Rebirth 2004: I can make money by writing.

With the rise of Future Technology Group in the semiconductor field, the global chip industry landscape has undergone earth-shaking changes.

ASML, the once dominant lithography machine giant, now has to re-examine its market strategy.

Under various pressures, ASML finally gave in and lifted the sales ban on Huaguo.

In the international market, the price of EUV lithography machines has also dropped to a certain extent, and the final price is around US$1.1 million.

However, the price sold to Huaguo actually increased to US$1.8 million.

Who knows, there might be a buyer willing to buy it.

If you can’t sell it, just gradually lower the price.

Behind this decision is the continued sharp drop in ASML's stock price over the past two weeks.

In order to recover losses and stabilize market confidence, the company's top management made the important decision to lift sales restrictions on EUV lithography machines after intense discussions.

Although Future Technology Group does not directly sell lithography machines, the high-end chips they produce have already sparked a revolution in the market, indirectly affecting the purchasing demand and market pricing of EUV lithography machines by major chip manufacturers.

It can be said that the rise of Future Technology Group has completely changed the landscape of the global semiconductor manufacturing industry.

ASML's monopoly position, which it once prided itself on, is no longer in its glory.

They have to face a cruel reality: if Future Technology Group decides to launch its own lithography machine on the market one day, ASML's EUV lithography machine may lose its competitiveness in an instant and fall into the embarrassing situation of high price and low sales.

The lifting of the sales ban undoubtedly gave Zhongxin International a huge surprise.

The company's chairman Qiu Yun was ecstatic and could hardly hide his excitement.

“That’s wonderful!

"Damn it! Hao Qiang won't sell lithography machines, but ASML is willing to! And they're high-end lithography machines!" Qiuyun recalled the dilemma of being unable to buy them in the past, and couldn't help but feel a lot of emotion.

Once upon a time, even if they waved money, they could not break through the many restrictions of the United States and buy the high-end equipment they wanted.

Now, this long-awaited opportunity has finally arrived.

Qiu Yun had to admit that all this was due to the indirect influence of Future Technology Group.

Hao Qiang, you are such a fucking idiot!

If you don't make money, let foreigners make it.

Qiuyun shook her head, finding it difficult to understand Hao Qiang's business strategy.

In his opinion, Future Technology Group could clearly make great strides in the lithography machine market by relying on its own technological advantages, but it chose to stay out of it and let foreign companies dominate the market.

They held a meeting and decided to purchase 10 EUV lithography machines.

$180 million is not expensive. It couldn’t be bought even with the previous offer of $200 million or $300 million.

However, Qiuyun didn't know that Hao Qiang's chess game might be much more grand than he imagined.

Then he will regret it.

11 month 10 day,

Zhongxin purchased 10 EUV lithography machines for a total of US$18 billion.

After the news broke, domestic peers were slightly surprised, while uninformed citizens criticized Zhongxin: "Future Technology Group clearly has lithography machines, so why are they willing to spend money to buy them from foreigners? Why are they spending money to support foreigners?!"

However, some domestic peers think that Zhongxin paid too much. It was not available for two or three hundred million US dollars before, but the situation is different now. If they wait for a while, ASML will become anxious and may offer a lower price.

In the past, if you bought a high-end lithography machine and the sales were good, you could recover the investment cost of the equipment in more than a year.

Today, the chip price has been lowered, and the quoted price is still US$1.8 million. It may not be possible to recover the investment cost in five years.

But Qiu Yun believes that as long as they have EUV high-end lithography machines, they can compete with international counterparts and may even gain more market share.

this day,

Hao Qiang began assembling the company's first supercomputer.

The name is: "Future No. 1", abbreviated as "Xiaoyi".

He purchased nearly 5,000 processors in total, with a total cost of approximately US$15 million.

In order to buy Eagletel's most advanced processors, it is quite troublesome to purchase them in the name of an overseas company.

There is no time to develop my own processor, so I will assemble one first and use it for two or three years.

Once we have the energy to develop computer processors, we will assemble a more advanced and lower energy-consuming supercomputer.

The assembly and performance optimization of a supercomputer is a complex and sophisticated system engineering project.

These computing giants usually adopt a cluster architecture, which is mainly composed of four core parts: computing nodes, storage nodes, network interconnection systems and cooling systems.

Each part works like a precision gear, working together to maximize the supercomputer's potential.

Although hardware forms the skeleton of a supercomputer, it is the optimization at the software level that truly gives it life and efficiency.

This includes a carefully designed parallel computing framework, dedicated computing algorithms tailored for specific tasks, and efficient system scheduling optimization.

These software optimizations are like the brain and nervous system of a supercomputer, directing this huge computer to operate efficiently.

To give a simple example, when you need to calculate basic operations such as "1+1 equals what", calling on the computing power of an entire supercomputer is obviously a waste of resources.

A regular processor is more than enough for this task.

Therefore, how to accurately assess computing needs and quickly allocate appropriate hardware resources becomes a key challenge.

This requires sophisticated algorithms to achieve.

If resources are not properly allocated, two extreme situations may occur: either it is like using a cannon to kill a mosquito, resulting in a huge waste of resources;

Either it will be inefficient due to insufficient scheduling, or even cause the system to crash under high load conditions.

Therefore, accurate allocation and scheduling of resources become the key to supercomputer operating efficiency.

Taking into account the special needs of supercomputers, a special laboratory building is usually built for them instead of placing them in the company headquarters building.

This dedicated location needs to meet a series of strict environmental requirements: first, it must be a dust-free environment to ensure the normal operation of precision equipment;

Secondly, the ambient temperature needs to be kept constant between 18-22°C to provide the best operating temperature for the computer;

Most importantly, the power supply system must be stable and reliable, equipped with a powerful backup power generation system, and able to ensure voltage stability.

In order to cope with the huge heat generated when the supercomputer is running, Hao Qiang carefully designed an advanced cooling system.

The core concept of this system is the separation of hot and cold channels, which greatly improves cooling efficiency by optimizing airflow organization.

This not only ensures the stable operation of the supercomputer, but also significantly reduces energy consumption.

When it comes to network security, supercomputers have very tight protection measures.

First, a completely independent network system is used, which is physically isolated from the external network;

Secondly, we deployed multi-layer firewalls, implemented comprehensive encrypted communications, and established strict access control mechanisms.

In terms of physical security, the laboratory building is equipped with multiple access control systems, 24/7 monitoring, advanced biometric technology and a full range of anti-intrusion systems.

These measures together build an indestructible security barrier to comprehensively protect the company's core data assets.

The installation of the supercomputer was certainly not completed by Hao Qiang alone, but the design of the entire system was his work.

Installing a supercomputer is far more complicated than installing thousands of ordinary computers, and the scale of the project is staggering.

The first is the preparation phase, which includes detailed site planning, complex power system installation, sophisticated cooling system deployment, and comprehensive network infrastructure rollout.

This phase usually takes at least one month, and under normal circumstances, can often take up to three months to complete.

Cabinet installation, server and storage device deployment, network equipment connection and other tasks can be completed in a week or two as long as there are enough people.

Software configuration is the core of the entire project and was designed and supervised by Hao Qiang himself.

The remaining workload is testing and optimization.

In general, a complete supercomputer installation project, from initial planning to final full operation, usually takes one to two years.

However, with sufficient funding, complete staffing, and the personal supervision of top experts like Hao Qiang, the entire process can be greatly accelerated.

In the best-case scenario, the entire process from design to commissioning can be completed within a few months.

Once Future One is put into use, Hao Qiang can truly develop his artificial intelligence.

Of course, with current hardware, achieving semi-artificial intelligence is considered abnormal.

As for the fully artificial intelligence described in science fiction films, Hao Qiang doesn't know if it can be achieved in his lifetime.

At the same time, he also has to consider issues related to artificial intelligence and human security, and it is not something he can just do.

Don't let the whole world explode and destroy him too.