giants of the era

Chapter 239 Umbrella Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
To do a good job, you must first sharpen your tools. To study artificial intelligence, you need to purchase a supercomputer. Supercomputers have a strong ability to calculate and process data, which is naturally more effective for the study of artificial intelligence.

So, Li Zetian and Dongfang Yuqin came to Sun Microsystems.

Company CEO Dr. Jim Clark took Li Zetian and Dongfang Yuqin to the Clay Research Laboratory.

After coming here, Li Zetian first saw a room full of machines, which looked like silver sailboats. They were very cool, covering an area of ​​less than 15 square meters and weighing no more than 12 tons. They looked like works of art!
Seymour Clay came up now.

"Mr. Li, hello!"

"Well, hello, Clay, how is the development of the new generation of supercomputers going?" Li Zetian asked.

"Mr. Li, as you can see, this is it!!!" Seymour Clay pointed to a pile of machines in front of him and said proudly.

Dr. Jim Clark said with a smile, "Based on the 'Cray-1' supercomputer, the Cray Research Laboratory has successfully developed a new generation of supercomputer with a calculation speed of 12 billion times per second, which is amazing. Compared with the Cray-1 computer, it is equivalent to 5 times it!"

Cray-1 is a very good supercomputer currently on the market, with a worldwide reputation and the largest market share. When it was just released in 1975, it crushed the IBM370 supercomputer by more than 40 times, and the two were simply not products of the same era! ! !

Now in 1983, despite the rapid development of supercomputers, supercomputers with a calculation speed exceeding 5 million per second are rare, and as for supercomputers with a calculation speed exceeding 10 billion per second, they have not yet been born.

A look of shock flashed across Li Zetian's face. After so many years, he has been used to the snail-like computing speed of computers in this era. He was really surprised to hear such a fast speed.Of course, it is naturally incomparable with the supercomputer in the previous life, maybe even an ordinary home computer.As far as the calculation speed of 12 billion operations per second is concerned, it is roughly equivalent to the level of the iPhone 2010 smartphone launched by Apple in 4.

"Clay, you did a good job!" Li Zetian praised with a thumbs up.

Seymour Clay said: "The reason why the new generation of supercomputers can have such excellent computing power is because they use the high-performance processor ARM1.0 developed by ARM." He pointed to the pile of machines in front of him and said, " This supercomputer has 4500 computing cores, and each computing core has two ARM1.0 processors!"

Li Zetian nodded, expressing his understanding.

Generally speaking, the more processors a supercomputer has, the more powerful it is.But it doesn't mean that supercomputers can add as many processors as they want, there are technical limitations.Otherwise, just relying on stacking processors, wouldn't the supercomputers in many countries be awesome?In fact, only a few countries and companies can produce supercomputers!

Dr. Jim Clark said: "Mr. Li, should the new supercomputer be named "Cray-2", or should it be renamed?"

Li Zetian thought for a while and said, "Let's rename it, which marks a new beginning for Clay Research Laboratory after joining Sun Microsystems!"

Both Jim Clark and Seymour Cray nodded.

Li Zetian thought for a while, and then said: "The name is "Solar Storm", which symbolizes that the power of the supercomputer is as shocking as the solar storm!!!"

Jim Clark said with a smile: "Well, the name is good, it has the sun, and it fits well with the brand of Sun Microsystems! By the way, Mr. Li, I heard that Evolution Robotics is going to build an artificial intelligence laboratory. Come on, do you want to buy a supercomputer?"

"Yes, that's right. With supercomputers, the research and development of artificial intelligence can achieve twice the result with half the effort!" Li Zetian paused and asked, "How long does it take to produce a Solar Storm supercomputer?"

Seymour Clay replied: "It may take a little longer at the beginning, about half a month..."

"What's the cost?"

"About seven million dollars!" said Seymour Clay.

"If it's $700 million, the price is set at $1000 million!" After speaking, Li Zetian looked at the two of them and asked, "What do you think of the price?"

"A machine earns 300 million dollars, very suitable!" Seymour Cray nodded.

"IBM's supercomputer is more than $1000 million, but its performance can't compare with 'Sunstorm'. I think the 'Sunstorm' computer can be sold even if it sells for $1200 million!" Dr. Jim Clark Said.

Li Zetian thought about it, and felt that what Dr. Jim Clark said made sense. IBM's supercomputers are all sold for more than 1000 million US dollars. Why is the 'Solar Storm' supercomputer sold cheaper than it?
"Well, then according to what Dr. Clark said, the price is 1200 million US dollars each!" Li Zetian said, "The Evolution Robot Company needs to purchase 3 'Sunstorm' supercomputers! One in the United States and one in the US. In London, England, there is another one...in Hong Kong!"

"Okay!" Seymour Clay nodded.

After explaining this matter, Li Zetian left the Cray Research Laboratory, and under the leadership of Jim Clark, he inspected the company to learn more about the situation of Sun Microsystems.

……

……

At present, the "Solar Storm" supercomputer has not been released to the public, so the outside world does not know about it.Of course, good things are first for their own use, and then they are sold to the outside world.The products circulating on the market are often products made with second-rate technology, and the first-rate products are all in the laboratory.

In addition to computer science, artificial intelligence research also involves information theory, cybernetics, automation, bionics, biology, psychology, mathematical logic, linguistics, medicine and philosophy and other disciplines. The main research contents include: knowledge representation , automatic reasoning and search methods, machine learning and knowledge acquisition, knowledge processing systems, natural language understanding, computer vision, intelligent robots, automatic programming, etc.

Therefore, the development of artificial intelligence is not easy, and there is still a long way to go in the future.

To develop artificial intelligence, in addition to buying supercomputers, there are many expensive things to buy, and hiring talents with high salaries is also a huge human cost.The funds of Evolution Robot Company are obviously not enough, Li Zetian then announced to inject 10 billion US dollars into Evolution Robot Company, striving to build the most advanced artificial intelligence laboratory in the world.

The shares of Joseph Engelberg and others could not help but be diluted out of shape.

There is a saying that “it’s easy to get on board, but hard to get off!” It’s too late for them to regret it now, and now they are on the same boat as Li Zetian, and their shares will be valuable only if they develop Evolution Robotics together.

At this moment, the three people sitting in front of Li Zetian are the initiator of the Dartmouth conference and the "father of artificial intelligence" John McCarthy, Alan Newell, and Seymour Papert.

Li Zetian said with a smile on his face: "When the 'Umbrella Artificial Intelligence Laboratory' was established, top-level talents were urgently needed to join. I am really happy that you three well-known seniors in the artificial intelligence field can join!!!"

The three people in front of me are all the winners of the highest honor of computer - the Turing Award, the master of the gods, they are over 50 years old, and they are full of peaches and plums!The world's top artificial intelligence talents are almost all their students, and taking the three of them is equivalent to taking in a group of artificial intelligence research talents.

In fact, Li Zetian also invited two founders of artificial intelligence, Herbert Simon and Marvin Minsky.But they rejected it.

Herbert Simon refused Li Zetian's invitation on the grounds that he was too old. Indeed, he is 67 years old, and he is indeed a bit old.Still, he says his students are interested in the Umbrella AI Lab.Li Zetian thought for a while, and decided not to embarrass the old man.

And Marvin Minsky is actually as young as John McCarthy, only in his 50s. Li Zetian invited him several times, but was rejected.Marvin Minsky was one of the first experts in the world to research artificial neural networks, a key technology in the field of deep learning.The reason why he rejected the people invited by Li Zetian is probably because he founded a company called Thinking Machines in 1982.

Thinking Machines (Thinking Machines) is the world's first truly commercial artificial intelligence company, and has won a multi-million dollar order from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

……

With the news that Li Zetian injected 10 billion US dollars into the Evolution Robot Company, it caused a sensation all over the world!

Obviously, for artificial intelligence researchers all over the world, the laboratory established by Li Zetian has become a place they yearn for one after another. They don't even need him to recruit people, and many people apply for the job on their own initiative.

Moreover, there are three authoritative figures in the field of artificial intelligence sitting in the town, which naturally attracts a large number of talents.

At this moment, because of Li Zetian's actions, the whole world has set off a frenzy of artificial intelligence development, and it has begun to grow wildly!Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Soviet Union, and even China have joined the competition in the development of artificial intelligence, and no one is far behind.

In fact, Li Zetian has been studying artificial intelligence for a long time. Looking at the current artificial intelligence and his understanding of artificial intelligence from the perspective of his previous life in 2016, it is obviously better than the current father of artificial intelligence. Li Zetian also knows a lot about algorithms and theories. For example, although he doesn't know much about the deep learning algorithm used by Google's AlphaGo, the research direction is the most important. The world is waiting for you to conquer.

PS:. . . .It may not be possible to update the fourth update today. How much is owed today will be made up tomorrow.

(End of this chapter)