on a global scale!

Moreover, superconducting quantum computers that can be commercialized on a large scale will also bring a considerable impact once they are widely used. The domestic industry is not yet prepared to welcome quantum computers.

So this YCL51 quantum computer has many advantages, but in the short term it can only be used by itself and supplied to some institutions. Not to mention exporting it, even other conventional domestic companies cannot obtain it.

However, in order to promote the popularization of quantum computers and to allow the industry to keep up, Zhiyun Group chose to release the so-called new generation of quantum computers in early April.

It still uses traditional superconducting materials and the LX architecture is several generations behind. The number of its controllable quantum bits has reached one thousand, and it has also announced a so-called commercial plan... Of course, the practicality of this quantum computer is not to be said to be non-existent, but it is also very limited and has little impact on the industry.

Some people think that this is just Zhiyun Group showing off its skills... There are so many companies in the world that are engaged in quantum computers, but only Zhiyun Group has achieved the number of one thousand quantum bits, while other companies generally still have dozens or one or two hundred quantum bits.

However, it has still triggered a new round of discussion on quantum computers in the technology industry, with people imagining a beautiful scenario where quantum computer technology will develop further and reach 5,000 or even 10,000 quantum bits.

What the outside world does not know is that Zhiyun Group has quietly started small-scale production of the YCL51 superconducting quantum computer. The first batch of units will be used to build the first quantum computer server array in human history and will be used for training the next generation of artificial intelligence technology in Zhiyun Group.

At the same time, some special research and development institutions or enterprises in China have also placed small orders for computers for specific scientific research tasks or special tasks.

The initial production will not be too large, estimated to be only more than 100 units a year.

The main reason is that the current production capacity of MMK34 material is too low. MMK34 material limits the production capacity of YCL51 superconducting quantum computer. In addition, the technical content of some other subsystems is also very high and the output is also low.

This ultimately led to low production of the YCL51 quantum computer.

In addition to its low production volume, the price of this YCL51 quantum computer is also very expensive!
Zhiyun Group purchases computers for itself and supplies them to institutions, with a single unit priced at more than 300 million yuan. There is no way around it. Quantum computers are so expensive in the early stages. Not only is the manufacturing price extremely expensive, but the huge initial research and development costs also have to be included, resulting in an extremely high price.

Due to the high price, not many companies can afford the YCL51 quantum computer even if it is sold publicly!

If we want to lower the price, we have to rely on increasing the production and sales volume of YCL quantum computers, and then significantly amortize the R&D and manufacturing costs.

However, if production capacity is to be increased, the output of MMK34 material must also be increased.

The current MMK34 material can only be produced on a small scale using laboratory preparation. Not only is the output small, but the key is that the manufacturing cost is extremely high.

As for large-scale and cheap mass production, I’m sorry that the top secret research and development team jointly established by the relevant institutions and Zhiyun Group, consisting of a large number of professors and doctors, has not yet found a way to cheaply mass-produce MMK34 materials...

In desperation, they can only prepare to adopt the existing preparation path in the laboratory and use factory integrated production to forcibly increase production capacity, which is also a typical method of Li Da Fei Brick, but the cost is still very expensive.

Of course, even so, it can greatly increase production capacity and allow MMK34 materials to be used in more high-tech, high-premium fields.

The low output and high price of MMK34 materials have resulted in limited production capacity of the current YCL51 quantum computer. This also limits the application of MMK34 materials in more fields. It will take time to solve these problems.

But even so, the YCL34 superconducting quantum computer using MMK51 materials has begun to be produced on a small scale and used in special tasks and the field of artificial intelligence. This is of great significance to the improvement of artificial intelligence technology in Zhiyun Group.

Xu Shenxue has high hopes for this!
What’s interesting is that when Zhiyun Group started to use MMK34 materials to produce YCL51 superconducting quantum computers, Lister in the intelligence agency on the other side of the Pacific Ocean was looking at a top-secret intelligence sent back from Guangcheng with a look of surprise.

caught you!

No matter how strong the security capabilities of your Zhiyun Group are, my people still infiltrated it and obtained the top-secret information.

Now we finally figure out what secret the Zhiyun Group has been hiding and has spent huge amounts of manpower and resources to keep secret.

It turns out that a new type of carbon nanotube material has been developed. According to intelligence, this carbon nanotube material may even be used to build a space elevator.

Lister did not understand what carbon nanotube materials were, and had no interest in the sci-fi space elevator. At the same time, the intelligence personnel on the front line had not yet obtained detailed information about the carbon nanotube material. They only knew that this top-secret project was a carbon nanotube material. It was just the name of the project, but it was enough to attract his great attention.

Lister may not trust himself, but he trusts the opposing intelligence agency!
The fact that the other party went to such great lengths to keep this material secret speaks volumes about the importance of this material...

Soon, Lister took the top-secret report to his boss to report!
The next day, Lister and his boss attended a secret technical discussion meeting, and the key word of the meeting was "carbon nanotube material"!
(End of this chapter)