Just turned over a new leaf and became a wise and intelligent student

Chapter 442 Supercomputing Center
"Oh? The boss is back?"

Zhang Ke's face showed an unscratched look of fatigue. For a man of his age, if he doesn't trim his beard for a few days, he will look very shabby.

Xu Qingshan pulled a stool over from the side and sat down next to Zhang Ke.

"What's going on? What happened to make our brother Ke so embarrassed?"

Zhang Ke is the oldest researcher here. He has worked in academic research as well as in industry. He is considered the senior with the most work experience here.

The tasks Xu Qingshan had assigned to him before were more or less difficult, but Zhang Ke had always been able to solve the problems in a steady manner.

Xu Qingshan seemed to have never seen any embarrassment on his face, only a warm and gentle smile.

"Ugh."

Zhang Ke rubbed his messy hair and said with a wry smile.

"It's not a big deal, it's just that our laboratory has almost reached a bottleneck."

Zhang Ke explained the situation simply and clearly.

"bottleneck?"

Xu Qingshan looked back at the environment of the Information Science Laboratory. In fact, there had not been much change here, except that the hangar was on the first floor. He seldom came to the laboratory, so he didn't quite understand what Zhang Ke was worried about.

"Well, boss, didn't you say that you wanted to continue to dig deeper into machine learning and build an AI training cluster? With the scale of high-performance equipment in our hangar, there is still a gap in hardware. We need to continuously upgrade software and hardware to match the speed of technological iteration. If we want to stay at the forefront, we have to iterate and replace it about once every one or two years. Although we have only used it for a little over a year, because we bought the equipment a year earlier, the computing power has almost reached its limit now."

Zhang Ke stood up from his chair and stretched.

Otherwise, how can he be called the elder brother and elder sister of the team together with Jin Jing? Even if he encounters a problem that is difficult to solve, his mentality is still very good.

"In addition to the equipment performance and computing power issues, the other main issues are system conflicts in a multi-tasking environment. At present, our laboratory needs to support many projects, mainly AI training, big data analysis, scientific computing and other diverse tasks. There are still differences between different software versions, and compatibility issues of dependent libraries often occur. I have solved all the compatibility problems before, but now the scale has grown, and I may not be able to finish it all by myself."

Xu Qingshan was stunned for a moment.

To be honest, he basically handed over the daily operations of the information laboratory to Zhang Ke and did not ask about any specific matters.

"What about the students from Huaqing? And the ones selected by Lao Mei."

"Those kids are still at the stage of theoretical learning. If they want to complete daily maintenance, they must at least master cross-domain skills such as distributed system optimization and network security. Their team has learned quite well, but they still lack the grasp of cutting-edge technologies. Asking them to do a container deployment can cause a lot of new problems."

"So what? What can we do?"

Xu Qingshan looked at Zhang Ke. Old Zhang was the one who knew the situation in the laboratory hangar best.

Zhang Ke looked at Xu Qingshan, scratched his head, hesitated for a while before speaking.

"In fact, the main thing is that we need a venue and money."

Zhang Ke forced a smile and said.

"Venue and money?"

Xu Qingshan was stunned for a moment.

"Isn't this a small matter? Wherever you need it, I can approve it for you in the Science and Technology Park. As for the money, how much money do you need? Just write a report to me and I will approve it for you."

Xu Qingshan hadn't realized how big a claim Zhang Ke was about to make.

“How many can be approved?”

Zhang Ke blinked and looked at Xu Qingshan, and asked doubtfully.

"Don't worry, I have money and land now, just tell me."

Xu Qingshan waved his hand generously, as if he had packed everything up.

"It would be best if we could own a building, and the funding would have to be at least nine figures."

Zhang Ke said in a low voice tentatively. He actually didn't have much hope. The condition he proposed was really too exaggerated.

"what?"

Xu Qingshan raised his voice and asked while staring at Zhang Ke.

"You're planning to open a separate laboratory. This standard seems a bit too high."

Xu Qingshan looked embarrassed. It was not that he could not afford the money, but he could not make an investment of this scale at Beijing University.

Even if he wanted to donate a sum of money to Jinan University, he could not guarantee that the money would be fully used for the construction of a computer laboratory.

"Something's wrong. What kind of laboratory is this? Why does it require such a large amount of funds?"

Xu Qingshan suddenly came to his senses. Although the equipment in a computer laboratory was indeed very expensive, a server or workstation would cost tens, hundreds, or even millions of dollars.

However, with an investment of hundreds of millions, it can no longer be considered an ordinary laboratory.

Zhang Ke smiled and touched his head and said in a low voice.

"I see that the data requirements are increasing, and it also involves the subsequent AI model training, so I just built a supercomputing center, so that the original problems will no longer be problems."

Seeing that Xu Qingshan didn't ask him to shut up, Zhang Ke thought that maybe there was still hope for this matter, so he continued talking.

"If we have a supercomputing center, we can solve all the problems, and the staffing of a supercomputing center is enough for us to have a team that can work full hours. Unlike the current laboratory of our size, at most one or two maintenance personnel will be saturated, and the actual utilization rate is not that high."

"When the supercomputing center is built, we can also take on some work from outside to subsidize the laboratory's household expenses."

As Zhang Ke spoke, he counted the benefits of building a supercomputing center on his fingers. His expression at this time was just like Li Guangzhi who came to Xu Qingshan with the paper, his eyes were full of light.

Xu Qingshan listened and observed Zhang Ke's expression, and laughed a little in his heart.

The guys under my command are all very skilled, and this state of mind seems to be contagious.

When Zhang Ke first came, he was in such a calm state. He didn't look like someone who was overly aggressive. To put it nicely, he just followed orders. To put it bluntly, he just did things within his job scope.

He has always been in charge of the information laboratory and never interferes in the affairs of other groups.

If others need data or information, he will help them deal with it. He also put a lot of effort into the construction of the information laboratory, but other than that, he doesn't participate in other people's activities.

"Boss, think about it. The resources in our normal laboratory are basically limited to specific project groups. It is difficult for an interdisciplinary team to build high-performance computing resources that can be called in real time. When we are working on mathematical problems in different fields, we always need to conduct preliminary debugging for a period of time, which is actually a bit of a waste of time."

Zhang Ke talked freely.

Judging from his attitude, he will not give up until he squeezes Xu Qingshan’s money and land out of him today.

"Besides, the network used by our lab is actually the research network of Beijing University. It is easy for students to make mistakes or encounter malicious code injection. Sometimes when there is a virus attack against Beijing University, it may also affect us and threaten the security of our sensitive data."

Zhang Ke was recruited by Xu Qingshan himself. He did not have such a deep sense of belonging to Beijing University. He pursed his lips when he said this.

Science and engineering men like him who are dedicated to working on computers don't care too much about those illusory titles. For them, it is enough to do the technology well and get the due compensation.

"In fact, the most important thing is that you want to do AI model training. Normally, what our own laboratory can do is quite limited, that is, an ordinary AI model."

"If we need to go to other supercomputing centers for temporary use, then normally, based on my understanding of other supercomputing centers in China, there is still a lack of special management systems for high-end equipment, especially in supercomputing allocation. The current system is basically a formality, and often some projects are paralleled, and there is no targeted optimization. If we take the data to the supercomputing center to train AI, it is very likely that there will be conflicts in computing resource grabbing and poor results because there is no mechanism to establish the priority of AI model training."

As Zhang Ke spoke, he carefully observed Xu Qingshan's expression.

He did have the idea of ​​getting Xu Qingshan to pay more attention to the computer field.

Although Zhang Ke is not so particular about external honors, because engineers like him rely on solid technical capabilities, even if mathematicians are unemployed, he is unlikely to be unemployed.

Whether it is universities, enterprises, or the government, there is a great demand for technical experts like him.

But he chose to come to Xu Qingshan because of Xu Qingshan's understanding of machine learning and his vision for the future of artificial intelligence.

In fact, when Zhang Ke first graduated from school, he was a pure hardware major, but as he studied more and more deeply, he was constantly transforming and changing to be compatible.

Later, he was amazed by Xu Qingshan's paper and heard his speech at ICML. He became a close friend of Xu Qingshan. When Xu Qingshan's laboratory announced recruitment, he signed up immediately and was successfully selected because of his outstanding qualifications.

However, after working in Xu Qingshan's laboratory for so long, he has been watching other researchers following Xu Qingshan in continuously producing academic results, while his own work is actually more basic.

As for the current computing needs of Xu Qingshan's laboratory, it is still far from enough for Zhang Ke to use all his life's learning.

Although he is emotionally stable and indifferent, as long as he is a human being, he will have thoughts and desires.

Especially this year, I learned that Xu Qingshan has contacted many international experts in the field of computer science, especially in the field of machine learning, and has successfully introduced several overseas experts. He is preparing to vigorously conquer the field of machine learning in the new year.

Such news made Zhang Ke extremely eager to own a supercomputing center so that he could work freely beside Xu Qingshan without being restricted by his hands.

Just like other people, if Xu Qingshan can win the Turing Award, then Zhang Ke can also proudly say to others, this is my boss, in the computer field, he is this (thumbs up).

It’s not that he thinks Xu Qingshan’s current achievements are not high enough, but no matter how high they are, they are in the field of mathematics, not computers.

If Xu Qingshan had not shined in the computer field, he would not suspect that it was Xu Qingshan's problem, but would suspect that he was not working hard enough and did not assist Xu Qingshan well enough.

It was under the premise of this mental journey that Zhang Ke proposed the idea of ​​a supercomputing center to Xu Qingshan today.

Listening to Zhang Ke's description, Xu Qingshan also realized that if he had bigger plans and prospects for the field of artificial intelligence in the future, it would not be enough to stay in Beijing University.

If it's about the venue and the money.
Xu Qingshan thought for a moment and suddenly looked at Zhang Ke, but he did not speak, just looked at Zhang Ke.

"Boss, what's wrong? It's okay if it doesn't work, I just mentioned it casually. Actually, the algorithm..."

Seeing that Xu Qingshan didn't say anything, Zhang Ke thought that Xu Qingshan didn't agree. Although he felt a little disappointed, he still quickly gave an excuse.

"It's not impossible, but I'm considering how to make it more convenient."

Xu Qingshan had no intention of making Zhang Ke sad. He raised his hand to stop Zhang Ke from speaking and gave a simple explanation.

"You also know that I am planning to build my own Aoyama University. I contacted Joshua and others before because I wanted to bring them to Aoyama University. My original idea was to let you stay in the laboratory of Kyoto University, and I would also take care of the work here. But now I think it might be a waste of your talent to keep you here."

Xu Qingshan crossed his arms and said seriously.

"If we want to build a dedicated supercomputing center, it is unlikely to be done at Kyoto University. After all, the resources at Kyoto University are not sufficient for us to use as we please."

“And even if we really build a supercomputing center, other departments will have needs by then, and it won’t be able to serve only us.”

"But if it's Qingshan University, then we have the final say."

Xu Qingshan stated.

"If, I mean if, I can build a supercomputing center at Aoyama University and let you be in charge, are you willing to give up your position and salary at Kyoto University?"

Xu Qingshan looked at Zhang Ke.

Zhang Ke's eyes lit up, he patted his chest and spoke loudly.

"Of course you can. I came to the laboratory just for you. It has nothing to do with Jingcheng University."

"As long as I can follow you, I will do anything!"

(End of this chapter)