Sail across the sea

Chapter 108 Do I need to roll like this

When Wu Zixian left the Zhongnan Building of the Normal University under the affectionate gaze of his senior sisters from other schools, Gao Fan was in the reference room of the Chemistry Building of Peking University looking at his fellow seniors with black eye circles, and was overjoyed.

"You said you waited in line for five hours last night, and only got two hours of machine time. Do you need to be so voluptuous?"

Gao Fan asked Yang Kai.

Yang Kai was woken up by Gao Fan while he was sleeping on the couch in the reference room, and he was still angry about getting up.He glared at Gao Fan and said, "What is a roll? Who doesn't line up like this? If I hadn't gone early, I wouldn't have been able to line up in these two hours."

Yang Kai took a fancy to Gao Fan's previous research on rare earth catalysts and claimed that he could help him design a calculation model to calculate the optimal ratio of rare earths.

In the past few days, Yang Kai can be said to have forgotten all about eating and sleeping. After searching a lot of information, he finally came up with a model. According to him, it can only be regarded as a phased result.

With the model in place, the next step is to actually calculate it.The amount of calculation of this model has exceeded the capabilities of human beings and must be completed on a computer, which has become a more difficult task than deriving the model.

There is an IBM4341 medium-sized computer in the public computer room of Peking University, equipped with 40 terminals, that is, it can accommodate 40 people to use at the same time.There are more than a thousand people who need to use computers in schools, so the computer time is extremely valuable.

The school computing center will send a statistical table to all departments in the school at the end of each month to count the computer hours needed by each department in the next month, and then allocate computer hours according to a set of complex algorithms. The factors considered include but are not limited to the project Importance, status of department, title of researcher, relationship with computing center, etc.

Sometimes there will be some vacancies on the schedule of the plane.For example, a department applies to use 38 terminals in a certain period of time, and the remaining 2 terminals are not suitable for the computing center to distribute to other departments. Therefore, the computer time of these 2 terminals is vacated, which is called scattered computer time, and the school is allowed The researchers temporarily apply for use.

In addition, sometimes when the machine is arranged in the plan, there will be a situation where the user cannot come due to temporary errands.The computing center stipulates that users who are late for 15 minutes will be disqualified, and the machine hours are also classified as scattered machine hours, which are open to the outside world.

In order to avoid the phenomenon of going through the back door when applying for scattered computers, and in fact to avoid getting involved in the trouble of allocating scattered computers, the Computing Center stipulates that when applying for scattered computers, the method of on-site application is first come, first served.

Well, in human terms, it is actually queuing.

This way of queuing is very common in today's China.Anyone who wants to buy rare things, such as train tickets, movie tickets, goods for export to domestic sales, or a good part of a pig, has to queue up.

It is the fairest way to distribute scarce supplies by queuing.In order to buy a train ticket, some people lined up outside the ticket window of the train station 12 hours in advance with Maza and wrapped in military coats.If you can't bear this hardship, don't expect to buy tickets.

The Department of Chemistry has never been a big user of computers, and the computing center allocates very limited computer time to the Department of Chemistry, which cannot be used by a young man like Yang Kai who has just graduated and stayed in school.If he wants to do calculations, he can only use the scattered machine hours in the computer center, which means he has to queue up.

The scattered machines in the computing center are mainly concentrated in the second half of the night.Some old gentlemen are too old to stay up late.There are also some researchers who have to go to work during the day, and it is impossible to stay up to work at night, so the computer time in the second half of the night is relatively loose.

It is said to be loose, but only for those who are eligible to apply for machine hours.There are still a large number of people like Yang Kai who are not qualified to apply for computer time on campus. Their eyes are fixed on the few computer hours in the middle of the night, so they start to "introduce".

Last night, it can be seen from the machine time schedule that between 0:6 am and 16:2 am, the computer room had a total of 8 hours of scattered machine hours.According to the calculation that each person can apply for [-] hours to use the computer, a total of [-] lucky people can get the opportunity to use the computer.

Yang Kai brought the book and Maza to the door of the computing center at 10:10 p.m., and saw that there were already 11 people in front of him, and he was the [-]th.He was not discouraged, but put his horse behind the line, sat down and read a book by the light at the door and waited.

Based on his experience, he knows that some people who have made an appointment will often not come to the plane in the middle of the night. The reason is that they are on a business trip, in a meeting, or sick. I was sleepy and didn't want to come, so I gave up.

This world is so wonderful. While some people are waiting in line for the plane, others can make an appointment and not come.Those who lined up outside, not only would not complain about the latter, they were even full of gratitude, thanking them for occupying the pit for themselves, and giving it to themselves without taking any money.

What Yang Kai was waiting for was the opportunity given by these "well-meaning people". He could even tell from the schedule which people would make such "good deeds".

Hard work paid off, Yang Kai waited from 10:3 pm to [-]:[-] am, and finally got two slots.And when he walked into the computer room with his head held high, there were more than a dozen people behind him silently waiting for the favor of fate.

After Yang Kai came out of the computer room, he went back to the reference room, wrapped himself in some clothes and lay down on the old couch to catch up on sleep, until he was woken up by Gao Fan's knock on the door.

"How about it, did you figure out the result?"

Gao Fan asked Yang Kai.

Yang Kai yawned, and said: "The calculated result is not in line with my expected situation. I have already figured out where the problem is. I will modify the model again, and then I have to go to the computer to calculate it."

"How about... I will line up for you next time." Gao Fan hesitated for a while before saying.

From his original intention, he doesn't like queuing.How painful is it to stand in line for five hours in the wee hours of the morning just to use the computer for two hours?
4341 is known as a medium-sized machine with 4M memory and 100 million calculations per second. This is not even qualified as a cash register in future generations, right?Thinking that he has to queue for two hours of such a machine, Gao Fan can't wait to be depressed for a quarter of an hour.

However, Yang Kai is a senior brother after all, and the purpose of going on the machine is to help him calculate the model, how could he have the nerve to watch from the side?
"It's useless for you to queue up." Yang Kai waved his hand, "The computing center is only open to teachers, students queuing up are all invalid. Otherwise..."

He didn't say any more, the subtext was understood by everyone.The most indispensable thing in the school is students. If students can help to line up, wouldn't it be more troublesome?

(End of this chapter)