May 1.

The good news came from the supercomputing research center set up in Tatsu City.

After nearly a year, Xinghai Technology's first self-developed supercomputer, Supernova 1, was successfully developed.

Since then, Xinghai Technology has a self-developed supercomputing system, which can greatly save the purchase cost of supercomputers.

Regarding the performance of "Supernova 1", Zhao Zhanglai, the person in charge of the project, explained to Chen Jin in a remote video conference.

Zhao Zhanglai, who is in his 40s, wears glasses and wears a white coat, was originally an associate professor-level expert working at the National Defense University of Science and Technology, and participated in the research and development project of the "Tianhe-2" supercomputer.

In order to poach him, Chen Jin not only offered him an annual salary of 10 million, Xinghai Technology signed a "Strict Confidentiality Agreement" with the National Defense University of Science and Technology, and paid 100 million yuan in technology licensing fees, so the other party was willing to release him.

But in fact, the mechanism used by Supernova 1 was brought by Chen Jin from the Dakeng base, which is obviously much more advanced than the structure of "Tianhe-2", and Zhao Zhanglai was dug up just because he was more familiar with this piece...... No matter how advanced the technology is, it has to be realized by experienced people.

As for the National Defense University of Science and Technology, they have developed the "Tianhe-3E" with a calculation speed of 10 billion times, and the "Tianhe-2" technology, which is obviously outdated, is no longer so important, so some talents are poached, and it is not particularly careful.

However, the annual salary of tens of millions of dollars offered by Xinghai Technology made a sensation within the National Defense University of Science and Technology, and many leaders were annoyed: "It's simply disturbing the morale of the military!" ”

……

Zhao Zhanglai introduced:

"Mr. Chen, the supernova architecture you provided us with is at least two generations more advanced than 'Tianhe-2', and is on par with 'Tianhe-3E', and theoretically can develop 10 billion exabyte-level supercomputing on the basis of this architecture."

"But you said that the company was short of supercomputing and was in a hurry to use it, so we made a small fuss and made a small 'Supernova 1' first."

"The peak computing speed of Supernova 1 is about 1.25 billion petabytes per second, and the sustained performance is 1 billion billion petabytes per second."

"The overall level is comparable to the light of Sunway Taihu Lake before the upgrade, and the performance ranks third in the country."

"However, due to the advanced architecture, the power consumption ratio of Supernova 1 is very outstanding, and we have achieved 9G/, which exceeds the 6.5/ of Sunway Taihu Light A, and the power consumption ratio of Tianhe-3E is comparable...... The world's top performers are almost at the limits of traditional computers. ”

"With such a power consumption ratio, hundreds of millions of dollars are saved in electricity bills every year."

Chen Jin nodded, the most expensive thing about supercomputers is not the cost of hardware construction, but the high cost of electricity!

For example, Tianhe-2 is a large power consumer, with a power consumption of 17,808 kilowatts, and the power consumption will reach 24 megawatts after being equipped with a water-cooling system...... It is equivalent to the power provided by a small NPP.

The annual electricity bill is as high as 100 million yuan.

Supernova 1's sustained computing performance is three times that of Tianhe-2, but Supernova 1 also saves 30% of energy, generating about 66 million yuan in electricity bills per year.

It's more cost-effective to use.

"In addition, the supercomputing architecture provided to me by Mr. Chen has unimaginable stability, and the general supercomputing failure rate is quite high, every time a computing core is broken, it takes half an hour to repair, and there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of computing cores in the supercomputer, and one or two often fail...... Such supercomputers cannot meet the needs of long-term use, and can only run some short-term computing projects. ”

"But many of our company's program applications require long-term operation and calculation...... It is not allowed for supercomputing to fail frequently. ”

"Our supernova architecture uses fault self-test and intelligent parallel technology, and the failure of one or two computing cores will not affect normal use, and can be directly replaced in the boot state...... Even if half of the core fails, it can be used normally. ”

"In terms of stability, the supernova architecture is not weaker than the one used by Tianhe-3E."

"Moreover, the supernova architecture is extremely scalable, and it is completely possible to develop E-level supercomputing on the basis of this architecture."

“……”

Zhao Zhang said that he couldn't finish talking about the advantages of the supernova architecture for half a day, in short, his decision to switch to Xinghai Technology was right, and the research on supercomputing here not only has a sufficient budget, but also a bright future.

He was very satisfied.

Chen Jin nodded repeatedly.

Regarding supercomputing, many people have the impression that it is as simple as stacking a large number of CPUs together, referred to as "heap core".

In fact, it is far from so easy, to get tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of computing cores to work together, at the same time to process one thing, the massive amount of data generated, it is easy to exceed the transmission bandwidth of the communication line, beyond the memory and hard disk read and write capabilities...... These bottlenecks can only be broken through by advanced architectures.

In the field of supercomputing, there is a reason why the supercomputers of country Z have repeatedly dominated the list and often ranked first in the world, that is, because our chips are not good, since the eighties or even earlier, the researchers of country Z can only horizontally develop CPU parallel computing to supplement quality with quantity. In that backward era, the older generation of scientific researchers left the only gift to the younger generation in the field of computers.

This is also the reason why after the ban on the sale of advanced CPUs abroad, researchers in country Z can still create the first supercomputer by using domestic CPUs that are several generations behind.

The "Supernova No. 1" developed by Xinghai Technology is also made of CPU, memory, hard disk and other core components that are all domestic, and even in order to reduce the purchase price, Xinghai Technology has placed a huge order enough to produce 15 "Supernova No. 1" at one time, which stunned those manufacturers.

As a result, the cost of "Supernova 1" has been successfully reduced, excluding R&D expenditures, and the cost of Supernova 1 is about 500 million yuan in terms of hardware cost alone.

"Sure enough, it's better to buy than to build."

Chen Jin sighed and said to Zhao Zhanglai: "Supernova No. 1 will assemble five units for me first, and the company will use them!" After completing this task, you will immediately devote yourself to the research and development of the Ai-class supercomputer, and develop the 'Supernova 2' with an exascale computing power. ”

"Understood, Mr. Chen."

Zhao Zhanglai nodded.

……

A few more days passed.

A not-so-optimistic news came.

Ma Xiaobing, the project leader of the "Nebulas System", said: "Mr. Chen, in the past few days, the number of programmers who have used the 'Nebulas Studio' to try to develop the Nebulas APP has decreased from 1 million at the maximum to less than 100,000, and there has been a cliff-like decline. ”

"Because Brother Gu's company forcibly pushed an 'anti-flashing patch', all mobile phones with this patch, as long as they are flashed into the Nebula system, the underlying hardware of the mobile phone will be damaged and unusable...... At present, 90% of Android phones in China have been hit by this patch...... This is simply a rogue push! Viral Push! The purpose is to ban our Nebula system! ”

This also directly confirms the rumor - the rumor that there is a backdoor in foreign software or operating systems is indeed true.

It's not even the backdoor in the software, it's the underlying hardware that should also have ...... Otherwise, how can changes at the software level harm the hardware?

Therefore, after the "backdoor incident" stone hammer, on the one hand, the information security department of country Z is investigating, and will soon give Gu Ge Company a fine.

On the other hand, the majority of programmers who originally wanted to participate in the development of the Nebula APP were suddenly greatly shaken in confidence and chose to give up.

Because things have developed to this point, it is no longer just a software problem, no matter how good the Nebula system is, it is useless, as long as the backdoor of the underlying hardware is still there, the Nebula system may still collapse.

Unless Xinghai Technology Company has the means to achieve full autonomy in hardware and software, it is impossible for the Nebula system to be built.

A senior programmer lamented: "The Nebula system will use its death to sound a wake-up call for us, unless the software and hardware are fully autonomous, the backdoor will always exist." ”

But is the Nebula system really going to die?

In this severe challenge, Xinghai Technology can only be helpless?