Steal the enemy's base at the start and build a technological empire.

Chapter 375 Our Only Path

Three months passed in the blink of an eye, and it was October 21st. Ling Yun sat at his desk with a stack of documents in front of him, all of which were tasks he needed to handle urgently.

For three whole months, Ling Yun was detained at the Jingxi Hotel. Every morning at eight o'clock, he would enter the conference room and not be released until ten o'clock at night. He ate in the canteen, slept in the hotel, and was not allowed to make phone calls or ask about anything outside. On the first day he went in, he was wearing short sleeves, but when he came out, he had to wear a jacket.

Just as Ling Yun was marveling at how wonderful freedom was, there was a knock on the door. He looked up at the doorway and said, "Come in."

Chen Lingling pushed open the door and came in, carrying a steaming cup of tea. She placed the cup on the table and stood to the side without leaving. Ling Yun glanced at her and asked, "What is it?"

Chen Lingling nodded and said, "Jiang Feng is here. He's been waiting for over an hour. He said he wants to report to you in person about the database."

Ling Yun nodded and said, "Let him in."

Chen Lingling turned and left. There was a knock on the door twice more, and Jiang Feng pushed it open. He was wearing a dark blue jacket, his hair was a little longer than before he left, and he had dark circles under his eyes, but he looked fine. He was carrying a bulging black laptop bag.

Jiang Feng sat down across from Ling Yun at the desk, placing his laptop bag beside his feet. He looked at Ling Yun and said, "Mr. Ling, you've lost weight."

Ling Yun said, "After being locked up for three months and eating in the cafeteria, it's no wonder I gained weight." He pointed to the teacup, "Want some? Have Chen Lingling make another cup."

Jiang Feng shook his head and said, "No need, I'll leave after I finish speaking." He picked up his laptop bag, unzipped it, took out a folder, and placed it on the table. The folder was thick, with neat edges, and a label on the cover that read "Nebula Database Financial Test Report." He opened to the first page, looked at Ling Yun, and said, "All tests have passed."

Ling Yun remained silent, waiting for him to continue.

Jiang Feng said, "The testing started in July at a subordinate unit of the People's Bank of China. We ran two rounds: the first was functional testing, and the second was stress testing. The functional testing lasted two weeks, with over a hundred test cases, and all of them passed. The stress testing lasted four weeks, simulating the load of the bank's core transaction system. The peak daily transaction volume reached ten million transactions, with an average response time of less than thirty milliseconds. There was no data loss, no deadlocks, and no crashes. The test report came out last week and was signed off by the expert group."

He flipped the folder to the middle page and pointed to a line of numbers. Ling Yun glanced at it; the numbers weren't large, but there was a red stamp next to them, along with several signatures lined up. Ling Yun asked, "Does the expert panel have any comments?"

Jiang Feng said, "The comments are written at the end. They said that the Nebula database meets the standards of a commercial database in terms of functionality. Under stress testing, it performed stably, and its performance can meet the needs of small and medium-sized financial institutions. Compared with Oracle, there is still a gap. The concurrent processing capability is about 30% lower, and the response time for complex queries is a bit slower. But its advantage lies in being completely independent and controllable. The code was all written by ourselves, and we did not modify any open-source materials. During the audit, the experts checked it line by line for two weeks. The final conclusion was: the code is 100% independent, there are no risks associated with open-source licenses, and there are no third-party dependencies."

Ling Yun asked him, "When will the 30% performance gap be filled?"

Jiang Feng thought for a moment and said, "Within two years, we'll optimize concurrent processing to 80% of Oracle's performance. Within five years, we'll catch up. But one team isn't enough; we need more application scenarios and more user feedback. Running it in the lab won't produce good results. Databases need to be tested in real-world scenarios to reveal their problems, and only a large amount of real data can measure their true performance. And we need people to use it and provide feedback so we can make changes."

Ling Yun nodded. "Since the performance can't compare, we should focus on improving the service, strengthening our operations and maintenance capabilities, and increasing the number of staff to ensure that every customer can contact our operations and maintenance personnel at any time. The operations and maintenance personnel can also collect a lot of real feedback, not only about bugs, but also about their real needs."

Jiang Feng nodded. "Okay, I'll arrange for the HR department to recruit maintenance personnel when I get back."

He turned to another page and said, "After the testing was completed, three banks approached us. One is a city commercial bank in Shandong, which wants to replace the database in its core system. It's not a large-scale operation, but they're willing to be the first to try. Another is a joint-stock bank, a nationwide one. They're building a peripheral system first, not the core one, but a reporting system, to run for a year and see how it goes. The third is a provincial credit union, which wants to centralize data across the province. They're currently bidding, and we're one of the shortlisted vendors. We've already signed a contract for the first project, worth three million. The second one is going through the process and we expect to sign it next month. The third one is waiting for the bidding results, which will be available by the end of this month."

Lingyun asked him, "When will the first project launch?"

Jiang Feng said, "Next March. The city commercial banks are very cooperative. They themselves feel that Oracle is too expensive, with service fees of several million yuan a year, which they can't afford. Moreover, the higher-ups have been emphasizing data security. They are willing to try, but they require us to provide on-site support and respond within two hours if any problems arise. I have already arranged for four people to enter the site next Monday."

Ling Yun said, "Okay. Keep a close eye on the first project; it can't go wrong. If it does, all the subsequent projects will be lost. Also, after signing the orders from those three banks, compile the case studies. Write a white paper and send it to the other banks. Replacing the database in the financial system is a huge market, but the trust threshold is high. If the first case study is done well, the rest will be easier to promote."

Jiang Feng nodded, closed the folder, and put it back in his laptop bag. He sat there, not leaving. He looked at Ling Yun and said, "Mr. Ling, there's one more thing."

Ling Yun looked at him and asked, "What is it?"

Jiang Feng said, "During the testing, the people from the People's Bank of China asked a question. They said, 'Your database is independently controllable, and the code is all written by yourself, but what about your hardware? The servers are imported, the storage is imported, and the CPU is imported. No matter how independent the software is, if it runs on someone else's hardware, can it be considered truly independent?'"

Ling Yun picked up his teacup, took a sip, and said, "Tell him that we're also working on hardware. Show them the news about ARM's acquisition and the R&D progress of Qilu Microelectronics. Let them know that we're not just doing software, but our hardware needs time, especially server R&D."

Jiang Feng nodded and asked, "President Ling, how long will it take for our server development to yield results?"

Ling Yun thought for a moment and said, "The servers should be ready by the end of the year, and at the latest by the middle of next year. However, they are still using Intel CPUs. It will probably take a long time before we can use our own chips."

Jiang Feng asked him, "What architecture will our chip use?"

Ling Yun said, "Using the ARM9 Haval architecture is not enough for high-performance computing. Although the power consumption is low, it is still not enough for servers. We need to add some complex instructions to the reduced instruction set to specifically handle high-performance computing."

Jiang Feng asked him, "Is this possible?"

Ling Yun said, "We definitely can. We need to start now. Whether it takes ten or twenty years, we have to produce results. This is our only way."

Jiang Feng nodded. "I believe we can definitely create a complete industrial chain that belongs to China."