NABC Chapter 33 Tianhe Computing Power, The First Appearance of the Singularity
Chapter 33 Tianhe Computing Power, The First Appearance of the Singularity
Jinghua University, the First National Key Laboratory of Theoretical Physics.
The air conditioning was blasting. Rows of black server racks emitted a deep hum, and indicator lights flashed like a dense swarm of bees.
Several second-year master's and doctoral students were gathered around a terminal, their eyes dark, cursing as they stared at the progress bar on the screen.
"The materials science department next door has stolen another 20% of our computing power! We'll have to wait until the next life to process this set of quantum entanglement data!"
The access control sensor suddenly beeped. The green light turned on.
The heavy, radiation-proof door slid open. Lin Yu walked in, one hand in his pocket, still wearing his school uniform with the zipper open. Xia Zijing followed closely behind, carrying a black backpack.
Several doctoral students turned around and froze.
The key laboratory does not accept undergraduate students. Even some young lecturers cannot open the access control here.
"Students, you've come to the wrong place."
A doctoral student wearing thick-rimmed glasses walked over with a frown, about to shoo the person away.
Lin Yu ignored him and walked straight to the empty, top-of-the-line main control panel in the center. He pulled out a chair, sat down, took out the pure black magnetic card from his pocket, and swiped it in the sensor area.
"Beep. Highest privileges confirmed. Welcome, Lin Yu."
Mechanical and electronic sounds echoed in the computer room.
The doctoral students were frozen in place, their jaws nearly dropping to the floor. Only the old man in the entire lab had that black card; where did this freshman get it?
Ignoring the stares behind him, Lin Yu placed his hands on the keyboard. His fingers were long and slender, and he typed so fast that only afterimages could be seen.
A dense waterfall of code popped up on the screen.
"What are you doing?" Xia Zijing pulled over a chair next to her and sat down, glancing at the screen.
Lin Yu's hands didn't stop. "Let's build a framework. Old Zhang gave me unlimited access to the Tianhe cluster, might as well use it. First, modify the underlying protocol and take over 30% of the computing power nodes."
The doctoral student next to him almost spat out blood when he heard this.
Thirty percent of the nodes! That's equivalent to one-tenth of the total research computing power of the entire Jinghua University! Does this kid think this is a vegetable market where people are fighting over cabbages?!
Xia Zijing moved closer. Her brain, accustomed to rigorous physics equations, quickly analyzed the code structure written by Lin Yu.
Three minutes later, Xia Zijing frowned slightly.
"This is not a physical model."
She turned to stare at Lin Yu. "There's no Hamiltonian, no wavefunction evolution. You're writing a data compression algorithm."
"clever."
Lin Yu pressed the Enter key, and the progress bar began loading rapidly. "Pure theoretical physics is too slow to monetize. I need some seed funding to buy my own private server. The streaming video compression technology on the market is too rubbish. I plan to use the folding concept of topological manifolds to reconstruct a new algorithm with reduced dimensions."
Xia Zijin understood.
This monster is using a national-level supercomputer to exploit loopholes and write private commercial code.
"If you use 30% of the computing power, the system will trigger a red alert. Academician Zhang will know in ten minutes."
Xia Zijin reminded her.
"So I need your help."
Lin Yu stopped what he was doing, turned to look at her, and said, "Help me write a decoy shell. Disguise this 30% computing power as a standard deduction of the Casimir effect. It shouldn't be difficult for you, right?"
Xia Zijing didn't speak, she just looked at him.
Communication between top students never involves idle chatter. She's asking for a price.
Lin Yu pulled over a piece of scrap paper, casually wrote down two formulas, and pushed them over.
"The high-dimensional physics model you were working on last night had incorrect boundary conditions. Adding these two operators will save you at least forty hours of redundant computation."
Xia Zijing glanced at the formula on the draft paper, her pupils contracting sharply for a moment. She immediately folded the paper and stuffed it into her pocket.
"make a deal."
Xia Zijing pulled up the keyboard and directly accessed the backend system. "Five minutes. I'll put on a double layer of encryption for the disguise, ensuring even the server room administrator won't detect anything unusual."
The two stopped talking, and the only sound in the computer room was the frantic pounding of keyboards.
The doctoral students standing to the side exchanged bewildered glances, their backs soaked with cold sweat. These two freshmen, right in front of them, had treated a national supercomputer like a private internet cafe?
They dared not interfere, much less ask questions. Because the system permissions on the control panel truly weighed heavily on them.
One month after the start of the school year.
The basic modeling course for first-year physics students. This course is worth a full six credits, and the grade on the final assignment directly determines the allocation of resources for the second semester.
Gu Feiyu stood on the podium. Although he had been removed from the core project by Academician Zhang, he was still the head of the academic department among undergraduates, responsible for coordinating the grouping of basic courses and the distribution of research topics.
This past month has been agonizing for Gu Feiyu. News of Lin Yu obtaining the black card has spread throughout the entire department, making him a complete laughingstock. Today is his last chance to use the rules to get back at him.
"Everyone."
Gu Feiyu held a stack of assignment sheets. "The major assignments are to be done in pairs. To ensure fairness, the assignments will be assigned by the student council. The deadline is four weeks, with a final defense at the end of the semester."
The list was read out one by one.
"Finally, Lin Yu, Xia Zijin."
Gu Feiyu looked up and his gaze locked onto Lin Yu, who was sitting in the last row playing Snake on his phone.
Gu Feiyu's lips curled into a cold smile, and he raised his voice: "Your research topic is—a model for the rapid compression and transmission of macroscopic state data of massive microscopic particles."
As soon as he finished speaking, a series of low gasps of surprise rippled through the lecture hall.
The topic of death.
This was an abandoned interdisciplinary project between the physics and computer science departments. The requirement was to compress and transmit petabyte-scale data without losing information about the quantum states of microscopic particles. This was something undergraduates couldn't even attempt; even doctoral students couldn't create a usable model.
Gu Feiyu feigned helplessness and spread his hands: "Junior Lin Yu, you are, after all, a top scorer with a perfect score, and you have the highest level of authority specially approved by Academician Zhang. Regular projects are too easy for you. Although this project is a bit difficult, I believe that with your abilities, four weeks will be enough."
To praise someone to death. A blatant act of praising someone to death.
As long as Lin Yu fails to produce anything at his final defense, Gu Feiyu can legitimately join forces with other professors to revoke Lin Yu's black card on the grounds that he is wasting national resources without making any contributions.
All eyes turned to Lin Yu, waiting to see him get angry, retort, or seek help from his mentor.
Lin Yu turned off his phone screen.
He didn't get angry, nor did he stand up to argue. He just looked at Gu Feiyu on the podium, a smirk playing on his lips as if he were looking at an idiot.
How to compress massive amounts of data at lightning speed?
The singularity algorithm he'd been working on day and night in the supercomputer room for the past month was essentially this. Gu Feiyu was practically stuffing a pillow under the neck of someone who was already feeling sleepy.
"The research proposal has been distributed."
Lin Yu spoke indifferently, not even bothering to offer any extra expression, "Four weeks is too long. See you at the defense in two weeks."
Gu Feiyu's face darkened. He dared to be arrogant even when facing death?
"Okay. I've got it."