Into Unscientific

". Oak technology?"

In the ward.

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

Is it 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.

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

The 20% of supercomputing capacity is distributed across the country, and regionally it can be classified into three provinces or municipalities directly under the Central Government:

Yanjing, Guangdong Province, Sichuan and Sichuan.

And Oak Technology is a supercomputer manufacturer located in Sichuan.

It's a coincidence.

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, tinkering with communication equipment.

Then came the ups and downs of 20 or 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:

Do not do head supercomputing, only do 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 low precision, he can even achieve higher vector processing effects than Liu's.

Therefore, in the past few years, although Oakwood Technology has not achieved the first name in the industry, it is actually quite comfortable to live a small life.

Take last year for 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 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 glanced at Academician Pan beside him.

When he greeted Lu Xiao a few days ago, 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 think that a supercomputer 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 thing is of the same nature as 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.

Therefore, as long as the company takes out a deposit of 20 to 30 million yuan, the manufacturer can almost start production.

The entire production and assembly process can be as fast as half a year, and 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.

Unexpectedly, Academician Pan took the initiative to lead the line before the inquiry letter was sent out?

This move obviously told Xu Yun one thing:

My own people, there are discounts!

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 ahead of 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, little one, Dr. Xu, please sit down, please sit down."

Looking at Guo Hao's posture, if he hadn't been infusing the injection with a drip on his hand, he probably would have gone down to the ground to move the stool for Xu Yun 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.

Therefore, 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, and scratched 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 wonder 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, it can be easily included with two attributes."

"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 through 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."

As he spoke, Guo Hao paused, 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 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."

"At present, almost all the supercomputers on the supercomputer list are 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 I 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.

After opening the notebook, I fiddled with it a few times, and pushed the screen towards 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 is 6 megawatts per hour, which is 6000 kilowatt-hours of electricity"

"0.8P 2 megawatts per hour, 2000 kilowatt-hours"

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

This value is about 10% higher than the data that 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 after, Xu Yun's eyes locked on one of the recommended packages.

This package is a combined 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.

Each side of these tiles has a bandwidth of 4.5TB/s, 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-cooled unit covers an area of ​​500 square meters.

The customized price of the entire set of supercomputers is 80 million Huaxia coins, excluding CPU + GPU. If it is equipped with related CPUs or GPUs, the price will go up a lot.

For example, after configuring the Xeon E5-2673v4 20C 2.3GHz, the customized price of the supercomputer immediately increased to 150 million.

The highest configuration in this part is AMD EPYC 7713 64C 2GHz, which is quoted at 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 set of equipment?"

"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 CPU and GPU are going to choose another one or not."

Xu Yun shook his head lightly:

"We plan to purchase this part ourselves."

When welcoming Lu Xiao earlier, Xu Yun and Chen Yunji had already connected.

Chen Yunji's Cambrian of Zhongke is engaged in chips. As one of the companies of the University of Science and Technology, it is almost impossible to find a supplier with a lower price than Cambrian in China.

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.

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

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

If the cut is less, Guo Hao agrees 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 it wasn't for the presence of Academician Pan, he would really have the heart to turn the table at this time.

Do you really think they are 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 and components must be purchased from suppliers, and this part has some expenses.

Secondly, the companies that buy commercial supercomputers are not pure computer novices, 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.

Therefore, 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.

The cost of an 80 million supercomputer is about 64 million.

Therefore, Guo Hao's psychological price is roughly around 73 million yuan, and the profit is around 10 million yuan.

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 caught, and he will bargain hard if he is not.

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 wrap the supercomputer with his 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.

What kind of bargaining is Xu Yun here?

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 care of it."

"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 had a deep friendship with Academician Pan, and he was ready to make concessions, the discount was several million more, which was somewhat beyond his expectations.

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

Besides, although he is the major shareholder of the company, the shares of other partners are also not low, and he has to 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 okay? 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, and although there were still a series of question marks in his heart, he still answered honestly:

"Of course I would. A fool would not do such a thing, but is it possible? Nobel Prize-winning."

As a result, before Guo Hao finished speaking, 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 [Did I watch one less episode? ] The second dimension of this kind of barrage, with a confused and bewildered expression.

A full half a minute passed.

grunt.

Guo Hao just swallowed heavily, and rolled his eyes twice:

"Old Pan, is what you said true?"

Academician Pan turned his eyes away, 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. In short, this is the only chance."

"In addition, let me remind you that the agreement above 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 think that I'm lying to you and refuse this request."

"Then let's pretend that this didn't happen. 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 was talking 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 an opportunity to participate in the Nobel Prize-level achievement conference, then the 3 million discount is definitely not a loss.

For example, when Andrew Wiles gave a tour lecture on Fermat's last theorem, the naming price in Princeton was as high as 400,000 US dollars, which was auctioned by Coca-Cola.

That's $400,000 in the last century, and it still doesn't have 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 rational point of view, this probability is indeed very low.

But as a good friend of Academician Pan 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 all.

A full minute passed.

Guo Hao finally made up his mind.

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

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