Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
On July 24th, at Bao Shan Industrial Park, equipment that was made up of 108 large cabinets were transported to Xing Hai Technologies’s third R&D factory via several trucks. After the anti-shock door of the truck was opened, the cabinet enclosure and other parts were carefully taken out by the workers. Treated with delicacy, they were transported into the factory. The custom-made supercomputer ordered by Xing Hai Technologies had arrived.
Its manufacturer was Dawn Enterprise. The model name of the supercomputer was Dawn TC9000; its internals consisted of 28800 high-performance processors with peak operations at 7994 TFlops per second, equivalent to 0.7997 billion times per second. This operating speed was only 0.8% of that of the top supercomputer in the country, the ‘Heavenly River-3’. Its performance was 4.26% of the M nation’s supercomputer ‘Summit,’ which once topped at world rankings. It could not even reach an operating speed of one billion times per second. In Chen Jin’s eyes, this TC9000 that he bought was utter trash.
Despite that fact, the computing power of the TC9000 was ranked at number six within the borders of the Z nation and surpassed the supercomputer ‘Heavenly River-1,’ which was also once ranked number one in the world. In the Top-500 ranking list of supercomputers, TC9000 could be positioned at rank 38. It was definitely worthy of being called a supercomputer. As for its price, 550 million, not negotiable! “One for Xin Hai Technologies!” Chen Jin waved his hands and ordered a unit straight away.
Could supercomputers actually be bought? Of course. In fact, companies such as Baidu, Ali, and Hua Yao had acquired many supercomputers. They used them for building massive database centers, cloud platforms, and many other things. From over 200 supercomputers in the Top-500 ranking list that resided within the Z nation, a good portion of them were owned by private companies.
But for companies that spent such a fortune to buy a custom-made supercomputer ranked at number six throughout the whole nation, aside from Xing Hai Technologies, there were technically no others. The mass majority of technology-based companies would not spend so much money to directly buy a supercomputer. Most of them would go to designated supercomputer centers and rent them at an hourly system. It was not that worthwhile to directly buy one.
For Chen Jin, spending 550 million on a supercomputer was not because he was too rich, but it was actually worth the deal. The “Smart Learning Program” that would be developed by Xing Hai Technologies would be capable of utilizing all of the supercomputer’s computing powers. It might not even suffice! Even for the top supercomputer in the nation, the Heavenly River-3, Chen Jin thought that its computing power was underwhelming.
Unless they could move supercomputer “Scarlet,” that Alice once used, from the Base of Operations to Earth. With Scarlet’s computing powers of one billion times per second, it would basically suffice.
“Moving ‘Scarlet’ to Earth? Yes, if we take out the motherboard, CPU, internal RAM, hard disks, and other components, and separately move them here with a few thousand trips or so, indeed we would be able to transport it and use it here on Earth. But, it would only be a matter of time before our secrets got revealed. Then we would get arrested by some mysterious departments, followed by trials, investigations, some gruesome interrogations, or some other stuff. Anyways, there is no way we keep that all a secret. Things that are five to six steps ahead of things on Earth, bringing them here will be like asking for death.” So, we should not save even a single cent of the money that we need to spend.
After acquiring the TC9000 supercomputer, the hardware required for the “Intelligent Learning Machine” project’s developments would all be in place, and they wouldl be able to kickstart the R&D work. Its performance was enough for their apparent usage, the reason being that version 1.0 of the Intelligent Learning Machine would be targeted for primary schoolers.
In a technical discussion, Chen Jin said, “The Intelligent Learning Machine that I conceptualize is not all-knowing from the very beginning, but its learning will be separated into a few phases. In the first phase, which is the primary school phase, it will provide primary schoolers teaching and question-answering services in literature, mathematics, English, and other subjects. The knowledge in this phase is more towards basic, simple, and entry-level knowledge. With the supercomputer that our company possesses, all the knowledge can possibly be learned in a matter of hours after initializing the smart learning program. The second phase will be the junior high school phase. The knowledge in this phase is a level higher in terms of difficulty when compared to the primary school phase, and the variations will be more complicated as well. But with our supercomputer, this will merely require a few months of computing.” In the third phase, which is the senior high school phase, the amount of knowledge will be significantly more. It will be more difficult and complicated, and will start to touch on topics which are esoteric and difficult to understand. For our supercomputer to master them 100%, it might need at least three years or more. The fourth phase is the university phase; needless to say, there are more than a thousand professional courses offered in universities. If we do not increase the number of our supercomputers, the learning process might not be completed in even 10 years’ time.”
Chen Jin continued, “The last phase will be the all-knowing phase. When we reached this phase, Xing Hai Technologies can announce to the public that we had all the knowledge in this world and our ‘All-Knowing Learning Machine’ or ‘All-Knowing Program’ will be bringing an earth-shaking change to our world! After that, if humans encounter any problems that they do not know, they can ask the ‘All-Knowing Learning Machine’ at any time. Those who are doing brain work, no matter what technical difficulties they are facing, can always refer to our ‘All-knowing Helper,’ and the ‘All-knowing Helper’ can solve their problems in the shortest time possible. With all these being said, do you still think that our product is merely a simple learning machine? No, it is not! What I am making is a vessel of knowledge, it is an almighty ‘brain,’ it is a ‘tool’ that can abolish brain work in the future. The learning machine is just a sub-product. Compared to the ultimate end product for this project, the learning machine is not even worth mentioning!”
After the crowd finished listening to Chen Jin, they all applauded. All the technical staff were stunned. They were all astounded by what he envisioned and the ambition deep within his heart! They went on to have a heated discussion.
“It is possible for what Mr. Chen envisioned to become reality. If the computing powers of the supercomputer were to be powerful enough, we could grasp all the knowledge in the universe!”
“It can’t be done, knowledge is infinite, and it is impossible for a computer to record all of them. Let me give you a simple example, 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9, even this simple math has 362880 kinds of variation and yet, they all yield the same meaning. The number of ways to combine the thousands of letters in the dictionary is more than atoms in the whole universe combined. Therefore, the supercomputer won’t even have enough storage space, not to even mention acquiring all knowledge.”
A young man refuted, “What you said is completely wrong! The knowledge in this world has no meaning on the surface as well as axioms that reside deep within, especially science which is more particular on logic; its properties are the laws of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, the Pythagorean law, the three laws of motion, chemical reaction formulas, and many others. All these formulas and theorems are what our world is made of! As long as we master all the basic rules, it will be equivalent to mastering all knowledge.”
“Yes, What He Fei said was right, it is said that all knowledge in this world, excluding the factual contents in liberal arts, in the field of pure science and technology, all knowledge that humans passed on for several millenniums can fill in a small room.”
“No matter how something variates, it can never deviate from its core concept; as long as the basic principles are mastered, this world that we live in is not as complicated as we thought it is.”
Technical director Song Bo Jun also nodded his head and said, “True, we are working on an intelligent learning program, its learning process is based on mastering the ‘principle’ like the laws in physics, formulas in mathematics, grammar in languages, and by learning with analogy, the machine can integrate the knowledge acquired, not just blindly learning every single thing. That’s why it is called a smart learning program… it can learn smartly and will be flexible in using them.”
Everybody nodded. Even the man that thought it was impossible nodded and said, “I understand now.”
The young man He Fei said, “Mr. Chen, Mr. Song, if we manage to complete the algorithms for the smart learning program, making the intelligent learning machine will not be a problem. Version 1.0 targeted at primary schoolers can be completed in at most six months’ time! The knowledge involved in the primary school phase is too easy.”
“Yeah, it’s simply so easy!”
“It can be done, just count on us for the smart learning program! I’m a hundred percent sure that the Intelligent Learning Machine can be realized!”
Song Bo Jun’s eyes were flashing with confidence as he waved his hands, “Let’s go back to our respective workplace, I will lead you all to complete the smart learning program within a month!”
After a round of cheers, everyone returned to their respective posts. All the several hundreds of programmers working on the ‘Intelligent Learning Machine’ project began working with high spirits. After realizing their boss’s ambition, Song Bo Jun and his team working on this project were filled with soaring passion and brimming with confidence, and that transformed into a force that propelled them to work harder.
Chen Jin nodded out of satisfaction as he looked at what happened. The others may not be optimistic about his learning machine project, but at least in his development team, nobody was holding him back.