To prevent getting lost, the elevator goes directly to the safety island to report Liu Yadong A
Source: Zhenghe Island
Author: Xue Jun
The wave of AI is rolling in, computing power has become the annual hot word in the technology industry, and the market value of NVIDIA has soared to 2 trillion yuan. In addition to computing power, there is another key area that has been overlooked by the public, and that is the storage industry.
Storage is not only the carrier of data, but also an important infrastructure for artificial intelligence. Without storage, there is no massive amount of data, let alone computing.
From ancient murals and books, to modern CDs, mobile phones, rice cookers, and automobiles, to the cameras of film and television crews, machines in smart factories, and satellites in space...... The storage of information has developed along with the origin of human civilization and has promoted the process of civilization all the way.
In the entire semiconductor industry, storage plays a pivotal role. In 2021, the global storage market size was close to $160 billion, accounting for nearly one-third of the entire semiconductor market.
For a long time, this field has been monopolized by foreign giants, with Samsung, Micron, and SK hynix occupying nearly 90% of the global market share. Although the domestic storage industry started late, there are also some businesses that take advantage of market demand to find their own business soil and thrive, such as Wuhan's Zhiyu Technology.
It is the booster behind popular film and television works such as "Flowers" and "The Wandering Earth", and its products are also widely used in automotive, industrial, aerospace and other fields, and it is a leader in the field of industrial and enterprise SSD (solid state drive).
Recently, we interviewed Mr. Xue Jun, Chairman of Zhiyu Technology. He was an early investor in GigaDevice, a leading domestic memory chip company, which was established in 2005, and the first key angel fund came from Xue Jun.
"Storage allows us to see the future from the past. With history, you can predict what the future will look like";
"Twenty years ago, there was more opportunity in the industry, but today the opportunity is even smaller. because the number of people who care about it has increased, and they have led this matter astray";
"I fancy this direction because that's the only thing I can do. If you like something, do it well, and someone will be moved by you";
"There are a lot of things that you can't think of in the office, you have to go out and see other people, see the world, to know what the world is like and how my things can help others."
The following is a condensed version of the interview, which is full of dry information, I hope it will inspire you.
Storage is to see the future from history
Q: Storage is ubiquitous in both ancient and modern societies, what does it mean for human beings?
Xue Jun: Storage is very important, let's look at the paper, which is both storage and display, such as stone tablets and murals. But these things have a lifespan, and they will disappear slowly after being exposed to the wind and sun. Therefore, human beings have been looking for ways to store, because storage is a manifestation of the continuation of human civilization.
What do we say storage? It can help mankind remember dreams and let us see the future from history. With history, you can have a rough idea of what the future will look like. The same is true for autonomous driving, where a large amount of historical data can only be stored in order for the car to predict what the future will look like.
The Records of the Historian is a record of history, but also a store. You will find in the Chronicles that there is not much difference between human nature thousands of years ago and today. The story of our human race is repeated repeatedly, and it is not much different from Sima Qian's time.
Some time ago, there was news that after five months, the missing Voyager 1 reconnected with Earth. It was launched in the 70s of the last century and has been flying in space for more than 40 years.
During the disappearance, NASA has been trying to contact Voyager 1, and later found out that a storage component is broken, and if you think about such an old storage product, there are still people who can maintain it, and someone needs to keep learning these old things. Later, NASA did a repair to reconnect.
So how important you want to store is, if you don't have the ability to maintain the storage parts, this whole spaceship is useless.
Q: What's more, Voyager 1 took the "Dim Blue Dot" because of storage, and this photo has also left a strong mark on the history of humanities.
Xue Jun: If there is no storage, we will not be able to see that photo, and we will not know how small human beings are.
As Carl Sagan put it, "Hopeful kids, inventors and explorers, superstars...... All live here – a speck of dust suspended in the sun."
The meaning of storage is to tell us that the world is meaningless.
Because what can be stored is what is from the past. How much of the past is meaningful? Qin Shi Huang is powerful enough, right? It's definitely better than you and me, so what?
Q: Intelligent driving technology requires the collection, analysis, and calculation of large amounts of data, what impact will this bring to the storage industry?
Xue Jun: In the future, whether it is an electric vehicle or a fuel vehicle, it will definitely develop in the direction of digitalization and intelligence, so the demand for storage capacity will definitely increase. Just like nowadays the amount of storage in our mobile phones is constantly increasing.
Just like a reader, the more books he reads, the more he needs to buy them, and he needs to stay there. Eventually, you will find that your home has become a book storehouse, and the storage capacity is constantly increasing.
An intelligently connected car generates about 4 terabytes of data per day, because a large number of things such as sensors and lidars in the car are generating data.
The camera on the smart car, it is not one, it is shooting before and after. Filming you may be for fear that you will be sleepy, so to warn you, or simply take over the vehicle parked there. Of course, these things can be thrown away and covered when they run out, but they do generate so much data in a day.
Compared with mobile phones, the environment of the car is harsher, and some special requirements for storage are also more stringent. Because mobile phones are with people, but the car is not necessarily, maybe more than 100 degrees near the engine, as well as the scorching heat and winter, then your entire electronic components have to adapt to such a harsh environment to ensure that the car can operate normally.
Q: In the aerospace industry, the requirements for storage products are even more stringent.
Xue Jun: That's for sure. Our products are also used in the aerospace field, so the environment is even more complex. If something breaks down in the car, I can still drive it to the garage and fix it. If it's on a satellite, it's already in space, so how do you change it?
The first problem to be solved in space is radiation, which is equivalent to the storage device being exposed to X-rays every day, and the data here is messed up. Because the way of storage is 0 and 1, there is a specific order between 0 and 1, and once it is radiated, this order is messed up. So engineers have to have algorithms and find a way to recover it.
For example, once hundreds of megabytes or even one T of data are messed up, you have to know clearly where it is messed up and where it is not.
But these industrial applications are different from the personal applications of the average consumer, and the more special the needs in the industrial field, the more advantageous we may be. Because it is not a requirement for how large your capacity is, but in the extreme environment of hot and cold, all kinds of rays, what should you do if your disk fails? Can you get it back? Even like NASA, after a few decades, will engineers still be able to operate and fix it?
Of course, it may not make that much business sense like this, and there will be people to maintain it decades after making a thing. But a small storage capacity like Voyager 1 may not be the memory of a song, and such a gadget has supported that spacecraft to fly for so many years, more than 20 billion kilometers, and it is constantly transmitting information back and forth.
Q: In the era of digitalization and artificial intelligence, what changes and trends will emerge in the storage industry?
Xue Jun: Storage is everywhere, including documents you take out of the printer, even a hot water kettle, which you can't imagine before. Especially in the era of artificial intelligence, there will be more and more demand for data storage.
Artificial intelligence calculates so many things for you, and you have to store them before they can be seen by humans. In the future, storage may be the same as arranging wireless WiFi at home, each household has a small independent storage server, and you can store all the data at home with a disk, which is similar to placing a bookcase at home.
To do business, we must find "big" from "small"
Q: Popular film and television works such as "Flowers" and "The Wandering Earth" are all supported by Zhiyu Technology, in the field of film and television, why can Zhiyu achieve such good results?
Xue Jun: Enterprises do the right thing, in fact, it is the same, it is nothing more than that your products just meet the needs of the market. A crew, when you have found a venue, the actors have made an appointment, and the camera has been filmed, and finally you have been busy for a long time and found that some of the things in the hard drive can't be opened, and some are black, do you say that people can't rub the fire?
This is the problem that we have to solve every day, to keep these documents intact after the power outage, to be stable and secure, or other confidentiality requirements, etc., which are all requirements put forward by the market. When you meet the needs of users, people will naturally use your things.
If you think about it, these stars are quite expensive, the salary is calculated by the hour, and the schedule is not enough at every turn, accounting for the majority of the entire budget, and of course, there are other expenses. After shooting for a long time, you said that the video was lost and you want to reshoot, how much is that?
But how much is my memory card, and compared to the star's salary, it's nothing. When those camera manufacturers and directors saw that my product was good and that the data could be safely and not lost, and slowly found that this thing was very easy to use, everyone trusted it.
No matter how "hard" the technology is, it is to meet the needs of users when it is put on the market. The company is to make products, and the products are to be used to make money, not to show everyone at the exhibition, that is the exhibits, not the products.
You can say how high the performance of the exhibits is, but when you use them in a real environment, you find that you can't use them when they are hot, or they are too cold to use, then this is still not good.
Another point is that the type of product should be in line with the user's positioning, depending on which circle it is sold in.
For example, people in the circle of making movies and playing photography are in pursuit of quality. Quite simply, no matter how expensive a memory card is, it is not as expensive as a celebrity, so he is willing to spend a lot of money on a more expensive, better, and more secure card. This is equivalent to buying an insurance policy and taking a small amount of money to protect a large amount of money.
At this time, the product is sold in a positive cycle, and the user thinks it is good at a glance, so he insists on using it and does not change it. The better you use, the longer you use it.
Q: There are some science and technology enterprises that have also made a lot of investment in research and development, but it is difficult to make money, on the one hand, the technological achievements have not been transformed, and on the other hand, they have not found a good foothold in the mass application. Including the dispute between "technology, industry and trade" and "trade, industry and technology" many years ago, how should technology and market be balanced?
Xue Jun: This kind of thing happens every day, for example, technicians always want to make something very powerful, but the market doesn't see the problem that way. Sometimes when you face some users, it doesn't matter how good the quality of your product is, they pay more attention to the price.
Therefore, when an enterprise makes a product, it is necessary to define the product in detail, what kind of parameters and what indicators are reasonable, and not everything must be very high.
Once it is high, the cost will be higher, and there will be fewer people who can afford it. Therefore, enterprises always have to find a balance among various parameters.
Another point is to maintain the uniqueness of the product. Even in a price-insensitive group, users can do it when they see other companies, and the price immediately becomes sensitive.
So why do we make special, exclusive, it's just that there are no competitors, and as long as I stay there, it's not price sensitive. For example, apples and oranges can't be compared, but if apples and apples are placed together, people will compare them.
Therefore, enterprises should try to avoid the occurrence of this situation of apples and apples. For example, if I have oranges and he has apples, if the user wants to eat apples, then you go and buy him. If you want to eat oranges, buy mine.
After all, apples and oranges belong to the category of fruits, and there is a high probability that you will not have the stomach to eat oranges after eating apples, which is a kind of competition. Fortunately, the taste of the fruit is different, or the season to which it belongs is different.
If you want to eat oranges, or if you want to eat some kind of seasonal fruit, and I happen to be the only one who has it, then people will come and buy me.
This may be a feeling that enterprises should strive to create and find, and it will be comfortable when it is found.
Q: Aerospace has a relatively high threshold, unlike everyday consumer electronics, and does not directly face the general public, why did Zhiyu choose to enter this field?
Xue Jun: Therefore, we should find "big" from "small" and "small" from "big". In the early days of commercial aerospace, how many satellites were launched in a day, this market was not big for me.
But now that commercial space has developed, and the number of satellites launched far exceeds before, that's a huge market. The key is that the products they want are still very expensive, and we sell a lot of products, isn't this a big market? Size is relative.
And the satellite has gradually become a "consumable", it is not just launched and finished, but also has to be eliminated regularly, and it has to be launched as a supplementary satellite. With the development of technology, the cost of satellites has gradually decreased, and it may have been hoped that it would not be bad for 10 or 20 years, but now people's concepts have begun to change, and they feel that it is okay to break one, and just launch another one.
As a result of these changes, a market that used to look small is gradually becoming "bigger".
Also, this market is "small" for Samsung, but it's already big for me. Mobile phones are undoubtedly the largest market, but Samsung occupies there, and ordinary companies can't compare with him and can't touch it.
This is also the significance of the development of our specialized and special new enterprises. Masters are in the people, there will be someone to do everything, and they will grow by themselves. In the rainforest, anything can grow, and this is a diverse environment.
"That's all I can do."
Q: The hard tech track has attracted a lot of attention in recent years, but you entered this field more than 20 years ago. During this period, real estate, Internet finance, bicycle sharing and other industries have become popular batch after batch, but you have always stuck to this industry. What keeps you going?
Xue Jun: I fancy this direction, it doesn't mean that this direction is good, it's because I can only do this one thing, I won't do anything else. I also want to build a house, I also want to build a car, but I can't do it.
I can only write calligraphy, so I will write it well, and one day I will become a calligrapher. At the end of the day, it's because of love and persistence that I love doing it. I also know that it was hard to make money from this thing, whether it was now or 20 years ago.
But because I like it and I'm good at it, I'm going to do it. If you persist for a long time, some people will know and say, "Mr. Xue is very good at these things, I'll go find him."
If you like something, do it. There will be people who will be touched by you, and of course there will be people who ignore it. You don't care about those who ignore you, you care about some of the people who care about you.
You know, it's not the attention of others that determines whether you want to do it, but whether you like it or not.
Although this field is difficult, from a national, collective and individual point of view, it has opportunities. I thought so 20 years ago, and I still see opportunities today.
Even, I would say that 20 years ago there was a greater chance, today the opportunity is even less. Because there are more people who care, they have led this matter astray. 20 years ago, no one cared, it was a normal thing, it was a hundred flowers blooming, and everyone could have a lot of investment opportunities to choose from.
And there are few people who pay attention, so it makes room for those who really love and like, leaving opportunities. On the contrary, today's bad money drives out good money, and what you like and don't like, and what you don't understand are all mixed up, but it messes up this matter, brings a lot of incorrect expectations, and leads the industry astray.
This industry is very difficult to do, but there will always be a few people who say how fast he is, this is not right, and it has set up some wrong ideas for others and misled everyone.
On the contrary, 20 years ago, everyone knew that it was difficult, and they were also calm, so I did it if I liked it, did it well, and did it in a down-to-earth manner.
A lot of success is a combination of choosing and being chosen, and the choice is to say that I am willing to do it; Being chosen means that you can't do anything else, you just do it and you're done.
Q: What do you think about the fact that scientific research results need to go from the bookshelf to the shelf, such as the "valley of death" from academia and research to products and markets?
Xue Jun: There are too many factors here, for example, scientists have discovered a principle, which is that it is difficult to turn into a product. Newton discovered gravity, how should he transform scientific and technological achievements?
But has gravity been transformed to this day? All of them have been transformed, and we are applying these principles of his old man every day in our practical lives. This series of transformations is very difficult.
Most valuable things need to go through a long time, so long that it may take a life to trade, a lifetime to exchange.
In general, the transformation of scientific and technological achievements is used to linking it with wealth. For example, when I first started doing this, I was still a handsome guy, but when I really made money from this thing, maybe everyone was 80, and the money had nothing to do with me. So. Everyone should think clearly about this truth and be mentally prepared to see if this matter is still worth doing.
If you want to achieve success in doing something, you must love and like, but love and like are not equal to wealth. Some people have gained wealth because of their love, but most people's love has not gained wealth, which is a test of their own life.
If you are not a very persistent person, a person who pursues the ultimate inner values, then there is no need to do this, and it is impossible to do it.
Q: It is often difficult to reconcile ideals and reality. What do you think of Dong Yuhui?
Xue Jun: I've watched several of his videos, including the live streaming, and I think it's pretty good. He thinks about problems from a wider angle and dimension than many ordinary people, at least with a wide range of knowledge.
You see that he sells books, and he doesn't talk about the book at all, but as soon as he puts the book here, he starts telling you stories, and when he talks about it, the book is sold.
This leads us to think that at the end of the day, the effort is outside of eight hours. You will find that the mind must be spent on the product, but if the mind is on this hard drive, it is difficult for the company to do a good job. In fact, you have to spend a lot of time thinking about related things, thinking about application scenarios, and seeing where my product can be used.
These are not things that you can think of in the office, you have to go out and see other people, see the world, to know what the world is like and how my things can help others.
You have to make others successful, and others can in turn make you successful.
Dong Yuhui is nothing more than the achievement of others, satisfying everyone's thirst for knowledge, and everyone loves to listen to what he says. After listening to it for a long time, I felt that it was not easy for him to sell things, and he was embarrassed not to buy it, although it was not necessarily useful to buy it back. This is essentially the user's recognition of Dong Yuhui as a person, so in turn he has achieved him.
And many of the stories he tells will touch your heart, how he was with his mother when he was a child, how he was in the countryside, how his colleagues were, he talked about himself and let others see him.
Q: What should we do in this wave of artificial intelligence?
Xue Jun: In the next 5 or 10 years, if you don't pay attention to artificial intelligence, you will definitely be eliminated. But how do you prove that you are on this track, or how to make yourself on this track, there is a lot of knowledge here.
The artificial intelligence that everyone talks about may not be the same thing as the artificial intelligence that Sam Altman said. Any specific person has a different understanding of AI.
The important thing is that this technology that changes all of humanity, people can't make money directly from it. It's just on this basis to see what specific small areas we can make money from.
For example, it is impossible for a waterworks to make a lot of money because the water bill is very cheap, but you make this water into milk tea, so it is easy to understand.
This milk tea is equivalent to a thing on the artificial intelligence track, which is a hundred flowers blooming. So if you want to be specific to what I can do under such a big wave, although it may not be eye-catching, but in the end I just enjoyed it.