Xu Yun was stunned when he heard the name from Academician Pan's mouth.
Is it 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 Biotech does require a supercomputer, especially now that Lu Xiao is in place, this need has become increasingly urgent.
Therefore, in the past period of time, Xu Yun or the company's board of directors has had a deep understanding of the supercomputing industry.
Mentioned before.
As of now, 80% of domestic supercomputers on the top 500 list are produced by the Liu family.
To be honest, this is a very scary value and can be called a monopoly.
But on the other hand, although the Liu family accounts for more than 80% of supercomputing production, 20% of supercomputing is still produced by other companies.
This 20% of supercomputing capacity is distributed across the country, and regionally it can be classified into three provinces or municipalities:
Yanjing, Guangdong Province, Sichuan and Shu.
Oak Technology is a supercomputer manufacturing company located in Sichuan.
It's a coincidence.
Its boss, Guo Hao, is also an alumnus of the Junior Class of HKUST, and one of the earliest batches. Although HKUST established a Junior Class in 1978, the computing software major was not officially opened until 1984.
From a certain perspective.
Guo Haocai is one of the first regular computer majors in China, and he is more senior than Xiao Rongdu.
However, after graduation, Guo Hao did not choose to stay as a programmer or hacker. Instead, he went to work on his own and tinkered with communication equipment.
Then came the ups and downs of 20 to 30 years. In 2019, Guo Hao and several partners founded Oak Technology.
Oak Technology mainly provides customized services for commercial computers, and its target customers are very clear:
We don’t do head-to-head supercomputing, we 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 great achievements in memory access models and parallel programs. In the case of lower precision, he can even achieve higher vector processing effects than the Liu family.
Therefore, in the past few years, although Oak Technology has not reached the top spot in the industry, its life has actually been quite comfortable.
Take last year as an example.
They produced a total of two supercomputers last year, both low- and mid-range machines ranging from 800 to 1,000 meters. One is supplied to China, and the other is supplied to Asan.
The total price quoted for 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 in the eight figures.
Think of this.
Xu Yun couldn't help but glance at Academician Pan on the side.
He had mentioned supercomputing when welcoming Lu Xiao earlier. At the same time, in the company's plan, supercomputing is indeed on the agenda.
Because a supercomputer costs hundreds of millions of Chinese dollars. At first glance, it seems that Huadun Biotech will not be able to afford this amount of money in a short time.
But in fact, this thing is just like decoration.
The decoration money does not need to be paid in full, and the decoration team will not come in today and finish it tomorrow. It will take a long time.
So as long as the company puts out a deposit of 20 to 30 million, the manufacturer can almost start production.
The entire production and assembly process can take anywhere from half a year to one or two years - even based on the fastest time, the company will have the ability to pay the full amount by then.
So what stood in Xu Yun's way during this period was not money, but the choice of partners.
Actually.
As a domestic supercomputing manufacturer with a fairly good reputation, Oak Technology was originally on the contact list planned by Xu Yun or the board of directors.
Unexpectedly, before the inquiry letter was sent out, Academician Pan took the initiative to get involved?
This move obviously tells Xu Yun something:
If you are your own person, you will get a discount!
And just as Xu Yun was slightly lost in thought.
Guo Hao, who was on the bed, came to his senses before him. He made a very exaggerated noise and sat up straight at the same time:
"Oh, look at my brain. I only paid attention to saying hello to Lao Pan. Come on, come on, Dr. Xu, please sit down, please sit down."
Looking at Guo Hao's posture, if it weren't for the IV drip on his hand and the injection, he would probably have to go to the ground to move a stool for Xu Yun himself.
Academician Pan then gave Xu Yun a look and motioned for 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 status as a middleman was destined to make some concessions on price.
Therefore, Guo Hao did not put on any pretense and asked directly:
"Dr. Xu, from what Lao Pan said, your company wants to customize a supercomputer?"
Xu Yun nodded and scratched his hair with a simple and honest expression:
"That's right, so when I heard that the teacher was coming to visit you today, I shamelessly followed you."
Academician Pan secretly gave a thumbs up after hearing this.
Although in order to avoid suspicion as much as possible, he never told Xu Yun about Guo Hao from the beginning to the end, but Guo Hao did not know about this situation.
When Xu Yun said this, Guo Haoke had to accept Academician Pan's favor.
Then Guo Hao thought about it and asked Xu Yun:
"Dr. Xu, I wonder what specifications of supercomputer your company wants to customize?"
"Specifications"
Xu Yun raised his head and glanced 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 customized supercomputing:
"There are many types of supercomputing specifications, but when it comes to data, it can be simply included using two attributes."
"The first aspect is the computing power of supercomputers. Currently, according to the computing power of supercomputers, they can be divided into E-level, P-level and P-level."
"The E here refers to Exascale, which means tens of billions of times per second."
“Last year there was actually no such category in the industry, but this year with Frontier becoming the world’s first supercomputer to break the exascale computing bottleneck, the E era has officially arrived.”
"In addition, above the E-level is the Z-level, which is the zettascale of ten trillion levels, which is the goal of the next stage."
As he spoke, Guo Hao paused, then lowered his voice and added:
"Of course, even if there is an E-class classification now, our company cannot produce supercomputers of this level. This business is mainly to maintain a 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 modify Bentleys.
Then Guo Hao coughed lightly and his expression returned to normal:
"P-class computers refer to PetaFLOPS, which is one quadrillion floating-point operations per second."
“Almost all supercomputers on the current supercomputing list are at P level. For example, those ranked three hundred are 2.3P, those ranked five hundred or so are 1.6P, and those ranked one thousand are about 0.8P – those below 1P are
I'm talking about P-level."
"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 laptop, I fiddled with it for 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 generally not disclosed to the public, please keep it confidential."
"Thank you very much."
Xu Yun thanked Guo Hao, took the notebook and started reading it.
"E-class energy consumption is 50 megawatts per hour"
"2.2P 6 megawatts per hour, which is 6,000 kilowatt hours of electricity."
"0.8P 2 megawatts per hour, 2000 kilowatt hours of electricity"
The data given by Guo Hao is not only about power consumption, but also includes the space occupied by water cooling equipment, PUE value, etc.
This value is slightly higher than the data Xu Yun learned by about 10%. After all, Oak Technology is not the kind of leading supercomputing manufacturer, and its main focus is comprehensive cost-effectiveness.
The unit price of power consumption of leading supercomputers may indeed be lower, but the premise of this low price is that the base of consumption is also large.
The unit price of equipment that consumes 50,000 to 60,000 kWh of electricity per hour is definitely much lower than that of 2,000 to 3,000 kWh - but this kind of low price is obviously something that Xu Yun does not need for the time being.
Soon, Xu Yun's eyes were fixed on one of the recommended packages.
This package is a combination configuration, and it is also marked with the words "year-end loss promotion" next to it.
The computing power of the package is 1.3P, the PUE value is 1.22, and it is configured with 5×5 Tiles.
These tiles have 4.5TB/s bandwidth per side, and each module also has a 15kW cooling capacity cap, minus the heat dissipation for 40 I/Os.
At the same time, this supercomputer uses 1023 computer nodes and a heterogeneous computing model of CPU + GPU.
The interconnection is 40G Ethernet, and the water-cooled unit occupies an area of 500 square meters.
The customized price of the entire set of supercomputer, excluding CPU + GPU, is 80 million Huaxia coins. If it is equipped with related CPU or GPU, the price will be much higher.
For example, after configuring the Xeon E5-2673v4 20C 2.3GHz, the customization price of the supercomputer immediately increased to 150 million.
The highest configuration in this part is AMD EPYC 7713 64C 2GHz, priced at 230 million.
Xu Yun then turned around and glanced at Academician Pan. In Academician Pan's "you decide for yourself" look, he turned the screen towards Guo Hao:
"Mr. Guo, how much is the minimum price you can pay for this set of configurations?"
"Is this the set?"
Guo Hao is not surprised by Xu Yun's choice. This is basically the best set of machines they have sold:
"Dr. Xu, I don't know if you are going to choose another CPU or GPU."
Xu Yun shook his head gently:
"We plan to purchase this part ourselves."
When greeting Lu Xiao before, Xu Yun and Chen Yunji were already on the line.
Chen Yunji's Zhongke Cambrian is engaged in chips. As one of the companies affiliated with the University of Science and Technology, it is almost impossible to find a domestic supplier with a lower price than Cambrian.
It is true that for ordinary companies, there may be a big gap or risk between Cambrian's chips and top chip suppliers.
But don't forget.
Xu Yun has the halo reward computing power template and artificial intelligence Mimi in hand, so he doesn't need to worry about this problem at all.
Seeing that Xu Yun's attitude was quite firm, Guo Hao 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 doesn't earn much."
"How about you look at it like this, 7777.7, what do you think of this price?"
Guo Hao's expression looked sincere, but Xu Yun didn't buy his fault at all.
joke.
These days, from fruit stalls on the street to real estate sales, even the lady from Dabaojian is shouting that there is no profit every day. Do you think who believes it?
But believe it or not, Xu Yun’s experience in bargaining is indeed not very rich.
If the cuts were too short, Guo Hao would have agreed the next second without even having a chance to regret the move.
In this case, it is better to cut more.
So he gritted his teeth and reported a number:
"Mr. Guo, how about this? 59.99 million. If that works, I'll sign the order directly!"
Guo Hao:
“(╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻??????”
If Academician Pan hadn't been present, he would have wanted to lift the table at this moment.
Do you really think they are a store like Computer City with a profit margin of 100%+?
The core profit points of supercomputers are actually only five or six. In the case of self-purchasing the CPU, a 20% profit margin for a supercomputer is not bad.
Firstly, this is because Oak Technology is not a pure upstream company, and many parts and components must be purchased from suppliers, which requires expenditure.
Secondly, the companies that purchase commercial supercomputers are not just computer novices. They are all high-tech companies, and each of them has a clear quotation.
If you treat your customers like guinea pigs like those in a computer mall, they will immediately turn around and leave.
Therefore, the quotation given by Oak Technology, even the initial price, is very sincere.
The profit margin they showed to Party A was only about 15 points on the surface. With Guo Hao's ability in memory access models and parallel programming, they could free up a few more points, and then it would be almost there.
In other words.
An 80 million supercomputer costs about 64 million.
Therefore, 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 there are jujubes but no jujubes. Xu Yun will naturally make a lot of money if he is fooled. If he is not fooled, he can bargain carefully.
Unexpectedly, Xu Yun no longer had a problem with whether he was lassoed or not. Instead, he grabbed the sack and tried to lasso the supercomputer with his backhand and carry it away.
This is pure robbery.
Actually.
It was not only Guo Hao who couldn't hold back, but also Academician Pan beside him.
How is Xu Yun bargaining? He's directly beheading people.
Then Academician Pan took a deep breath, calmed down the smile on his lips, and took the initiative to say:
"Okay, Lao Guo, Xiao Xu is not very good at bargaining, so please be more patient."
"I don't think you two should fight over 7777 or 5999. Let me give you a number, 6999. How about it?"
"6999?"
Guo Hao frowned, obviously unhappy.
Although he had a close relationship with Academician Pan and he was ready to make concessions, the discount amounted to millions more, which was a bit more than he expected.
The bottom line was cut from 7300 to 6999. This is no longer the category of giving face to friends.
Moreover, although he is the majority shareholder of the company, the shares of other partners are also large, and he must also take into account the opinions of these partners.
Seeing that Guo Hao's attitude was a bit tangled, Academician Pan thought for a while and suddenly said:
"Lao Guo, let me ask you a question first."
"If you agree to this price, I promise that within two weeks, your company can attend a press conference for Nobel Prize-level results as a sponsor. Are you willing?"
"?"
A clear question mark appeared on Guo Hao's face, and he looked at Academician Pan as if he were a fool:
"Lao Pan, are you okay? The bed next to me is still empty. How about you go through the hospitalization procedures and we can become fellow patients again?"
Unexpectedly, Academician Pan's expression did not change at all, he was still very serious:
"Lao Guo, I'm not joking."
Guo Hao suddenly frowned.
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. Only a fool would not do this kind of thing, but is it possible? Nobel Prize-level."
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 words was stuck in his throat, and his round face showed an expression of doubt about life.
He is just like many anime that have a two-dimensional barrage of "Did I watch one less episode?" because of the different angles described in the new episode, with a confused and confused look on his face.
A full half minute passed.
Gulu.
Guo Hao just swallowed hard and rolled his eyes twice:
"Old Pan, is what you said true?"
Academician Pan turned away his eyes, looked at the sky outside the window, and said in a leisurely tone:
"Lao Guo, there are some things I can't say too much. Whether you believe it or think I'm deceiving you, this is the only chance I have."
"Also, let me remind you that the above agreement cannot be written into the contract. That is, if I sign the contract and I turn my back on it, you will still have to use that price to equip Xiao Xu with a machine."
"So, you can also reject this request because I think I'm lying to you."
"Then let's pretend this never happened. Today is just a reunion of old friends. I'll ask Xiao Xu to go downstairs and buy some lunch later."
"Xiao Xu and I eat spicy butter hot pot, and you eat steamed buns with Wangzai milk."
"."
Looking at Academician Pan talking eloquently, Guo Hao's expression changed inexplicably.
To be honest, Academician Pan's appearance today was so sudden that he was passive throughout the whole process and had no chance to verify whether what Academician Pan said was true or false.
If there is really a chance to participate in the Nobel Prize-level results conference, then this 3 million discount will definitely be worth it.
For example, when Andrew Wiles gave a lecture tour on Fermat's Last Theorem at Princeton, the title price was as high as $400,000, which was purchased by Coca-Cola.
That was 400,000 US dollars in the last century, and it was still not the price of Internet live broadcast.
The naming record in the Internet era was set by Kajita Takaaki in 2016.
The naming rights for his live lectures at the National University of Singapore were acquired by Singapore Telecom SGX for a price of US$2 million, 60% of which went to Takaaki Kajida.
You know, these two lectures are not the first results yet.
So if there is really a Nobel Prize-level result released, then these millions will definitely be worth it.
But the problem is
Is Academician Pan telling the truth?
The direction in which Academician Pan is most likely to win the Nobel Prize has already been won by his teacher Anton Zeilinger. In theory, even if Academician Pan makes 18-photon entanglement, it is almost impossible to win the Nobel Prize.
At least from a rational point of view, this probability is indeed very low.
But as a friend of Academician Pan for many years, Guo Hao did not think that Academician Pan would deceive him about this matter.
At the same time, Academician Pan, who was supposed to be in Luzhou, suddenly came to Rongcheng today.
Many pros and cons flashed through Guo Hao's mind quickly, and the two ends of a scale that did not exist in reality kept rising and falling.
that's all.
A full minute passed.
Guo Hao finally made a decision in his heart.
He took a deep breath and looked up at Academician Pan:
"Lao Pan, I trust you once and sign the contract."
