Chapter 1255 MiniCOS
This is a thorough conspiracy. Japan and South Korea have no way to deal with it and have no other choice but to agree.
After the two of them understood the situation of Clover Company, they felt that the two giant monsters of IBM and Microsoft were looking at the valuable things, and they could not easily obtain them. Looking at the rest, they felt that it was really worthless. .
However, they were not interested, but Zhou Zhi was somewhat enthusiastic: "I heard that the island country is working hard to transform the traditional camera industry?"
"What? Clover still wants to enter the digital camera industry?" Matsui Zuo There was a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
Zhou Zhi seemed not to have heard it: "Mr. Matsui, the image of a four-leaf clover itself is four leaves, which means it can be divided or combined."
"Our goal is to create a four-leaf clover. A universal operating system platform, this platform can not only be used as a computer operation The system can also be used as the underlying operating system for all information equipment in the future, including digital cameras. "
"As far as I know, several companies in our country have already started."
In fact, digital cameras have come a long way so far.
From 1970 when Bell Labs promoted the CCD photosensitive array, to 1975 when a black and white image of a child and a dog was recorded on a cassette tape, and then to 1991 when Kodak successfully trial-produced the first true digital camera Digital cameras have gone through thirty years of development. All technologies have matured and are about to usher in an explosive period.
Next is the qualitative change caused by the quantitative change of time. From now on, even if digital photography technology is completely finalized, it will continue to move towards the "involution road" of doubling the pixels, increasing the storage, increasing the standby time, and continuously reducing the cost. .
But the technical architecture and intellectual property barriers have been basically determined from now on.
Such technical barriers are everywhere, so that latecomers can only see the layers of high walls, but it is difficult to climb over.
Zhou Zhi smiled and said: "I know you started early. From 1981, when Sony invented the first CCD electronic still camera "Mavica", to 1988, when Fuji and Toshiba jointly developed a camera that uses flash memory cards. Fujixs still cameras are quite remarkable achievements.”
“But what I want to say is that these cameras are still old models.”
"Old model?" Jin Chunyi was surprised by Zhou Zhi's eloquent words, but now that he is short-tongued, he still asked for advice: "Please tell me, Mr. Zhou, what do you think is advanced?"
Zhou Zhi said: "What I mean is that digital cameras haven't really happened yet. A true technological revolution. It is still a traditional camera, but it uses a photosensitive element to replace the viewfinder, a storage element to replace the film, a data cable to connect to the computer, and a developing room. ”
“The rest is basically mechanical control, or Talking about motor control. "
"That's not all." Matsui shook his head: "Our point-and-shoot cameras can now also automatically meter, range, focus, red-eye reduction, flash, and exposure functions. As far as I know, Fujifilm also has portrait, landscape, night and other shooting modes. . ”
This is absolutely correct. In fact, the various functions of later digital cameras have basically been covered by current point-and-shoot cameras, and the control system of digital cameras is actually the control system of point-and-shoot cameras. Design concept, pan to digital camera.
Of course, the real situation will not be so simple, but the big conceptual deviation is not far away. The point-and-shoot camera is a transitional product in the "practical stage" of mankind, and its lifespan only lasts for ten years.
Ten years later, the world has become a world of digital cameras. Those camera manufacturers that did not have time to transform in time completely missed this feast and eventually became the only playthings in the hands of nostalgic people.
However, Zhou Zhi has a perfect breakthrough: "Our company is engaged in information technology, but in the final analysis, it is still a producer of goods. Before the goods are delivered to consumers, there is no There is no way to generate profits.” “What you saw in the training center. We have our own name for this 'shelled' Linux, called COS"
"COS?" Matsui asked: "ChineseOperatingSystem?"
"Of course not." Zhou Zhi smiled and said: "The laws of our country do not allow this. It is Clover Operating System."
"Clover is four-leaf clover, the English name of our company."
" Oh, the name is also quite nice. "
"As I just said, it is difficult to realize the product before it is in the hands of consumers." Zhou Zhi continued: "In order to achieve this goal, we also use CO. S made a shortened version and used it as an industrial control-level operating system platform. We named it MiniCOS. "
"And this MiniCOS, in our expectation, can become a benchmark for digital products. Operating platform, it can become the working matrix of various encoders and decoders. Load it with different decoding protocols, and it can become a CD player, LD player, DVD player, and MPEG player."
"Similarly, for different hardware support, it can also support electronic dictionaries, game consoles, scanners, and digital cameras."
"You can understand it as a middle ground between the X86 instruction set and Linux The product is only designed for small portable devices.”
“I know that there are only a few powerful companies in the island country, such as Sony, Fujifilm, and Toshiba, that have developed their own digital camera operating systems, but I Personally, I think we can develop individually , is actually a huge waste of resources, and it is also an excessive and ineffective competition.”
“Our solution is to leave this matter to us professionals, and everyone only needs a small sum of money. With a high licensing fee, you can obtain the right to use this platform, so that you can devote more energy to the research and development of core components of the product. "
"This idea... is indeed a bit sensible. ." Matsui Zao was actually a little tempted by Zhou Zhi's words.
For those mobile devices mentioned by Zhou Zhi, the operating system is of course indispensable, but it is not the absolute core.
For example, the core technology of digital cameras is optical devices and image sensors that determine imaging accuracy.
Currently there are two types of sensors: CCD and CMOS modes. The former is mid- to low-end and the latter is high-end.
No matter what kind, photodiodes are used to collect visible light, and finally output into original imaging pictures. The initial files are all in RAW format.
For the operating system of a digital camera, in addition to various fancy operating functions, its job is to faithfully store the most fine-grained RAW format files. At most, it also has one job, which is to store them. It is processed into a rough browsing image and returned to the viewfinder, so that the photographer can see the rough image effect. The actual editing is done after exporting the image from the digital camera to the computer.
Therefore, there is no need to imagine how high-end the operating system chip of a digital camera is. It is actually just a small platform that can load the functions of a point-and-shoot camera.
“Because our MiniCOS is supported by the concept of ‘baseline platform’, it can provide maximum compatibility to various manufacturers.” Zhou Zhi saw that Matsui had come to his senses and handed him another slice. Pork belly wrapped in spring bamboo shoots: "Mr. Matsui, do you understand what I mean?"
(End of this chapter)