Rebirth: Start to Save the Treasure Girl

"Since you're already here," Professor Wang persisted, leading Xue Rui to the server rack and opening it: "This is it."

Xue Rui glanced at it and, based on the experience he had learned from the maintenance technician over the past few days, opened the computer and took a look. There were only a few pitiful K40 GPUs, which were far inferior to those in his computing center, and even far behind those used by Lin Ruoxi herself.

Xue Rui looked around again and saw a few workstation cases, which could only fit a few graphics cards at most.

"Gone?" Xue Rui was quite surprised.

"That's all." Professor Wang said awkwardly.

Xue Rui, oblivious to Professor Wang's expression, muttered to himself, "Isn't the configuration a bit too low-end?"

He thought university labs were all top-notch, but it turns out they're just like this?

"It's not low, you haven't seen other people's experiments..."

Professor Wang was about to retort when he suddenly remembered what Xue Rui did, so he quickly shut up, thinking to himself, "Isn't this like showing off your skills in front of Guan Yu?"
Xue Rui chuckled, knowing he had touched a nerve with Professor Wang. He said with a pained expression, "Professor Wang, what I mean is, how can we do experiments with such low-end equipment? The school is really something, they didn't even approve more funding."

However, Xue Rui also noticed a detail: what Professor Wang meant was: Don't look down on me; the setup here already surpasses that of most professors' labs.

However, compared to Lin Ruoxi, the gap was too huge, so Professor Wang didn't continue speaking.

“It has nothing to do with the school. Funds are strictly managed; they can't be misappropriated to buy GPUs. Besides, there are too many other places where money is needed. Even if I were allowed to buy them, I wouldn't be willing.” Professor Wang paused here, “But after experiencing Lin Ruoxi's equipment, I suddenly feel a bit lost…”

When Lin Ruoxi contacted him last time, she asked if he was interested in buying cloud computing services. Once the supporting tools were developed, data that used to take months to process could be processed in just one day with the support of GPU clusters, which is equivalent to a speedup of tens or hundreds of times.

At the time, he didn't feel anything, but after experiencing Lin Ruoxi's equipment, he could only sigh: It's hard to go from luxury to frugality.

"Mr. Xue, I heard from Lin Ruoxi that you want to build a computing center. Let's sit down and discuss it in detail. How does your company charge? Can you issue special invoices?"

Professor Wang asked a series of questions and gestured for Xue Rui to sit down and talk.

Xue Rui returned to his chair, picked up the paper cup, and took a small sip.

His computing center was still under construction. He came here to conduct "user research," while Lin Ruoxi was conducting "user needs research" to build supporting tools for his computing center.

"Professor Wang, my computing center will be ready for trial operation in a few more months. I will contact you then."

Xue Rui stood up and extended his hand to Professor Wang. He had already seen what he wanted to see, so there was no point in staying.

Professor Wang paused for a moment, then stood up and firmly grasped Xue Rui's hand: "Remember to urge Lin to help us develop the tools as soon as possible. She said she wants to integrate them into your platform."

"Definitely, definitely," Xue Rui replied with a smile.

Professor Wang escorted Xue Rui to the door. At that moment, a row of students were sitting on the lawn in front of the laboratory, each with a bunch of foxtail grass in their hands, all trying to weave little dogs like Lin Ruoxi.

Lin Ruoxi sat in the middle, head down, carefully weaving small animals, and noticed that Xue Rui had come out.

Xue Rui didn't say anything, just watched quietly from a distance. Sunlight fell on his shoulders, and he smelled the faint scent of grass. His crush was sitting on the lawn. Perhaps this was what youth was all about.

The atmosphere subtly changed when someone noticed Professor Wang's presence.

Lin Ruoxi followed everyone's gaze and gave them a sweet smile, because the puppy in her hand was already finished.

"Rui, look." Lin Ruoxi ran over and presented the fluffy puppy to Xue Rui with both hands.

"Great job." Xue Rui didn't hold back his praise and reached out to pat Lin Ruoxi's head again.

"Professor Wang, I'll definitely contact you first when the time comes." Xue Rui took Lin Ruoxi's hand and winked at her.

Lin Ruoxi was taken aback at first, but quickly understood what Xue Rui meant; Xue Rui was telling her to be more polite.

"Goodbye, Professor Wang," Lin Ruoxi called out crisply.

"Come and sit down if you have nothing to do."

Professor Wang had a kind smile on his face. He really liked Lin Ruoxi. She was smart and capable, unlike the students under his own supervision.

"Junior Lin, come visit often!" Zhang Feng called out.

In an instant, Professor Wang's face darkened: "What are you playing at? Have you finished your paper yet?"

Everyone hurriedly lowered their heads and squeezed into the laboratory, not forgetting to mutter a few words behind their backs:
"I thought he was in a good mood today."

"You're too narcissistic. He's only nice to Lin Ruoxi; he's still the same as always with us."

"That's not right, but he also treats Lin Ruoxi's boyfriend very well."

"You also know that he's Lin Ruoxi's boyfriend?"

"Damn, that's so snobbish."

Zhang Feng sighed deeply: "This is the power of capital."

……

After leaving campus, Xue Rui opened the Omnipotent Campus app and casually scrolled through the homepage.

His campus platform has been operating for more than half a year, covering not only campus life services for various schools, but also a Q&A section on the homepage, similar to Zhihu, except that the popular posts are usually short emotional stories, which has become a gossip section.

However, based on each student's major, we will also recommend some professional Q&A posts.

Xue Rui also posted a Q&A thread: "Are there any crappy computers in our school that are even worse than this one?"

I also added a screenshot of the computer configuration for phishing purposes.

The image shows a Titan X, which is already the top-of-the-line consumer-grade configuration. Anything exceeding this configuration is either a server with multiple graphics cards or a professional computing card.

Because of his control over traffic, Xue Rui pushed his post to the trending section.

In just one or two days, he will be able to master the laboratory configurations of most schools.

Lin Ruoxi tilted her head, not understanding why Xue Rui would lie to her; this was Xue Rui's own computer.

Seeing Lin Ruoxi's puzzled expression, Xue Rui chuckled and said, "This is fishing. You should learn something."

It's like wanting to buy a pair of headphones for 200 yuan and wanting to ask netizens for their opinions, preferably by posting the opposite: "[Headphones under 200 yuan are all garbage.]"

This would attract a lot of rebuttals and also lead to a lot of optimal solutions.

"Okay, sure." Lin Ruoxi stared at the post, wondering what kind of fish Xue Rui could catch.

Within just a few minutes, the comments section of the post exploded.

[Damn, Versailles? Our school doesn't even have graphics cards; they're still using the integrated graphics of Celeron processors.]

[This is outrageously extravagant! What major requires a Titan graphics card? I want to transfer!]

……

Most of them were complaints and jokes.

However, a highly-rated screenshot appeared shortly afterward.

128GB of RAM, K80 computing card. Then, opening the homepage reveals Tsinghua University.

Immediately, a lot of praise appeared below the post.

Xue Rui's lips curled up slightly; he had caught a fish.

Whenever someone wants to complain or gain a sense of superiority, they will inadvertently reveal information.

He doesn't need to go through the trouble of conducting market research; he can simply sit back and reap the rewards.

Lin Ruoxi took out her laptop, skillfully opened CXCel, and created a spreadsheet according to the school and configuration.

"No need, I can do it myself." Xue Rui closed the laptop.

"Hmm, then what do you want me to do?" Lin Ruoxi blinked blankly.

"Hmm... Let's go home for dinner," Xue Rui said with a grin.

Lin Ruoxi, that silly girl, she learns whatever he wants to do, always silently supporting him from behind.

In Lin Ruoxi's vision, as long as he could contact the laboratories of various universities, he could make money in the scientific research circle.

But Xue Rui isn't that sensitive to money now. With the electronics factory and the game getting on track, plus the revenue from Omnipotent Campus, he can earn nine-figure dividends without even having to do anything.

Xue Rui's original intention in setting up the computing center was to support Lin Ruoxi's career.

But Lin Ruoxi's ambitions are too great. She's working on AI with one hand and preparing to take down Nvidia with the other, which is giving Xue Rui a real headache.

Because he doesn't understand technology...

"Xi Xi, let me help you this once too," Xue Rui murmured to himself.

……

For the next two weeks, Xue Rui carried his laptop with him every day, sending private messages to various netizens to collect statistics, while also going to the labs to investigate the configuration and the degree of dependence of various disciplines on GPU clusters.

By late May, Xue Rui sat in the Orange Calculations office, looking at the densely packed spreadsheets in his hands, feeling quite melancholy.

"How is it?" Wu Hongwei handed over a glass of water.

Xue Rui took a sip without looking away, then tossed the form over: "Look at it yourself."

Xue Rui has visited many schools these days, and the configuration of their computer labs and laboratories is, to put it mildly, disappointing.

Some top-tier university labs only have a few computing cards, while most ordinary first- or second-tier universities only have a few consumer-grade gaming graphics cards, with configurations even worse than those in high-end internet cafes.

It's not that the school is reluctant to spend the money, but rather that it doesn't have the funds to invest in construction.

On the surface, there is a considerable amount of funding, but almost all of it is used for basic operating expenses of schools, leaving very few schools with the funds available for building computing power.

When it comes to the details in the spreadsheet, even Professor Wang's configuration is enough to rank among the top in his spreadsheet.

Xue Rui has even seen some professors use their laptops' graphics cards to run data...

It couldn't be more shabby.

However, not all schools are like this. For top universities such as Tsinghua and Peking University, their equipment is firmly at the top of the table, consisting of more than ten high-end computing cards forming computing nodes.

It could even be said that the top twenty schools combined are far stronger than the next few hundred combined...

Similar to the difference between a monthly salary of 2,000 and a monthly salary of 20,000.

The numerical difference is tenfold, but what about the amount of discretionary spending?
The former's basic expenses account for the vast majority, leaving almost nothing for discretionary spending. The difference between it and the latter is not just ten times, but hundreds or thousands of times.

"Such a big difference?" Wu Hongwei laughed, but he wasn't too surprised; he had actually expected it.

The Pareto principle applies everywhere.

The gap between ordinary universities and top universities is similar to the gap between him and the richest man.

“Most universities are struggling to find available computing resources, and their projects are all waiting in line for verification. We can capture these users,” Xue Rui said.

"So how much computing power can they consume? No more than 20% of ours." Wu Hongwei asked himself, then threw the table back.
“Our computing power far exceeds the needs of universities. We should focus on AI and pharmaceutical companies. Universities are just a small part of our business; we can treat them as casual customers.”

Xue Rui did not answer, but rested his chin on his hand and fell into deep thought.

If Lin Ruoxi wants to develop AI, she needs massive amounts of data for training, but the data that companies have often comes at a cost.

Lin Ruoxi still needs talent. Xue Rui discovered this during last year's recruitment: even in a place like Chang'an with a high concentration of universities, it is extremely difficult to find AI-related talent.

The reason is simple: in 2015, AI had not yet taken off, and the infrastructure could not support the ecosystem.

He had a bold idea: to indirectly verify it with Wu Hongwei.

"Old Wu, I have a way to get the computing center running at full capacity," Xue Rui said with a smile.

"Oh? Tell me about it?" Wu Hongwei looked at Xue Rui with great interest.

“Although universities don’t have a large demand for computing power right now, it’s an untapped wasteland. With just a little bit of development, it can fill the entire computing center.” Xue Rui picked up the booklet again.

“I conducted on-site research and found that many laboratories are interested in cooperation. With a large-scale GPU cluster, their verification time can be shortened by dozens of times, and it can also help them to do larger projects.”

"It's a good idea; it can expand the research needs of universities." Wu Hongwei then changed the subject, pouring cold water on Xue Rui's idea:
"However, they can't keep expanding the project indefinitely, since our computing power isn't cheap."

Wu Hongwei's lips curled up slightly. He actually had high hopes for Xue Rui's Orange Computing. With his more than ten years of experience working at NVIDIA, Wu Hongwei knew very well that the CUDA ecosystem would take Orange Computing off together.

But he didn't want to tell Xue Rui because... the feeling of giving a lecture to the boss was just too damn awesome!

Xue Rui's lips curled slightly: "What if my plan is to offer computing power for free?"

Wu Hongwei paused for a moment, then involuntarily sat up straight. The smile on his face gradually faded, turning into a serious expression: "Free? You're not making any money?"

Wu Hongwei had been tricked by Xue Rui before. He wanted to find something for Xue Rui to do and give him some trouble, but he never thought about affecting the company's interests. After all, he chose to join Orange Computing, so he had to consider the future of Orange Computing.

Now look what's happened... He's driven Xue Rui crazy...

"Which internet giant didn't burn through money to get where it is? I've calculated it. Even if the computing center runs 24 hours a day, the maintenance and electricity costs would only burn through a little over ten million yuan a year. I can handle that," Xue Rui chuckled.

Wu Hongwei thought for a moment. Burning money to expand the market was a classic tactic, but he knew that Orange Computing didn't need to do that. Wouldn't it be better to take off with Nvidia?
Wu Hongwei said earnestly, "Chairman Xue, you haven't done the experiment. The experimental process involves acquiring data, cleaning the data, and then verifying it with computing power. Computing power is not the only cost."

Xue Rui nodded seriously: "What you said makes sense, so we also need to create an open-source community. Projects running on Orange Computing must be open-sourced according to our rules, including free computing power and free data..."

"Oh right, we also need to establish a contribution mechanism to allocate computing power according to contributions; you only get computing power if you contribute..."

Wu Hongwei's pupils dilated violently. He sat in the chair, breathing heavily, his hand holding the teacup trembling slightly, causing ripples to appear on the surface of the water inside.

“Madman, madman…” Wu Hongwei murmured.

"No, let me think about it carefully..."

“Computing power attracts talent, talent generates high-quality data, and data, in turn, enriches the community ecosystem and enhances its attractiveness. Talent + data + computing power, a trinity…” Wu Hongwei’s voice trembled slightly. (End of Chapter)