203: Chapter 204 The Crushing Power of a World-Class Technological Gap!

General Manager Chen Shengqiang felt a faint layer of cold sweat seeping out from his back.

He was also an elite who had struggled and fought his way through the business world.

Before this, he had simply been blinded by this massive five-hundred-million-dollar order.

Now that Shen Du had hit the nail on the head, he immediately smelled the dangerous scent of conspiracy within it.

"When things are abnormal, there is bound to be something sinister."

Shen Du walked back to his desk, his tone icy:

"There are only two possibilities behind this order. First, they are testing our actual production capacity and technological bottom line. Second, they want to use their status as the 'Client' to legitimately send a technical team here for an inspection. They are attempting to steal the secrets of our 'Heaven-Defying Cooling' manufacturing process!"

Once Jiyuan Technology's special foundry process was thoroughly figured out by foreign capital, this group of greedy plutocrats would absolutely turn hostile without a second thought.

Not only would they cut off the orders at any time, but they would also leverage global technological barriers to completely strangle Jiyuan Technology's foundry in the cradle.

"President Shen, then this five-hundred-million-dollar order... should we just reject it?" General Manager Chen Shengqiang swallowed and asked tentatively.

"Reject? Why reject it?" Shen Du sneered, slamming his hand down with extreme dominance. "This is five hundred million dollars in hard cash delivered to our doorstep! Since they dare to give it, we dare to take it! Not only will we accept it, but we will deliver the goods on time and with quality, and earn every cent of this foreign exchange!"

But immediately after, Shen Du shifted his tone and issued an absolute order that could not be crossed: "However, as for how to play, the rules must be set by us at Jiyuan Technology."

"Old Chen, go convey my instructions immediately. From today on, the super foundry cluster at the foothills of Tianmu Mountain will immediately enter a Red Alert state of the highest security classification!"

Shen Du pressed both hands onto the large mahogany desk, his oppressive gaze locked onto General Manager Chen Shengqiang, as he delivered the prohibition with every word carrying immense weight: "All external negotiations, contract signings, and even the final spot checks and inspections regarding this South Korean order must take place at the Shanghai headquarters! You must clearly tell the South Koreans: We will only deliver the goods; we will never accept any form of on-site inspection at the factory!"

"Without official written safety certification from our country, any non-national corporate personnel, even if the crown prince of the Samsung Group himself comes..." A cold glint flashed in Shen Du's eyes: "They are absolutely forbidden from stepping even half a step into Western Zhejiang's Tianmu Mountain! Whoever dares to exploit loopholes and let in even a single foreign spy, I won't just fire them immediately; I will make them go bankrupt and rot in prison!"

General Manager Chen Shengqiang received the "Tianmu Mountain Prohibition," which was filled with a murderous aura, and turned to leave the president's office with a solemn expression.

Watching General Manager Chen Shengqiang's slightly hurried back, Shen Du picked up the warm tea on the table and took a sip, a hint of contemplation flashing in his deep eyes.

As Jiyuan Technology's territory expanded explosively and crazily over this past year, General Manager Chen Shengqiang, the head steward, although capable, was clearly becoming stretched too thin and struggling to handle it all alone.

The Meituan business alone, which spanned across the country, coupled with the twenty-six chip foundries currently under frantic expansion, was enough to exhaust all his energy.

It was time to reorganize the personnel at a higher level.

At this start-of-the-year executive meeting, Shen Du had already officially issued a new round of organizational restructuring orders: Technical Expert Su Hua, who was originally responsible for core algorithms, would be transferred back to headquarters to officially serve as the CEO of Jiyuan Entertainment, taking full control of the vast pan-entertainment empire.

Meanwhile, Operations Manager Zhang Nan, relying on her keen instincts and illustrious achievements over the past year, was officially promoted to the head of the Publicity Department and Vice President of the Group.

"Knock, knock, knock." The office door was knocked on again.

Technical Expert Su Hua, who had only been the CEO of Jiyuan Entertainment for two days, walked in with a furrowed brow, holding a marked-red emergency document in his hand.

"President Shen, there's a big problem."

Technical Expert Su Hua was a pragmatic technology fanatic and didn't even bother with polite pleasantries. He pushed the red-marked document directly in front of Shen Du, his tone revealing a rare sense of anxiety: "Our server cluster is about to burst!"

Shen Du frowned slightly, set down his teacup, and opened the document.

"With the full-scale rollout of the national 4G infrastructure at the beginning of this year, the number and activity level of mobile internet users have shown a terrifying explosive growth trend."

Technical Expert Su Hua pointed to the traffic growth curve on the document, which was so steep it was almost vertical, his voice tight.

"Currently, it's not just the Short Video, live streaming, and gaming businesses under our Jiyuan Entertainment that are generating astronomical concurrent traffic every day. What's worse is that our cloud service nodes built across the country are also consuming immense bandwidth and computing power due to the surge in external leasing business."

Technical Expert Su Hua took a deep breath and reported a figure that would make any CTO of a major internet company's scalp tingle: "President Shen, the daily full-load operation rate of our super server cluster, which we spent billions to build across twelve provinces and cities, has already soared to eighty percent!"

Eighty percent! In traditional physical industries, this number might represent extremely high capacity utilization. But in the ever-changing internet industry, which frequently faces tens of millions of concurrent traffic, this was simply a Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads!

"The remaining twenty percent of redundant computing power might be barely enough to maintain operations during normal times."

Fine beads of sweat had already seeped out on Technical Expert Su Hua's forehead: "But once we encounter a holiday or the explosion of some phenomenal hot event, crashing head-on into that kind of hundreds-of-millions-level sudden traffic peak... this twenty percent buffer space will be instantly punctured!"

"Once a large-scale crash occurs, the entire ecosystem of Jiyuan Entertainment will fall into complete paralysis, and the losses will be immeasurable."

Technical Expert Su Hua looked at Shen Du and stated his request with extreme solemnity: "President Shen, the situation is critical. I request that we immediately have the foundry produce another batch of the latest core chips for re-packaging. We need to expand our existing server infrastructure scale... by double!"

Double the server cluster? Based on the current international procurement prices for top-tier server equipment, if this scale of computing power and chip demand were reported to Western oligarchs like IBM or Intel, it would absolutely be an astronomical sum of tens or hundreds of billions of RMB, and would likely be a extortionate price where they would take the opportunity to choke our throat!

"Tens or hundreds of billions?" Hearing the desperate, sky-high procurement cost reported by Technical Expert Su Hua, Shen Du's lips curled into an extremely relaxed, even slightly playful arc.

He didn't even frown, simply pulling the black and gold Montblanc fountain pen from the pen holder. On the red-marked emergency expansion request document, he signed his name with a flourish and stamped it heavily with the president's exclusive seal.

"President Shen, this..." Technical Expert Su Hua was stunned, looking at the document that had been pushed back to him, which had already completed the highest approval process: "This is a cash flow budget of billions. Are we really going to bow our heads to those vampires at Intel and NVIDIA to buy equipment?"

"Buy from them? Do they even deserve that?" Shen Du sneered, leaning forward slightly, his hands crossed on the desk, his deep eyes flashing with a chilling gleam: "Technical Expert Su Hua, do not go through any external procurement processes with this computing power demand document. Take it yourself and go to our Yushan Laboratory in the suburbs."

"Go to Yushan Laboratory?" Technical Expert Su Hua's heart jumped. As a core executive, he certainly knew about that top-secret laboratory, which was heavily guarded and swallowed astronomical amounts of R&D funds every year.

"Do you really think that Jiyuan Technology can build the largest server cluster in the country so recklessly because we have too much money to burn and are willing to pay that sky-high 'technological protection fee' to Western oligarchs?"

Shen Du looked at Technical Expert Su Hua and calmly uttered a nuclear-level secret that could trigger a magnitude-12 earthquake in the global technology circle: "Go tell the person in charge of Yushan Laboratory to start the machines and 'print' them for me, according to the computing power requirements in your document!"

"All the underlying core chips we need to build the new generation of server clusters, whether it's CPU or GPU, are all products that have been directly reverse-engineered and cloned one-to-one from Intel and NVIDIA's latest architectures inside Yushan Laboratory!"

"Boom!" This sentence, like a thunderbolt, exploded directly in Technical Expert Su Hua's mind. Reverse-engineering and cloning Intel and NVIDIA's core chips?! You could make as many as you wanted, and the cost was almost zero?!

Technical Expert Su Hua felt his scalp tingle, and even his breathing stopped. As a pragmatic technology fanatic, he knew better than anyone what kind of terrifying crushing technological gap this represented!

In this era where major domestic internet companies still had to look at the faces of Western chip manufacturers and were frequently "choked" and forced to pay exorbitant road tolls, Jiyuan Technology had actually secretly and forcefully hand-crafted a hidden "cloning" empire!

"This... this is simply a miracle!" Technical Expert Su Hua was trembling slightly with excitement.

"Don't get excited just yet." The smile on Shen Du's face vanished instantly, replaced by an unprecedented coldness and murderous aura: "Technical Expert Su Hua, since you have taken over the entire foundation of Jiyuan Entertainment, I must reveal this secret to you. But you must remember this firmly—"

Shen Du's gaze locked onto Technical Expert Su Hua, and he delivered the absolute order with every word carrying immense weight: "This matter is the true highest secret of the entire Jiyuan Technology!"

"This batch of 'cloned' chips, during the entire process of being sent to the Tianmu Mountain foundry for re-packaging and finally being installed and operated in server rooms across various locations, must be subject to the strictest isolation management! Even the final scrapped chips must all be crushed and recycled; not even half a defective piece must ever leak out!"

Shen Du took a deep breath, his tone icy: "Before our semiconductor physical industrial chain is fully mature and we have enough strength to go head-to-head with the US NASDAQ... this layer of window paper must never be punctured!"

"Once the outside world obtains physical evidence proving that we are infringing on and cloning the underlying patents of Western monopoly giants on a large scale, Jiyuan Technology will be subjected to destructive sanctions by global capital and technological hegemony with all their might before we can even clear customs!"

Listening to Shen Du's highly oppressive warning, cold sweat instantly broke out on Technical Expert Su Hua's forehead. He stood up straight abruptly, his eyes filled with a fanatical determination, and issued a military pledge: "President Shen, rest assured! I will send my most trusted die-hard loyalists to watch the server rooms and packaging lines! As long as I am here, the chips will be here; even if the servers catch fire, I will absolutely not let a single piece of silicon with writing on it fall into the hands of those foreign investors!"