Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry

With Dongda's economic development doubling, the Liming Research Institute, as the leader and engine of Dongda's technological innovation, experienced even greater growth alongside Dongda's rise.

Dongxin Technology, the core enterprise responsible for chip manufacturing, now has four major factory areas and more than ten production lines, covering processes from 3 microns to 0.13 microns, producing core chips such as 8080 to 80486 CPUs, ARM Mali GPUs, and memory chips.

It has a firm grip on the upstream of the IT industry.

Although North American IT giants, led by Bell and MBI, successfully reverse-engineered the 8080 in the past five years and pushed their chip processing capabilities to the 2-micron level, in terms of chip design, their X86 architecture is only at the 80286 stage.

Without Ren Zhong's cheat-like access to electronic design software, the design and verification of chips with over 100,000 transistors would be incredibly complex.

Moreover, because Dongda Dongxin Technology has already applied for countless fundamental patents on this technology path, including basic patents related to the instruction set, it is impossible to bypass them.

Therefore, even MBI's X86 chips can only be sold to the rogue Eagle military and cannot be monetized in the civilian market.

In the civilian market, they have launched a new path, a Power chip technology route similar to ARM but with a completely redefined instruction set.

After Power 1 was designed, its highest performance was close to that of the 286, which is indeed several streets behind Dongda's 486.

However, in low-end applications, such as the $200 home personal computer market, MBI has now found a way.

Seeing Dongda's chip performance break through the sky in commercial personal computers and mainframes, MBI now has to learn from Vision and fully adopt Dongda's CPU, memory, and other chip products.

However, due to its concentrated talent pool in the computer field, MBI, like its counterpart in the main world, took the lead in making a name for itself in mainframes.

Their in-depth research in parallel technology, using 486 chips to conduct parallel computing, led to the design of 8-way to 32-way mainframe systems, providing System/360 series mainframes for advanced computing needs in banking, energy, and meteorology!

On the altered main line of technological development, MBI continues to stubbornly survive and promote its mainframe business.

Ren Zhong also felt incredible about this situation.

Thanks to Dongda's chips being an order of magnitude more powerful than those in the main world at the same time, MBI's System/360 series mainframes also far exceeded the level of PC systems in the main world at the same time.

They had strong practicality for advanced application scenarios such as banking, energy, and meteorology, especially large-scale computing needs for the military, allowing MBI to shine in this market and take away most of the military orders.

Although Vision Company had Ren Zhong's golden finger pointing the direction and invested a lot in parallel computing, launching the Vision OS/100 mainframe system to compete, and cooperated to launch its own Tru64OS system based on Dongda's operating system core authorization, Vision Company did not have the same powerful influence in the military as MBI.

Therefore, in mainframe sales, it only focused on commercial markets such as banking and meteorology.

Overall, Vision Company lagged behind MBI in mainframe market share, but fortunately, Vision remained the undisputed giant in the personal computer market, occupying more than 40% of the market share, further consolidating Vision Company's position as a trillion-dollar giant in North America.

Because Vision Company took the lead in paying Dongda a 5% personal computer patent licensing fee, the Liming Research Institute of Dongda gained huge benefits in the development process of personal computers.

After 5 years of development, the global annual sales of personal computers have now exceeded 30 million units, with a total market value of over 30 billion US dollars.

Adding the mainframe market, which has exceeded 40 billion US dollars, the Liming Research Institute can now reap more than 1 billion US dollars annually just from patent licensing.

This does not include the profits from the sale of front-end chips.

Dongxin Technology's various chips now account for about a quarter of the market share in the personal computer and mainframe markets, which is nearly 10 billion US dollars in annual sales.

This also allowed Dongxin Technology to quickly gain capital recognition with a market value of 100 billion US dollars after listing on the Shanghai and Oriental Pearl financial markets, raising 15 billion US dollars by releasing a total of 15% of its shares, becoming Dongda's first company to break through the 100 billion US dollar market value, even in the Bright Sword world, it is one of the well-deserved behemoth enterprises.

It is even more dazzling than the giants in traditional industries such as shipbuilding, steel, chemical, and petroleum.

With this money, on the one hand, it is expanding chip production capacity to an annual output of 100 million chips, and on the other hand, it is starting to invest in the research of the new generation 90nm chip production line, especially the 90nm lithography machine.

The huge advantage in chip processing technology now has not stopped Dongda from pursuing technological development, because Ren Zhong knows that the limit of this road is still very far away.

As Dongda's cutting-edge technology increases, Ren Zhong suddenly discovered a major problem.

A courtyard office in Yandu.

"We now need to impose necessary controls on exported products?" Chief of Staff Ye attached great importance to Ren Zhong's latest proposal, "Brother Ren, tell me the reasons first."

"Our development in technological innovation, emerging technology fields such as telecommunications, computers, and network equipment technology, has now comprehensively surpassed the West.

It can be said that we are in a leading position in these areas.

At the same time, we also have many products in materials and chemical industries that exceed the current level of the West, such as carbon fiber, certain high-temperature alloys, and other special materials, and even some of our computer products have now reached the world's top level."

Ren Zhong pointed to the report he had compiled in the past two days and said.

"The performance of these products is significantly better than that of previous generations, which has a huge impact on the next generation's development and sales.

Although we do not have restrictions at the national level, in the actual operation process, we are now consciously not providing them to the outside world, but this is not enough.

With the development of Dongda's technology, more and more enterprises will follow the development of the Liming system in the future, and they will also create more and better products, which will have a great effect in the military."

"Therefore, it is necessary for us to formulate a standard for export control technology and products, as well as a list of restricted export technologies and products that are updated annually, in order to protect Dongda's national interests.

Ensure that our advanced technology can be retained in the hands of Dongda people for a long time."

Ren Chong hadn't given these matters much thought before, but after twenty years of development, Dongda was no longer the same as before, and had begun to lead in many fields.

Ignoring these realities would now be unreasonable.

In his original world, the "Wassenaar Arrangement" was a particularly disgusting agreement that severely hampered Dongda's development. This "WA" in his original world included two control lists: one for dual-use goods and technologies, covering nine major categories such as advanced materials, materials processing, electronic devices, computers, telecommunications and information security, sensors and lasers, navigation and avionics instruments, ships and maritime equipment, and propulsion systems; the other was a military goods list, covering a total of 22 categories of products and technologies, including various weapons, ammunition, equipment, and combat platforms.

This agreement directly hindered the 908 and 909 semiconductor projects that Dongda had invested heavily in during the mid-to-late 1990s. It was under the guidance of this Wassenaar Arrangement that many Western countries imposed restrictions on the export of semiconductor equipment and technology, causing Dongda's Huajing and Huahong to encounter "Wassenaar Arrangement" restrictions when purchasing equipment on the international market. This meant that even with money, they couldn't buy advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment and related technologies at the time, artificially maintaining a gap of 2-3 generations between Dongda's semiconductor equipment manufacturing industry and international advanced levels, lagging behind international advanced levels by more than 10 years. This arrangement caused Dongda to remain at the low end of the semiconductor processing industry, greatly hindering the upgrading of Dongda enterprises in the global semiconductor value chain.

At the same time, Dongda was subjected to Western countries' discriminatory restrictions with strong malicious intent in areas such as advanced aero-engines, advanced materials, and even advanced computer products.

Now that Dongda has its own advanced technology system in the Bright Sword world, Ren Chong naturally needs to ensure Dongda's leading advantage.

Before he had these thoughts, after the chip sales in Dongda were divided into generations, under Ren Chong's influence, they began to consciously control the export of the most advanced chips. The 489/ARM11 chips sold externally were more than two generations behind in performance.

However, this behavior is currently only Ren Chong's personal action, and no standard or regulation has been formed at the national level.

If there is no one with Ren Chong's foresight to oversee it, then there will be no restrictions at all.

"Old Ren, you are right. We are leading in some areas, but if we don't impose restrictions, these technologies may spread out and weaken our future competitiveness and competitive advantages. I think it is very meaningful to formulate an export control standard and an export control product list, and it needs to be implemented as soon as possible," Staff Officer Ye said after listening to Ren Chong's explanation, quickly understanding the deep meaning behind Ren Chong's words.

That is to ensure that our advanced technology can be monopolized!

This is a great thing.

The technological development prospects of Dongda are now very good.

All emerging technology fields are now making rapid progress, and many fields have broken through to a new generation of products, which completely crushes the old products of this era.

Of course, such technology should be held in Dongda's hands for a long time.

Patents only protect a part of it, and the real core of the product cannot be completely protected by patents. A lot of it needs to be kept secret.

For example, the equipment for chip processing, Dongda's most advanced 0.13-micron lithography machine, is the highest-level confidential product on Dongda's technology line.

There hasn't even been an announcement that such a heaven-defying chip processing equipment has been born.

ARM9/ARM11 chips are also restricted from being launched on the civilian market. They are now fully busy meeting the needs of the military. A large number of cutting-edge chips are needed for various avionics, shipborne electronics, radar, and large-scale command systems, which cannot be met by the current production capacity in the short term.

The main chips being sold now are the 286/386 and 486 three-generation chips. In terms of price, the 8086 chip is still just over $100, the 286 is priced at around $400, the 386 chip reaches the $1000 level, and the highest-end 486 chip currently sells for over $10,000 per chip. This is not only because of its strongest performance, but also because of its low production volume, and the output flowing into the market is indeed limited.

This is also why Dongxin Technology invested most of its financing into the large-scale capacity expansion of the 0.13-micron production line. After all, now a single production line needs to take into account the production of four types of 386 chips, and for the sales end, there is too little capacity that can be put into civilian use. Only more than 100,000 high-end chip products above 386 chips per month are a drop in the bucket for the current high-end market.

Therefore, the current export restrictions are more affected by capacity constraints.

After Staff Officer Ye finished reading the first batch of lists proposed by Ren Chong, chips were the first to bear the brunt, and he was also a little surprised. This is Dongxin Technology's most profitable product!

"This chip restricts civilian use, do we have a way to restrict it?" Staff Officer Ye asked Ren Chong, looking at the chip's control measures.

"Yes, we can require that the places where high-end chips and high-end computers are used need to inform us, and at the same time, they must accept unscheduled inspections by relevant Dongda parties, otherwise we will not approve the sale."

The plan proposed by Ren Chong is a fatal blow to MBI and other Western local companies' high-end computer service products.

After all, the main customers of their high-end products now are the military market!

"In this way, our foreign affairs department now has one more thing to do," Staff Officer Ye said with a smile, "But our restricted-use sales, it may be difficult to achieve under the current operating model. In this regard, if it is selling large products, tracking the flow is relatively convenient. If it is chips, it may not be very operational to count the flow of overseas sales."

Staff Officer Ye is engaged in economics and has some understanding of the microeconomic field. He knows that according to the current technical means, there is no way to control the sales flow of chips. Once they leave the country, no one may know where these chips end up.

After all, the cargo ships on the high seas can theoretically sail freely to any country, and no one can intercept and inquire in the middle.

At least in international conventions, this is how it is for the free navigation of merchant ships.

Forcibly violating these international consensuses has a very large impact on a country's reputation.

"Another aspect of the problem is that suddenly proposing such a standard or regulation may also cause a certain reaction internationally, and even trigger a backlash from many countries against us, affecting our export work. Old Ren, I don't know if you have considered this possibility?" Staff Officer Ye restrained his smile and began to ask about the disadvantages of this matter.

(End of this chapter)