MTL - Into Unscientific-Chapter 417 Supercomputing Has Fallen (Part 2)

  Chapter 417 Supercomputing has settled down (Part 2)

   ". Oak technology?"

  In the ward.

  Hearing the name that Academician Pan said, Xu Yun was taken aback for a moment.

   It’s actually this company?

  After receiving the reward of the supercomputing module, Xu Yun has been thinking about realizing it as soon as possible.

  In addition, the development of Huadun Biotechnology really needs a supercomputer, especially now that with Lu Xiao in place, this demand has become more and more urgent.

  So in the past period of time, Xu Yun or the company's board of directors has done a very deep understanding of the supercomputing industry.

   Mentioned earlier.

   As of now, 80% of domestic supercomputers on the top500 list are from the Liu family.

  To be honest, this is a very scary value, which can be called a monopoly.

  On the other hand, although the Liu family accounted for more than 80% of the supercomputing output, 20% of the supercomputing still comes from other companies.

  The 20% of the supercomputing capacity is distributed all over the country. Regionally, it can be classified into three provinces or municipalities directly under the Central Government:

  Yanjing, Guangdong Province, Sichuan and Sichuan.

   Oakwood Technology is a supercomputer manufacturer located in Sichuan and Sichuan.

   Coincidentally.

   Its boss Guo Hao is also an alumnus who graduated from the junior class of HKUST, and he was one of the earliest batches—although HKUST established a junior class in 1978, the major of computing software was not officially opened until 1984.

   From a certain point of view.

  Guo Hao is the first regular army of computer majors in China, and he has more seniority than Xiaorong.

  However, Guo Hao did not choose to stay as a programmer or a hacker after graduation, but went to sea to start his own business and tinkered with communication equipment.

   Then came the ups and downs of 20 to 30 years. In 2019, Guo Hao and several partners founded Oakwood Technology.

  Oakwood Technology mainly provides customized services for commercial computers, and the target customers are very clearly positioned:

  Does not do head supercomputing, only the market below the waist, that is, supercomputing that ranks 300-1000 in the world.

  At the same time, Guo Hao has made a lot of achievements in storage and access models and parallel programs. In the case of lower precision, he can even achieve higher vector processing effects than Liu's.

  So in the past few years, although Oakwood Technology has not been able to reach the top spot in the industry, it is actually quite comfortable to live a small life.

  Take last year as an example.

  They produced a total of two supercomputers last year, both of which are mid-to-low-end machines with a ranking of 800 to 1,000 meters. One is for domestic use and the other is for Ah San.

  The total quotation of these two supercomputers is about more than 200 million points, and the equipment profit is 50 to 60 million.

  After deducting the company's operating expenses and employee bonuses, Guo Hao's annual income is also in the eight figures.

  Think here.

  Xu Yun couldn't help but glance at Academician Pan who was at the side.

  A few days ago when he greeted Lu Xiao, he had mentioned the matter of supercomputing. At the same time, in the company's plan, supercomputing was indeed on the schedule.

  Because you don’t need to look at a supercomputer that costs hundreds of millions of Huaxia coins. At first glance, it seems that Huadun Biotechnology will not be able to afford this money in a short time.

   But in fact, this stuff is just like decoration.

  The decoration fee does not need to be paid in one lump sum, and the decoration team will not enter the venue today and finish it tomorrow. It will take a long period of time.

  So as long as the company puts up a deposit of 20 to 30 million yuan, the manufacturer can almost start production.

  The entire production and assembly process can take half a year as fast as possible, or as slow as one or two years—even if you look at the fastest time, the company will have the ability to pay the full amount by then.

  So what stood in front of Xu Yun during this period was not the issue of money, but the choice of the partner.

   Actually.

  As a supercomputer manufacturer with a relatively good reputation in China, Oakwood Technology was originally on the contact list planned by Xu Yun or the board of directors.

   It turned out that Academician Pan took the initiative to lead the line before the inquiry letter was sent out?

  This action is obviously telling Xu Yun one thing:

   There is a discount for your own people!

   And at the same time when Xu Yun was slightly lost in thought.

  Guo Hao on the bed came back to his senses one step earlier than him, only to see that he let out a very exaggerated ah ah ah, and at the same time sat up straight quickly:

   "Oh, look at my brain, I just pay attention to say hello to Lao Pan, come here, Xiao Ai, Dr. Xu, please sit down, please sit down."

  Looking at Guo Hao's posture, if it wasn't for the intravenous drip in his hand, he would probably have to go down to the ground to move Xu Yun's stool himself.

   Then Academician Pan gave Xu Yun a look and motioned him to sit down.

  Xu Yun obeyed obediently.

  The practice of ignoring Xu Yun's existence in advance put Guo Hao in a passive position from the beginning. At the same time, Academician Pan's identity as a middleman was also destined to make some concessions on the price.

  So Guo Hao didn't put on much of a gesture, so he asked directly:

   "Dr. Xu, according to Lao Pan, your company wants to customize supercomputers?"

  Xu Yun nodded, scratching his hair honestly and honestly:

   "That's right, that's why when I heard that the teacher was coming to visit you today, I had the cheek to follow."

  Academician Pan secretly nodded when he heard the words.

  Although in order to avoid suspicion as much as possible, he never told Xu Yun about Guo Hao, but Guo Hao didn't know about it.

  When Xu Yun said this, Guo Hao would have to accept the favor of Academician Pan.

   Then Guo Hao thought about it and asked Xu Yun:

   "Dr. Xu, I don't know what kind of supercomputer your company wants to customize?"

   "Specifications"

  Xu Yun looked up at Guo Hao, with a trace of curiosity on his face, and said:

   "Mr. Guo, can you introduce the concept of specific specifications?"

  Guo Hao nodded. This in itself is one of the most critical business modules for custom supercomputing:

   "There are many types of supercomputing specifications, but when it comes to data, two attributes can be used to easily include them."

   "The first aspect is the computing power of supercomputing. Currently, according to the computing power of supercomputing, it can be divided into E-level, P-level and P-level."

   "The E here refers to Exascale, which is tens of billions of times per second."

  “Last year, there was no such category in the industry, but this year, as Frontier became the world’s first supercomputer to break the bottleneck of exascale computing, the E era has officially arrived.”

   "In addition, above the E-level is the Z-level, which is the zettascale of ten trillion trillion, which belongs to the goal of the next stage."

   Guo Hao paused as he spoke, and added in a low voice:

   "Of course, even if there are more E-level classifications now, our company can't produce supercomputers of this level. The main reason for this business is to support the facade."

  Xu Yun and Academician Pan smiled dumbly.

  This incident is not uncommon in other industries. For example, the bicycle tire repair shop downstairs of Xu Yun’s house claims to be able to change the Bentley.

   Then Guo Hao coughed lightly, and his face returned to normal:

   "The P-level computer refers to PetaFLOPS, which is one trillion floating-point operations per second."

"Currently all the supercomputers on the supercomputer list are almost at the P level. For example, the 300th place is 2.3P, the 500th place is 1.6P, and the 1000th place is about 0.8P. The ones below 1P are mine. Said P-grade."

   "At the same time, based on this classification, the second attribute I mentioned can be derived, which is power consumption."

  After speaking, Guo Hao thought for a while, and took out a notebook from his side.

  Opened the notebook and fiddled a few times, then pushed the screen in front of Xu Yun:

   "Dr. Xu, this is the corresponding power consumption corresponding to the computing power-this is actually not disclosed to the public, please keep it secret."

   "Thank you very much."

  Xu Yun thanked Guo Hao, took the notebook and read it.

   "Class E energy consumption 50 megawatts per hour"

   "2.2P 6 megawatts per hour, that is, 6000 kWh"

   "0.8P 2 megawatts per hour, 2000 kWh"

  The data given by Guo Hao is not only the power consumption, but also the area occupied by the water-cooling equipment, PUE value, etc.

  This value is about 10% higher than the data Xu Yun learned. After all, Oakwood Technology is indeed not the kind of leading supercomputing manufacturer, and its main focus is comprehensive cost performance.

  The power consumption unit price of the head supercomputer may indeed be lower, but the premise of this low price is that the base of other people’s consumption is also large.

  The unit price of equipment that consumes 50,000 to 60,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per hour must be much lower than that of two to three thousand kilowatt-hours—but such a low price is obviously not needed by Xu Yun for the time being.

   Soon, Xu Yun's eyes locked on one of the recommended packages.

   This package is a combination configuration, and the words "year-end loss promotion" are marked next to it.

  The computing power of the package is 1.3P, the PUE value is 1.22, and it is equipped with 5×5 tiles.

  These tiles have a bandwidth of 4.5TB/s on each side, and each module also has a cover with a heat dissipation capacity of 15kW, minus the heat dissipation for 40 I/Os.

  At the same time, this set of supercomputing uses 1023 computer nodes, CPU+GPU heterogeneous computing mode.

  The interconnection is 40G Ethernet, and the water-cooling unit covers an area of ​​500 square meters.

  The customized price of the entire set of supercomputers is 80 million Huaxia coins without CPU+GPU. If it is equipped with related CPUs or GPUs, the price will go up a lot.

  For example, after configuring the Xeon E5-2673v420C2.3GHz, the customized price of the supercomputer immediately increased to 150 million.

   The highest configuration in this part is AMDEPYC771364C2GHz, the quotation is 230 million.

   Then Xu Yun turned his head to look at Academician Pan, and under Academician Pan's gaze of "you decide for yourself", he turned the display screen towards Guo Hao:

   "Mr. Guo, how much can you pay for this configuration?"

   "This set?"

  Guo Hao is not surprised by Xu Yun's choice, this is basically their best selling machine:

   "Dr. Xu, I don't know whether you are going to choose another CPU or GPU."

  Xu Yun shook his head lightly:

   "We are going to purchase this part ourselves."

  When Lu Xiao was greeted earlier, Xu Yun and Chen Yunji had already connected to the line.

  Cambrian of China Science and Technology of Chen Yunji is engaged in chips. As one of the companies of the University of Science and Technology, there are almost no suppliers in China with lower quotations than Cambrian.

   It is true that for ordinary companies, there may be a big gap or risk between Cambrian chips and top chip suppliers.

   But don't forget.

  Xu Yun has the computing power template rewarded by the halo and the artificial intelligence Mimi in his hands, so he doesn't have to worry about this problem at all.

  Seeing that Xu Yun's attitude is quite firm, Guo Hao also gave up the idea of ​​continuing Amway and focused all his attention on the price:

   "Dr. Xu, to tell you the truth, the price of this package is already very low, and our company can't make much money."

   "How about you look at it like this, 7777.7, what do you think of this price?"

  Guo Hao's expression looked very sincere, but Xu Yun didn't buy him at all.

joke.

  Basically from fruit stalls on the street to real estate sales these days, even the little sister of Dabaojian is yelling every day that there is no profit. Who do you believe?

   But believe it or not, Xu Yun's experience in bargaining is indeed not very rich.

   If there were fewer cuts, Guo Hao agreed in the next second, without even a chance to regret the move.

  In this case, it is better to cut a little more.

  So he gritted his teeth and reported a number:

   "Mr. Guo, how about this, 59.99 million, if it's ok, I'll sign the bill directly!"

   Guo Hao:

  “(╯‵ ′)╯︵┻━┻?????”

  If Academician Pan wasn't present, he would really have the heart to turn the table right now.

   Really thought they were a shop with a profit margin of 100%+ like Computer City?

  The core profit points of supercomputers are actually only five or six. In the case of self-purchase of CPUs, a 20% profit margin for a supercomputer is not bad.

  One reason is that Oakwood Technology is not a purely upstream enterprise, and many parts have to be purchased from suppliers, and this part has been spent.

  Secondly, the companies that buy commercial supercomputers are not pure computer noobs, they are all high-tech companies, and they all have a clear understanding of the quotations.

  If you treat customers like guinea pigs in the computer city, they will turn around and leave immediately.

  So the quotation given by Oakwood Technology—even the initial price, is in the category of sincerity.

  The profit margin they showed to Party A is about 15 points on the bright side, relying on Guo Hao's ability in storage and access models and parallel programs to free up a few more points, and then it is almost the same.

   In other words.

  80 million overcalculation costs about 64 million.

  So Guo Hao’s psychological price is roughly around 73 million, and the profit is around 10 million.

  7777 belongs to the idea of ​​​​making two or three poles if you have a date or not. Xu Yun will naturally make a lot of money if he is hooked.

   Unexpectedly, it was no longer a question of whether Xu Yun was caught or not, but that he snatched the sack, and he was about to put the supercomputer in the backhand and carry it away.

   This is pure tm robbery.

   Actually.

   It was not only Guo Hao who couldn't hold back, but also Academician Pan beside him.

  Xu Yun, this is no bargaining, it would be fine if you cut someone directly

   Then Academician Pan took a deep breath, calmed down the smile on the corner of his mouth, and took the initiative to say:

   "Okay, Lao Guo, Xiao Xu is not very good at bargaining, so you should take it easy."

   "I think you two should stop arguing about 7777 or 5999, let me tell you the number, 6999, how about it?"

   "6999?"

   Guo Hao frowned, obviously a little unhappy.

  Although he has a deep friendship with Academician Pan and he is ready to make concessions, the discount has increased by several million, which is somewhat beyond his expectations.

   From the bottom line of 7300 to 6999, this is no longer the category of giving face to friends.

  Besides, although he is the major shareholder of the company, the shares of other partners are also not low, and he must also take into account the opinions of these partners.

  Seeing that Guo Hao's attitude was somewhat tangled, Academician Pan thought for a while, and suddenly said:

   "Old Guo, let me ask you a question first."

   "If you agree to this price, I promise that within two weeks, your company will be able to attend a conference of a Nobel Prize-level achievement as a sponsor. Are you willing?"

   "?"

  A clear question mark appeared on Guo Hao's face, and he looked at Academician Pan like a fool:

   "Old Pan, are you alright? The bed next to me is still empty, why don't you go through the hospitalization procedures and we'll be sick again?"

  Unexpectedly, Academician Pan's expression did not change at all, he was still very serious:

   "Old Guo, I'm not joking."

  Guo Hao frowned suddenly.

  Then he stared at Academician Pan for a long time. Although there were still a series of question marks in his heart, he still answered honestly:

   "Of course I am willing, this kind of thing is a fool would not do it, but is it possible? Nobel Prize-winning."

  As a result, Guo Hao didn't finish his sentence, and Academician Pan interrupted him neatly:

   "Okay, since you are willing, let's sign the contract."

  “.?”

  The second half of Guo Hao's sentence froze in his throat, and his chubby face showed a suspicious expression of life.

  He is like a lot of anime because of the different angles described in the new episode【I missed an episode? ] The second dimension of this kind of barrage, with a confused and bewildered expression.

   After half a minute.

   Gollum.

  Guo Hao just swallowed heavily and rolled his eyes twice:

   "Old Pan, is what you said true?"

  Academician Pan cast aside his eyes, looked at the sky outside the window, and said in a leisurely tone:

   "Old Guo, it's inconvenient for me to say too much about some things. It doesn't matter if you believe me or think I'm fooling you. Anyway, this is the only chance."

   "In addition, let me remind you that the above agreement must not be written into the contract, that is, if I sign the contract and I turn my back on it, you still have to use that price to equip Xiao Xu with a machine."

   "So, you can also refuse this request because I think I'm lying to you."

   "Then let's pretend that this didn't happen. Today it's just a reunion of old friends. I'll ask Xiao Xu to go downstairs to buy some lunch later."

   "Xiao Xu and I eat spicy hot pot with butter, and you eat steamed buns with Wangzai milk"

  “.”

  Looking at Academician Pan who talked eloquently, Guo Hao's expression changed inexplicably.

  To be honest, Academician Pan appeared too suddenly today. So much so that he was very passive the whole time, and he had no chance to verify whether what Academician Pan said was true or not.

  If there is really a chance to participate in the Nobel Prize-level results conference, then the 3 million discount is definitely not a loss.

  For example, Andrew Wiles’ tour lecture on Fermat’s Last Theorem, Princeton’s naming price was as high as $400,000, which was bought by Coca-Cola.

  That was $400,000 in the last century, which is still not the price of an Internet live broadcast.

  The naming record in the Internet era was set by Takaaki Kajita in 2016.

  The naming rights of his live lecture at the National University of Singapore were won by Singtel SGX at a price of 2 million US dollars, of which 60% belonged to Takaaki Kajita.

   You know, these two lectures are not the first results yet.

  So if there are really Nobel Prize-level achievements released, then the millions are definitely worth it.

   But the problem is

  Is Academician Pan telling the truth?

   Academician Pan’s most likely direction to win the Nobel Prize has been won by his teacher Anton Zeilinger. In theory, even if Academician Pan made 18-photon entanglement, it is almost impossible to touch the Nobel Prize.

   At least from a reasonable point of view, this probability is indeed very low.

  But as Academician Pan’s friend for many years, Guo Hao didn’t think that Academician Pan would fool himself with this matter.

  Academician Pan, who was supposed to be in Luzhou at the same time, suddenly came to Rongcheng today

  The pros and cons flashed through Guo Hao's mind quickly, and the two ends of a balance that did not exist in reality kept ups and downs.

that's it.

   A full minute passed.

  Guo Hao finally had a decision in his heart.

   He took a deep breath and looked up at Academician Pan:

   "Old Pan, I trust you once, sign the contract."

  (end of this chapter)