Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

In this wave of technology, whether it is the underlying development ecology, the hardware basis of computing, or a variety of commercial landing scenarios, Chinese enterprises have an undeniable discourse output ability. And another well-known long-term pain of China's ICT industry, the domestic operating system, also experienced a worldwide military parade at the 2019 World Congress of artificial Intelligence (WAIC).

Therefore, to re-embark on the road of self-development of operating systems, or even to become one of the world's first-class, has become a major problem for Chinese science and technology enterprises. What exactly does the Chinese operating system camp look like today? And how can the global ICT industry stir up the changes? This is what we hope to explore at the World artificial Intelligence Congress.

The evolution of domestic operating system

At this year's WAIC scene, we found that domestic operating systems seem to have "stood together" in space. From the first entrance with the largest flow of people, visitors can easily find the booths of the zebra network and Huawei. Huawei needless to say, when it unveiled the "Android backup" Hong Meng OS, we read a lot of heroic articles such as "the past of domestic operating systems", and countless Chinese people began to care about what happened to operating systems in the upper reaches of the industrial chain.

Although zebra network is a newly established company, a recent piece of news has also let the industry see this different force from the domestic operating system. Just before the opening of 2019WAIC, SAIC reached an agreement with Alibaba to deepen strategic cooperation and work together to build the next generation of smart cars. To this end, the two sides strategically reorganize the zebra network and the overall intellectual property and business of the YUNOS,YUNOS operating system into the zebra, creating more space for the future development of the zebra, with the goal of becoming the leader of the next generation of smart-connected cars.

I believe that most people can not deny the fact that the intelligent terminal of information is a part of human body. And the operating system that controls every interaction between man and machine has naturally become an important symbol of industrial power.

Unfortunately, from the PC era to the mobile Internet, the road of localization of the operating system is particularly difficult.

After a brief review, we will find that domestic operating systems have experienced two bitter periods of growth:

From nothing to something

Since the personal computer entered the Chinese market in the 1980s and the desktop Internet has flourished, Windows has occupied a dominant position in the global PC market. Naturally, China's IT industry can only follow suit and follow the footsteps of Microsoft's operating system. Whether it is the technical ability and cognitive jet lag of practitioners, or the overall development and testing environment, it is not enough to support the prosperity of China's IT industry in independent research and development.

Until 2001, the state power, together with the industry and academic circles (China University of National Defense Science and Technology, China soft, Lenovo, Chaochao, National Star), launched the earliest commercial closed-source operating system-Kirin operating system (Kylin OS), which fired the first shot of the domestic operating system.

Over the next few years, there have been a number of domestic operating system schemes, such as Wickleen Linux, starting point operating system, condensing rock security operating system, co-creation of Linux, Sipu, Zhongke Fangde Desktop, Puhua Linux, ZTE New fulcrum, and so on.

Generally speaking, at this stage, new systems seem to emerge one after another, but on the one hand, they are all based on the variants of the open source system Linux, which are improved and strengthened; at the same time, the siphon effect of Windows is so strong that domestic systems simply cannot obtain sufficient industrial chain resources for development.

Lofty ambition is hard to reward

The rise of mobile intelligent terminals, represented by mobile phones, seems to be a critical historical moment for the failure of the PC system. However, until last year, the operating system of mobile Internet terminals was still firmly in the hands of Apple IOS and Google Android.

It is worth noting that at this stage, domestic operating systems are not collectively weak. In fact, during this period, not only Huawei Hayes, China Star International and other semiconductor manufacturers have launched self-developed Kirin processors; mobile phone manufacturers represented by "China Coollian", as well as Internet giants such as BAT, have also joined third-party ROM in an attempt to get a piece of the operating system. And domestic mobile phone manufacturers that need to develop based on Android mobile architecture and interfaces can only carry out micro-innovations with minor fixes on Android, such as Xiaomi's MIUI.

Under the Matthew effect, domestic operating systems do not have the ecological appeal of software developers, but also lack of support from mobile phone hardware manufacturers, naturally do not win much say, independent research and development also gradually shut down with the lack of commercial value.

Looking back on the past of the Chinese operating system, we can find two happy and sad trends: one is that the industrial foundation is getting deeper and deeper, and the technological R & D personnel, commercial power, software and hardware facilities are gradually growing; second, they have successively failed to the ecology. Whether it is the computer system, the commercial operating system, or the smartphone system, there have been many bright spots, but they have been quietly engulfed by the ecosystem of the giants' continuous prosperity and optimization.

Set out again: heading for the "no man's land" on the foundation of AI

From the PC Internet to the mobile Internet, it can be said that the domestic operating system has formed an unfavorable scene that it is easy to get stuck. But it is clear that after 30 years of suppression in basic system design, Chinese technology companies are more alert and energetic in the face of this AI boom.

First of all, different from the mobile Internet, AI puts forward higher requirements for cloud computing, and the monopoly advantage of tight coupling of WINTEL is disappearing, while Chinese cloud service manufacturers with the advantage of backwardness have the opportunity to redivide the market pattern through cloud operating systems. For example, Huawei Cloud began to explore the virtualization infrastructure of cloud computing, FusionCompute. In contrast, Microsoft just merged Windows into the cloud computing department last year.

In addition, the rise of massive Internet of things devices, cars and other new intelligent terminals is attracting a steady stream of development teams to explore new ideas in games, interaction, life, entertainment and other aspects, as well as intelligent terminal operating systems such as the Internet of things. Interconnection with Internet of things devices, but also buried huge wealth "eggs".

More importantly, due to the scattered scenarios, the interactive experience requires a higher degree of fit between the system and users, and needs to be closely related to the software and hardware manufacturers in the field of intelligent infrastructure, so smart terminals such as car networking are not dominated by overseas technology giants in the first place, like PC and smartphones.

It can be said that it is the only way for Chinese manufacturers to bypass the traditional terminal operating system market and move towards these "no man's land" in the intelligent era.

For example, Google launched the "The Physical Web" project in 2014 in an attempt to connect smart devices with phones, tablets and other terminals. Microsoft also launched an operating system called Windows 10 IoT Core (the core version of the Internet of things), and Huawei switched to Internet of things devices to create an operating system the size of 10KB. In other words, the Internet of things under AIoT+5G today still leaves a huge space for Chinese enterprises to imagine the pattern.

Similarly, the intelligent process of car networking has also brought the focus of the industry from the competition for "screen" to the track of the operating system. Because it not only needs to rethink the logic of human-computer interaction, but also needs to be good at long-sleeved dancing in a wider range of areas, such as life services, autopilot, car-road coordination and so on.

To achieve such a powerful function, the difficulty is to make IT and CT industry roles such as car companies, vehicle terminal manufacturers, telecom operators, software and hardware developers, and cloud service providers intertwined like never before. Building user habits from scratch is obviously not a day's work. Domestic vehicle terminal manufacturers such as zebra networks began to lay out as early as 2015.

History has proved that each independent terminal operating system may grow an independent developer ecology, so as to cultivate prosperous applications and services, and further stimulate the growth of hardware terminals and derivative products. In other words, the "no man's land" of the operating system is very likely to become the center of industrial value in the future.

This also makes us begin to be concerned about what challenges Chinese science and technology manufacturers are facing and what achievements they have made in these areas.

Ploughing the Oasis: the "Chinese era" of the operating system has just begun

As we mentioned earlier, the 2019 World artificial Intelligence Congress is a military parade of domestic operating systems.

The reason for this is that all the leading manufacturers who are currently heading for the "no man's land" are on the scene, and we can also observe closely and comprehensively what shape Chinese science and technology enterprises are shaping their intelligent life from the underlying system level. it also hides what domestic operating systems need to do well if they want to overtake in World War I.

For example, to challenge the commanding heights of the frontier and underlying technology. If the domestic operating system wants to develop, the most fundamental thing is the solid degree and leading advantage of the technology. For example, in addition to constantly seeking breakthroughs in core, end, cloud and other levels to enable the basic operating system, Huawei also proposed optical computing to improve computing efficiency at the World artificial Intelligence Congress. new technical concepts such as gene storage to solve the problem of data explosion. The fact that Chinese science and technology companies begin to take the lead in cutting-edge technology is a prerequisite for the emergence of new operating systems.

For example, integrate the industrial chain and constantly build a high operating system experience "city".

In the current operating system, the hardware system is highly bundled with the software ecology, which often needs to communicate across terminals, which not only easily causes the sense of breaking of experience, but also puts forward higher requirements for the security of information.

At present, manufacturers like Tesla, who have the ability to develop independent intelligent systems, will directly install and test the on-board system and the car when they leave the factory. In China, more mainframe manufacturers choose to cooperate with intelligent manufacturers who have the ability to develop the underlying operating system to integrate the operating system with the vehicle.

Taking the operating system AliOS of the head as an example, Zebra Zhixing developed a complete set of on-board systems specifically for the automobile side on the technical basis of Ali YUNOS. Through deep cooperation with SAIC and other mainframe manufacturers, it completed the matching of software and hardware when it left the factory. In this way, the intelligent system can not only fully integrate the manufacturer's OBD (vehicle diagnosis system), but also make the system more autonomous and controllable, and return the initiative to the car owner.

More importantly, although the cloud operating system and smart vehicle operating system are still in the early stages of development, the leaders have learned from the experience of the PC mobile era and actively opened up their own technology architecture. At the World artificial Intelligence Conference, we saw that giants such as BAT, Huawei, platform, zebra and vertical industry representatives all attached great importance to ecological partners.

As a result, the domestic operating system can share the latest technological achievements with the industry, quickly optimize the user experience on the automobile side, and strengthen the community at the same time. Build a complete ecosystem covering accessories, terminals, application services and many other links. The more software and hardware manufacturers support their systems, the higher the replacement cost in the future, and the wider the soil for follow-up ecological services. This is a spectacle not seen in the past forty years.

Academician Ni Guangnan, who has been running for domestic chips and operating systems for many years, once said anxiously that if he did not seize the opportunity, the domestic terminal operating system would not have a chance to do it. At present, it seems that these warriors, who are struggling to find an oasis in the desert, are opening the door to a home-made operating system called Hope.

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