Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1261 Feeling at Home

Of course, it cannot be said that the inventor is really selfless, because although the QR code is free, the code reader is patented.

Ricoh’s idea is to promote QR codes for free and then make a lot of money on code reading equipment.

"Does Zhou Zhi want to cooperate with Ricoh to promote QR code scanning equipment in China?" Matsui believed that he had found Zhou Zhi's pulse.

"Haha..." Zhou Zhi laughed a little awkwardly: "Actually, what I want to say is that Ricoh no longer needs to develop that thing, because we have already developed it, and the cost should be much lower than what Ricoh would develop by itself. …”

"What?!" Matsui was shocked. This flip was really unexpected. The islanders only opened the patent this year, and then the Chinese said they had already produced a patented product. This makes no sense anywhere.

In fact, even Zhou Zhi himself was a little bit dumbfounded: "Our Clover Company has received many patent transfers from the Shu University Computing Center, one of which is the machine-readable card scoring system."

"Based on that system, we developed our own pattern recognition technology, which is a device used to read Chinese character cards."

"This set of equipment can read Chinese characters on character cards, realize automatic recognition and decomposition of character roots, generate group character codes, automatically fill in and assign UNICODE code points, and many other functions. Otherwise, our Han character library would never be able to be developed so quickly. can form a product.”

"Since we can read Chinese characters, is it difficult to identify QR codes?" Zhou Zhi spread his hands and said, "We didn't expect that you would completely open up the patent for QR codes, and put all your profit expectations into reading them. On the code reader, this code reading technology is our mature technology, and this technology is extremely easy to use for code reading."

"When the two sides meet, it means that our Clover Company has a complete set of technologies related to QR codes. How can this be justified?"

Matsui Zuo's heart skipped a beat. What Zhou Zhi said was completely reasonable. As long as you know the algorithm of the QR code matrix and use a device that can recognize Chinese characters to decipher the QR code, it is also a dimensionality reduction application and there is no difficulty at all.

This achievement will be censored!

In fact, Zhou Zhi didn't pay much attention to this QR code, because in the life before he traveled through time, the Japanese also made the same mistake.

They did not anticipate the prospects of smartphone camera functions, lacked imagination for the application scenarios of QR codes, and did not expect that they could be used as an important interface for mobile phones to connect online and offline, that is, they could be used as offline products online. The payment transaction channel eventually played tricks on the Chinese people, but they did not get a penny of benefit.

In the end, this code reader became a useless product. It had no sales in the first place, and then it was completely replaced by mobile phones until it disappeared.

But for Clover Company's supermarket management system, this thing is very useful.

The amount of information that QR codes can carry can theoretically reach 350 times that of barcodes. This can provide more information labels for products, allow products to carry more information, and make management more detailed.

The cost of scanning equipment has not increased much.

What’s more, after the code-scanning patents are iterated and matured, they can be easily transplanted into scenario applications on mobile smart devices in the future. This market will be really huge.

The key is that the Chinese didn't spend a penny of extra research and development expenses. They introduced algorithms and simplified the equipment, and the Chinese character recognition scanner became a QR code scanner. This is a bit bullying.

"There is a Chinese poem about sewing wedding dresses for others, right?" Matsui Zuo shook his head and smiled bitterly: "Mr. Masahiro Hara, Denso Co., Ltd., and Ricoh all miscalculated!"

"No." Zhou Zhi smiled and said: "We still admire Mr. Hara Masahiro's high integrity, but I believe that Denso Co., Ltd. and Ricoh have not invested too much in R&D. After all, the QR code has not even entered the JIS and ISO standards." "I think we can work together to make the QR code a national standard for our two countries first, and then make it an ISO standard. We can be responsible for manufacturing and do overseas OEM for Denso and Ricoh. It can still be a win-win situation!"

"Is it possible to adopt another form of cooperation?" Matsui asked: "Transfer the code scanning patent and even the Chinese character intelligent recognition technology to us. We can pay a considerable patent transfer fee."

"This possibility is really unlikely. Chinese character intelligent recognition technology is the core patented technology of Clover, which is equivalent to its lifeblood." Zhou Zhi smiled: "As for the scanning patent... it is actually a scanning camera plus a decoding algorithm chip."

"Then can we seek a cooperation method that can be recognized by both parties?" Zhou Zhi thought for a while: "With investment from Clover Company, we will introduce a set of chip RTL design software and EDA tools from the island country to design our decoding chip. Deliverable GDS."

The birth of a chip is actually divided into three steps - chip design, wafer manufacturing, and packaging and testing.

Large-scale integrated circuits often have more than a million components, so it is impossible to draw them all by hand. Therefore, there are now several major design languages.

The first step is to pass the design through a hardware description language, which is now called Verilog or VHDL, to describe the circuit in code and generate RTL code.

Afterwards, the RTL code is logically synthesized and converted into NetList, which is a gate-level code table.

Even if the chip design is completed at this point, but for the lithography machine to "read" it, one more step is needed. Use EDA tools to convert the NetList output into the input process file of the lithography machine - that is, the GDS file.

Taking the generation of RTL code as a division, the chip design is divided into front-end design and back-end design.

Now Zhouzhi wants to give Clover Company such capabilities through cooperation with Japan.

"After designing the GDS file, where will it be produced?" Matsui asked.

This was a naked display of eating, but Zhou Zhi could only hold his nose and accept it.

"Debei and Huahong should both have such production capabilities." Zhou Zhi thought for a moment: "But since we have to rely on your country, I am more inclined to Huahong."

"Firstly, I am familiar with Huahong's Director Hu. Secondly, Huahong and your country's NEC are cooperating. Huahong's full name should actually be Huahong NEC. If possible, if this chip is designed, we will entrust Huahong NEC in production?"

"If that's the case, I can come forward to lobby our country's manufacturers." Seeing Zhou Zhi's actual benefits, Matsui Zuo finally nodded: "According to the latter plan proposed by Zhou Sang, it should be more optimistic."

After chatting until this point, Zhou Zhi finally felt that his barbecue was not in vain. He could get the underwriting rights of Samsung flash memory cards and the country's RTL design software and EDA tools, and also started the cooperative development of Hanka chips and QR code scanning chips. , which is already a harvest beyond expectations.

With the prospect of benefits in mind, Zhou Zhi then let his Japanese and Korean "friends" experience what it means to feel at home.

(End of this chapter)