Chapter 25: Lofty Aspirations

After unleashing a torrent of words over the phone, Luo Xiang unexpectedly calmed down.

"Boss, are you being serious?"

"Yes!"

"Could you tell me the reason?"

"To save the world?"

Song Han's voice also sounded somewhat uncertain. After a moment, he murmured in a voice audible only to himself, "Or perhaps just to save myself."

Luo Xiang said helplessly, trying to persuade him, "I believe the world is already wonderful enough and doesn't require us to save it.

Moreover, what kind of behavior is this? An expression of national will? A business operation? Or a charitable act specifically targeted at these three companies, NVIDIA, ATI, and SIS?

Or are you trying to tell me that these three companies saved the galaxy in their previous lives, and now it's your turn to come to their aid in this one?"

"It's a personal action!"

"And the funds? Where will the funds come from? I don't think you can afford to wait a thousand years to implement this plan, boss!"

"If five million dollars a day isn't sufficient, I can raise it to fifty million!"

"Per day?"

"Every single day!"

Luo Xiang forcefully calmed his heart that was about to jump out of his chest. How much did he earn per month? Five thousand?

Why did he have to worry about matters involving tens of billions of dollars?

But why did he also feel a little bit of excitement deep down inside?

Luo Xiang scratched his itchy throat and lowered his voice, saying, "Boss, I don't know what your motives are.

But you have to stop this crazy idea of yours. You're forcing your personal will onto the development process of electronic chips!

No matter where your funds come from, as long as it's still on Earth, it means you're depriving other fields of funds and squandering a huge amount of human social resources according to your personal will!

If it's just for your so - called model, there are many other ways and means, rather than this simple and crude way of just buying!

This kind of behavior is as reckless as if your head was full of muscles!"

On the other end of the phone, Song Han unconsciously pinched his thin arm.

In his previous life, he had exercised for decades. To build muscles, he had endured so much in terms of the chicken he consumed. Over the years, no one had ever complimented him like this.

He asked curiously, "Is this method not going to work?"

"Manager Luo!"

On the other end of the phone, Luo Xiang looked at the assistant who interrupted him with an unhappy face. "What is it?"

"The NVIDIA side has informed us that due to the fire in their subcontracting factory, the delivery date will be postponed, and we need to pay an additional 30% deposit to cope with the uncertainties brought about by the future increase in raw material prices. "

"I got it!"

Luo Xiang waved his hand, showing no surprised expression. 

"Boss?"

"I'm listening!"

"If you really have such great influence, you'll need more people to help you carry out this plan. Otherwise, even if you can earn a hundred million dollars every day, it still won't be enough!

After all, in this society, when the amount of money exceeds a certain level, it no longer belongs to you. You need to transform it into another form to continue to possess it."

On this end of the phone, Song Han pondered for a long time.

"Come back, bring your plan with you."

After hanging up the phone, Song Han looked through the window at the star - dotted dim sky in the distance.

This was a safe house arranged by the State Security General Administration, located inside the military camp in City Y. In theory, on this day in 2004, apart from a world war, this should be the safest place.

And the rent was even cheaper than expected, fifty thousand dollars a day, payable only in foreign exchange.

On the third day, while Song Han was still being led by Wang Wei to visit an office building, Luo Xiang showed up in front of him with a pair of deep dark circles under his eyes and reeking of body odor.

Song Han waved away the pungent smell lingering around his nose and said, touching his nose, "Let's talk upstairs!"

In an office specially prepared on the top floor, with the window open and looking at the shrunken world in the distance, Song Han's previously pent - up mood was partially relieved by the howling wind.

Luo Xiang curiously sized up this simple office.

"What is this place?"

"The company headquarters we just bought. Do you want someone to show you around?"

Luo Xiang shook his head and took out a thick stack of documents from his briefcase.

"We need to find a reasonable explanation for our business actions. After receiving the price - increase notice from NVIDIA, there was also a fire at ATI's subcontracting factory. Currently, only the customized production of SIS is still in the design stage and hasn't encountered any problems." 

"What's your plan?"

"Acquisition!"

Luo Xiang straightened his face and explained, "Simply using a huge amount of funds for continuous purchasing, especially in a rapidly - developing electronic technology industry..."

Luo Xiang shook his head and continued, "According to Moore's Law and the depreciation of goods' value, it can basically be determined that after 18 months, the value of the goods we've ordered will suffer at least a 50% loss. Coupled with the price premium and industry impact caused by our procurement, there will definitely be significant fluctuations in the depreciation and real pricing of the goods' value.

The utilization rate of such funds and the speed of depreciation are just too high!

Moreover, making cash purchases worth five million dollars every day!

This is the profit that it's difficult for thousands of domestic listed companies to accumulate in a year!

Without the support of a corresponding and mature foundation, frantically purchasing graphics processing chips, the best outcome would be just to pay some extra money due to fires and price hikes.

I wouldn't even be surprised if something happened to me one day!"

Hearing this, Song Han's eyes flickered, and he looked at Luo Xiang in surprise. "I didn't expect you, Manager Luo, to understand foreign affairs."

Luo Xiang shook his head. "I don't understand foreign affairs. I understand our country in the 1990s.

The complex ethical relationships in the endless criminal cases in the 1990s were the key research objects during my postgraduate studies."

"Behind each of those disheartening cases, there were mostly entanglements of money and power.

Without the support of power, no matter how much money there is in the bank card, it's just a pale number." 

"We need a lot of people. We need well - known global enterprises to step forward to achieve our goal!

Rather than showing up in their territory with a huge sum of money and just going on a buying spree!"

"So, this is your goal?"

"Yes!"

Luo Xiang introduced, "In 2001, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) established its first 8 - inch wafer chip production base and testing and packaging plant in Shanghai. Later, two more wafer fabs were expanded. The total investment was around one billion. Currently, the production capacity has reached 30,000 wafers per month. Each wafer can be cut and packaged into about 200 good - quality chips.

The annual chip production capacity is nearly 100 million!

If we take it over and expand, upgrade, and conduct R & D, I think we can produce 10 billion chips in less than 10 years.

And the cost will be no more than 50 billion dollars at most! Maybe even less!

We can even recruit top - notch graphics processing chip design teams from all over the world to do customized design for us! Boss, didn't you say that the chips produced through customized production can improve performance by 20%?"

Flipping through the business plan, Song Han missed the world 100 years later. After all, at that time, a dedicated artificial intelligence could be run on just one electronic device.

As for the general - purpose ones...

Well! The general - purpose artificial intelligence 100 years later was also quite large in size. After all, with the unlimited stacking of computing power, large size was also a sign of advancement.

Song Han picked up his phone and called Director Zhou.

"Are you sure?"

Along with Director Zhou came a middle - aged man in his fifties.

In 2003, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) was in high spirits and making rapid progress. However, no one could have predicted that after it went public the next year, it would be dealt a heavy blow by its former partner, left half - crippled, and take nearly a decade to recover.

"You're planning to customize chips?"

"If possible, we're also open to taking a stake."

Song Han's innocent words made Zhang Jing burst into laughter.

"Kid, do you know how much it costs to build a wafer fab?"

"Currently, it should be around 200 million dollars, right?"

"Uh..."

Song Han's words left Zhang Jing speechless for a long time.

"At present, our company doesn't lack funds. If it's just about contract manufacturing, you can directly contact our business department."

"The quantity we need is quite large!"

"How large?"

"All of your production capacity for the next ten years!"

"Is it you?"

Luo Xiang's words suddenly made Zhang Jing realize. Just two days ago, he was chatting with a friend about a company that was acting like a spendthrift, throwing money around the world to buy graphics processing chips like crazy, the money - god had suddenly appeared right in front of him.

Zhang Jing looked at Director Zhou in surprise, then stared at Luo Xiang for a long time. As for Song Han, who was being pushed by Wang Wei beside them, he naturally ignored him.

"Based on the current annual compound growth rate of electronic products, the maximum demand for chips in the domestic market is currently 200 million per year. Are you planning to monopolize the global graphics processing chip market to make capital gains?" 

Hoarding goods for profit doesn't work well in the chip industry, especially with such a huge amount of capital at your disposal."

Luo Xiang glanced at Song Han and explained, "It's for the company's own use."

Luo Xiang's words made Zhang Jing burst into laughter again. "Even for supercomputers, 30,000 chips per machine is the maximum. You're not going to tell me you're planning to build a supercomputer with 3 billion chips stacked together, are you?"

As he spoke, he seemed to be amused by his own idea and couldn't help laughing.

"Not 3 billion, but 10 billion."

Hearing this, Zhang Jing's laughter suddenly stopped. "You're not joking, are you? In all my years in the industry, I've never heard of any research institute that can solve the problem of parallel processing in ultra - large - scale computer architectures!"

Song Han beside him waved his hand. "Brother Wang, take him for a tour."

After coming back from Jian'an Technology not far away, Zhang Jing still looked as if he had seen God.

"How did you manage to do this? Can it operate just by a simple numerical stacking?

Who designed the system architecture? What about its functions? What are its application directions? What can it do?"

"It's a basic weak artificial intelligence. The system architecture is adaptively generated by the artificial intelligence. In theory, as long as the energy input is stable, the computing power and core can be infinitely stacked."

"This isn't scientific!"

"You've completely deviated from the current technological development path! It's as abrupt as an aircraft carrier suddenly appearing in the era of sail - powered warships and great voyages in the 18th century!"

"Who designed this system?"

Everyone's gazes instantly turned to Song Han sitting in the wheelchair.

Song Han waved his hand.

"I'm just a porter."

"No!"

As if he had thought of something, Zhang Jing frowned and said, "An aircraft carrier is the comprehensive result of various fields such as materials, computing, energy, and communication.

Although in theory, your system can achieve computing - power stacking under hot - swapping, considering energy supply, heat dissipation, information feedback, and connection latency, it's simply impossible to integrate the computing power of more than ten million core nodes!

The latency alone would cripple you!

The existing energy - transmission lines can't supply such a huge amount of energy either! It has to be split up!

But splitting it up would further exacerbate the latency of information feedback, making it difficult to achieve practical - purpose computational processing!"

Song Han explained, "With the self - adaptive system architecture and the blockchain technology of the distributed computing platform, as long as the distance between two cores doesn't exceed 1000 kilometers, a response can be made within five seconds.

As fiber - optic technology and 5G communication develop and become more widespread in the later stage, this latency can be shortened to one second.

It's basically sufficient compared to human reaction times and current usage requirements."

"Blockchain? Distributed computing platform?"

Suddenly bombarded with so many unfamiliar terms, Zhang Jing felt his head was in a whirl.

Especially after having a brief communication and interaction with "Jian'an", a strange sense of familiarity and a feeling of being left behind by the world kept lingering in his mind.

After a moment, he seemed to have thought of something.

"Is this artificial intelligence already being used on the Internet?"

He asked uncertainly, "The forum?"

"Yes!"

"Why!"

Zhang Jing gasped, "The potential of this system is enormous. If it's misused, it could lead to catastrophic consequences. Connecting it to the Internet means you're putting human survival at the mercy of 'Jian'an'!"

"Whoa!"

Before Song Han could react to Zhang Jing's words, Director Zhou beside him jumped up.

"Is this thing really that dangerous?"

Song Han shook his head and looked at Director Zhou to comfort him, "The LLM large - language model is just a model. All its capabilities come from external parameter adjustments.

It doesn't have real intelligence or self - logic. It's very safe!"

"I hope so!"

Zhang Jing looked seriously at Song Han, then shifted his gaze to Director Zhou beside him.

"I agree to your request for a stake. When the development of artificial intelligence reaches a singularity, it will bring about earth - shattering changes to the whole world.

I always thought it would be impossible to see its birth in my lifetime.没想到, there is already a foundation for large - scale application in our country now."

He explained, "When I founded SMIC back then, I also raised funds from multiple sources. I'll need some time to coordinate and communicate after I get back. I wonder how much of a stake you need?"

"Controlling stake!"

Zhang Jing frowned. "51%?"

"61%!"

After Song Han's words fell, the meeting room fell into instant silence.

After a long while, Zhang Jing let out a long sigh.

"I can help you with the coordination, but I want the right to use 'Jian'an' within SMIC!"

"Sure!"

With these words, this makeshift meeting came to an end.

After Zhang Jing left, everyone in the meeting room looked at each other in dismay.

After a long time, Song Han finally looked up from the computer.

"I remember that at this time, Dr. Zhang Jing should be busy catching up with the foreign chip - manufacturing process gap and the listing and financing plan of SMIC.

Combining personal goals with the country's development process, is this a national plan?"

Hearing this, Director Zhou beside him said seriously,

"After learning about your procurement plan, we had the idea of acting as a matchmaker.

Such a huge amount of money, and a fixed annual procurement quota at that, there's no reason to give it all to foreign companies.

After all, the use of foreign exchange reserves in our country has always been rather tight.

It's just that you guys acted too fast. Just as we finished our external liaison work, you had already set off.

However, you were wrong about one thing."

"Combining your personal goals with the country's development process, and taking the lead in solving the problem of poverty and food and clothing in the country and promoting the development of high - tech industries, that's what we've been planning and busy with recently."

Hearing this, Song Han asked in confusion,

"Since the country's foreign exchange reserves are tight, why weren't you tempted when you learned about my way of making money?"

Director Zhou shook his head.

"You're thinking too simply. In essence, your way of making money is part of a war. It's similar to Germany's 'Bernhard Operation' during World War II, which involved printing counterfeit British pounds to disrupt the UK's domestic economic and financial order. Our think - tank has named it: currency war.

There are no secrets that can be kept forever. If it's discovered, compared to a state - sponsored act, an individual act will give our country more leeway in the international community.

Peaceful rise and not firing the first shot are our country's basic national policies. Even the greatest interests have to yield to them."

Song Han frowned and didn't agree with Director Zhou's explanation.

"Can't we just use more middlemen?"

"No matter how many isolation measures there are, human involvement is needed during the implementation. People have self - interests. Who can guarantee that they'll really abide by the country's will strictly?

Moreover, your approval and assistance are also required for this kind of thing. So why not simply cooperate with you?

At least compared to others, you have lofty ideals!"