Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Since the beginning of this year, the innovation industry has been hot in the capital market.

From October 12 to November 30 this year, the Xinchuang industry index rose 16.27%, compared with 3.24% for the CSI 300 index, according to wind.

According to the report of Ai Media data Center, the scale of Xinchuang industry has exceeded trillion yuan in 2020, is expected to reach 1.66894 trillion yuan in 2022, and will maintain rapid growth in the next three years.

Behind the huge development prospect is the result of the joint action of the complex internal and external demand factors of our country.

Xinchuang, that is, the "information technology application and innovation" industry, gets its name from the "Information Technology Application and Innovation working Committee" established in China in 2016 and the subsequent formation of related industrial alliances, thus giving birth to a large and complex industry.

Over the years, China has played the role of imitation and catch-up in the field of information technology, especially at the bottom of the key technology level can not achieve self-sufficiency.

At present, we need to implement the strategy of "new infrastructure" internally, promote digital transformation and build a digital economy. These major development strategies require our country to establish a complete and controllable information technology industry chain.

While to the outside world, in recent years, China's ICT industry has been faced with technological blockade and sanctions from the United States, and the development of high-tech industry has been hampered.

Under the influence of internal and external factors, it is urgent to establish their own IT infrastructure and standards to form their own open ecology.

The purpose of Xinchuang industry is to achieve independent control in the key areas of information technology software and hardware.

This industry system is numerous and complicated, but it can be divided into four parts: basic hardware, basic software, application software and information security. Among them, the most basic and lowest are the chips and operating systems in "basic hardware" and "basic software".

Especially the chip, it can be said that the various technological routes of the development of Xinchuang are all rooted in the chip.

The construction of Xinchuang ecology is also based on chip + OS.

In fact, the pre-research and exploration of the innovation industry in China has begun since the 1990s, and after nearly 30 years of development, it is now in the critical stage of large-scale application, and needs the complete support of the underlying chip, operating system and ecology.

But at the same time, after years of open exploration and development, the industry is showing a situation of seven countries and eight systems, competing with each other. As far as the underlying CPU and operating system are concerned, there are three main technical routes.

In order to promote the innovation industry to speed up the landing of applications and the formation of cohesion, it is necessary for us to gradually converge the technical route and choose a path suitable for long-term development.

The three major technological routes are obviously differentiated, and the most sustainable one is ARM+Linux. In terms of the most basic CPU + operating system, the entire domestic Xinchuang industry presents three main technical routes, namely, the ARM route represented by Huawei and Feiteng, the X86 route represented by Mega Core and Haiguang, and other self-research routes represented by Godson.

The corresponding whole machine, operating system, application ecology and so on are all adapted and constructed on these different routes of chips.

Let's first take a look at the X86 route that we are familiar with. The biggest advantage of CPU of X86 architecture is that it starts early, has a mature and rich ecology, so it has wide compatibility, powerful functions and performance, and X86 is still the mainstream architecture of global server CPU.

But at the same time, the performance of X86 architecture in low power consumption has been unsatisfactory, and for the domestic, it also has a fatal problem, that is, the IP authorization of X86 is controlled remotely by Intel and AMD of the United States. If they stop authorizing, the long-term evolution of China's information innovation industry will be like draining from the bottom. At that time, the research and development projects that have been invested and deployed will come to a bad end, and ecological construction will also come to naught.

Then take a look at the self-developed instruction set route represented by Godson LoongArch, which can be said to be the other extreme compared to X86. The advantage of self-research route is that it is completely self-controllable and not controlled by others, but the disadvantage lies in the lack of ecosystem support, fewer available software and manufacturers, and a large gap in performance compared with mainstream ARM and x86 processor products.

Photo from: Godson official website

Finally, the route of ARM+Linux combination represented by Huawei and Feiteng.

Let's first look at controllability. Domestic manufacturers of ARM chips can be fully licensed. For example, Huawei's ARM technology route has been licensed for 100% of the source code, which can optimize the processor architecture, instruction set and design chips for long-term security. While Linux is an open source system, the research and development of its system and iterative domestic innovation industry can also achieve complete control.

And look at the performance. In this respect, ARM and Linux can be said to be a "natural pair". The Linux system itself is developed from the hardware supporting reduced instruction set and is very suitable for ARM architecture; at the same time, ARM is developed with Android, while Android and domestic OS are both distributions of Linux.

Picture from: pexels

With this adaptability, Linux occupies only 1G of memory under ARM architecture, while Windows needs 4G on X86 architecture chip, which has obvious advantages. Especially in low-power and high-performance computing, the combination of ARM+Linux is relatively capable of playing.

Then there is the ecological aspect. In the process of growing up with Android, ARM has accumulated a wealth of ecological and application experience, and these ecological resources can also be quickly transplanted to the ecology of ARM+Linux.

In fact, many PC products equipped with ARM processors have been successfully applied in the market, such as Huawei's Qingyun series of PC and workstation products, which have shown gratifying strength, which are of great benefit to the construction of ARM ecology, and are sufficient to prove that ARM architecture processors can meet the performance needs of the market.

Therefore, after analyzing the circle above, CTOnews.com believes that the technical route of ARM+Linux should be the best route for the long-term development of China's Xinchuang PC industry.

In fact, there has been a debate in the industry about whether to choose X86 or ARM. But CTOnews.com feels that X86 is still ARM, not a choice question, but based on business and cost, to make the most reasonable plan in the short-term route and long-term route.

From this point of view, X86 does not have the stability and controllability needed for the long-term evolution of the industry, but more like a short-term transition plan, while ARM+Linux has significant plasticity in many aspects, such as long-term controllability, performance, ecology and so on, and can be used as a sustainable development route.

Of course, at the same time, we should not give up the development and ecological construction of the self-developed instruction set route such as Godson LoongArch, and strive to achieve real "self-control".

The most important thing is to use it for real! How to promote the real popularization of ARM+Linux Xinchuang ecology when we are convinced that ARM+Linux is the best route for the long-term development of China's Xinchuang industry, then the next step is to think about how to quickly adapt to the ecology and apply to the ground around ARM, because the current pattern of dispersion and disunity and seven countries and eight systems is very disadvantageous to the long-term development of the whole industry.

In other words, it is necessary to realize the real use of the Xinchuang industry chain based on the ARM route and put it into practice.

This requires the participants in each link of the industrial chain to unify the direction and path, and also requires that some enterprises can take the lead in realizing the full stack autonomy and commercial ability based on the ARM route, and take the lead in ecological construction, so as to achieve comprehensive empowerment.

Among them, Huawei is a good example.

As a provider of ICT infrastructure and terminals, Huawei has always been an important builder of China's innovation industry. Their cumulative R & D investment in the past 10 years has reached 845 billion yuan.

In 2021, Huawei proposed six future-oriented technology ecological upgrades of Kunpeng Computing, Teng AI, Hongmeng OS, HMS Core, self-driving car MDC and Huawei Cloud, coupled with innovation, ecology and services, to achieve compatibility in all subdivisions from chip to operating system to virtualization and cloud technology, and comprehensively promote the construction of Xinchuang ecology.

In the field of high-performance chips, Huawei has the ARM permanent instruction set license, as well as industry-leading processes to achieve ultra-high performance and ultra-low power consumption. For example, Kirin 990 is the only chip with more than 10 million shipments among domestic desktop processors, and its performance, stability, security and reliability have all been tested in the market.

Photo from: Hayes official website

In terms of ecological construction, Huawei has been based on Kirin / Pangu chip platform to adapt to software ecology 1W and hardware ecology 1.9W, which can fully meet the office needs of Xinchuang. At the same time, they also build two capacity systems of Xinchuang ecological migration and ecological compatibility, provide ecological flight companion services based on user scenarios, and formulate the best ecological adaptation scheme.

Of course, in addition to Huawei, Feiteng, which also adopts the ARM architecture, has also made great achievements in the products and ecological construction of domestic CPU.

In terms of products, they have launched more than 10 chips for high-performance server CPU, high-performance desktop CPU and embedded CPU markets, such as Tencent Cloud S series, Tengrui D series and Tencent E series, all of which are independently developed cores based on ARM architecture.

It can be seen that the domestic chips based on ARM route are becoming more and more powerful and rich in product and ecological construction, and have achieved practical domestic substitution and application in many industries.

In order to achieve the true use of the ARM route in the field of information creation, it is not enough to do so. If you want to really highlight the advantages of ARM route direction, you must also do the layout in advance in the actual application experience.

In other words, if enterprise users deploy home-made alternative ARM PC, desktops, and servers, and find that the experience is much worse than expected, poor battery life, stutter and other problems come, and the products and services are equivalent to no, and so on, then no matter how well the chips are done, no matter how widely spread the ecology is, it is also a castle in the air.

Experience is a hard indicator of creating ecological truth for real use.

At this point, Huawei can also give us a lot of reference and inspiration. For example, in terms of product service capability, Huawei has more than 1900 offline service stores and more than 1200 door-to-door outlets across the country, as well as online commercial service lines that provide 7 × 24-hour online services, and hundreds of dedicated service engineers cover the country to provide users with product-related services.

In terms of product quality, Huawei has also formed a fully automated testing capability. They have a test environment of up to 3000 square meters. Through big data's AI analysis, they can simulate the use scenarios of real users to test product quality.

In terms of testing standards, they are also very stringent, and they strive to surpass the industry in testing each index and create safe and reliable products for customers, including explosive atmosphere tests, high and low temperature tests, dust, hot and humid, acid atmosphere and other extreme environmental tests.

This makes Huawei's relevant creative products more stable and reliable than the industry, and the experience is naturally more excellent and reassuring. Only in this way can the industry be really willing to promote the substitution and application of Xinchuang.

Finally, as mentioned earlier, the development of Xinchuang industry is entering a critical period, from the small trust of the party and government to the leapfrogging of the eight key industries.

At present, the ARM line Xinchuang ecological application can basically meet the general office needs, and the ecological software for the vertical industry is still missing, and the performance also needs to be improved. Therefore, in order to achieve "real use", we must promote the Xinchuang industry to explore the vertical application industry, gather resources to solve available problems, and let the ecology iterate in use and gradually mature.

At this point, let's take Huawei as an example. Let's take a look at how they promote the development and construction of applied ecology in the vertical field.

It is worth mentioning here that Huawei has launched a "fertile soil Project 2.0" for individual developers and institutions of different industrial types, focusing on ARM chips to create an open source and open industrial ecology that goes deep into different fields. Specifically, it includes building an extensive open source and open community around the two core processors of "Kunpeng + Teng", creating a 360-degree omni-directional enabling system, establishing a more pragmatic industrial alliance, and building application ecology according to industry. build industrial ecology by region, and so on.

In fertile soil Project 2.0, Huawei will invest US $1.5 billion over five years to enable 5 million software and hardware developers in various industries to carry out technological and business innovation. Therefore, from a very early stage, Huawei has shown a good ability to build vertical industry ecology.

In a word, these efforts and achievements are enough to make us full of confidence and expectation that the industry based on the ARM line can realize the real use of the ecology as a whole.

Conclusion if the development of the information innovation industry in the past is still a process of exploration and transition, then the present and the future is the critical period for the whole industry to move forward in a large-scale and in-depth direction. We need to take, suitable to take the road should be more and more clear. From the perspective of the current situation of industrial development and the internal and external environment, one size fits all is obviously not advisable. we can not only consider the actual use and blindly pursue the degree of self-control, but also can not only look at the short-term applications and benefits and ignore our own crisis. from a comprehensive expedient point of view, the technical route of ARM+Linux should be the most suitable scheme at the present stage.

Moreover, through various arguments and examples, this route has its own advantages in product performance, self-controllability, ecological construction and the development prospect of promoting the real use of the Xinchuang industry. Huawei and other builders have indeed achieved some ideal results, which is not a process starting from scratch.

With the advent of the digital age, the development of the innovation industry will only be more and more in full swing, and more participants are expected to join the construction of the ARM line of the innovation industry, so as to contribute to a prosperous, independent and controllable digital future.

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