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Chapter 245 What I want is respect!

Qiao Yu had of course also seen the news. He even knew it earlier than the professors. After all, now anyone would be notified of any news that could be related to him.

There is no need for him to pay special attention to it at all.

Qiao Yu also took the opportunity to research the time when Microsoft released this announcement. It was exactly 20 minutes after he talked to the Microsoft representative.

The person in charge of negotiations with Qiao Yu at Microsoft was Ranveer Chandra, director of industrial research at Microsoft Research.

Just by looking at the name, you can tell that this is an Indian-American Microsoft executive.

Qiao Yu carefully recalled the negotiation process with Ranveer Chandra.

The Indian executive objected to some of the conditions he proposed, and then he ended the conversation by saying that Google, the leading quantum supercomputing company, had agreed to his conditions, so how could a small Microsoft like you have to make so many troubles?

Of course, these are definitely not Qiao Yu's original words, but this is roughly what he meant.

Now it seems that Microsoft is still a little dissatisfied with his evaluation. For example, does it think that its technology is not worse than Google's?

To be honest, Qiao Yu felt a little strange.

After all, he doesn't pay much attention to the research progress in quantum hardware.

After all, Qiao Yu has not been in the field of scientific research for a long time, and most of the time he has focused on pure mathematics research.

Even if you are interested in brute-forcing large prime numbers, the focus is on solving the problem through algorithms and software.

After all, the research cycle of hardware is too long. It is also limited by the industrial strength of the small broken ball. The time spent is calculated in decades.

It was okay for Qiao Yujue to ask him to provide some help, but he definitely didn't have the patience to study this kind of thing.

Just like the moon landing project, it is a ten-year plan that requires several generations of people to carry out the work. The first generation of astronauts had already retired before they sent an unmanned vehicle to the moon.

By the time we actually start manned lunar landings, I guess another large number of people will have to retire. Unlike in previous years when we were starting from scratch, it is difficult to reflect the contribution of an individual in today's large-scale projects.

But software and algorithms are different. They require little investment and produce quick results. They do not require a team of thousands or tens of thousands of engineers to solve thousands of engineering problems.

Of course, this does not mean that hardware is not important. But Qiao Yu thinks that these things can be left to professionals. What he does is more meaningful - under the conditions of existing hardware, squeeze out every bit of potential of the hardware and provide an optimal solution.

This is what an elegant mathematician should do.

We can't let him go through the crazy trial and error process like a fool, right? If we delve into the history of human engineering development, we will find that it is a history of crazy trial and error.

And this is true for any engineering development, without exception. Aviation, aerospace, chips, electricity and even infrastructure...

As long as you are good at summarizing and generalizing, plus a little bit of luck, after enough trial and error, you will always find a solution.

This is also one of the reasons why China's industrial system has been able to develop to such a scale.

There are so many people, and it took decades to popularize education. Coupled with the involutionary culture, dozens or even hundreds of laboratories are trying and erroring on a project at the same time, so it is hard to imagine that the efficiency is not high.

Although this process certainly caused a lot of waste of resources, the overall result is still good.

At least 50% of the manufacturing productivity on the little broken ball is rooted in this land. It even gained the strange reputation of "Industrial Cthulhu".

Microsoft chose this time to suddenly release the chip without even giving itself a little time to prepare. Qiao Yu could naturally conclude that this was the result of Ranveer Chandra's urgent communication with the company's top management after talking to him.

However, considering that it was almost five in the morning when he finished negotiating with Ranveer Chandra, they still had the energy to hold a high-level meeting and make a quick decision, which made Qiao Yu admire the professionalism of these high-tech company executives.

Really, if anyone tells Qiao Yu again that European and American technology companies don’t need to compete, Qiao Yu will spit in his face.

I was still on the front line negotiating at 4am, and after the negotiation I had to report, hold meetings, and make decisions...

Maybe Microsoft executives don’t know what the streets of New York look like at 4 a.m., but they definitely know how beautiful the streets of Redmond look at 4 a.m.

This is much more dedicated than ordinary workers.

However, Qiao Yu is still unsure what motivated Microsoft to make this decision.

Was it because he wanted to prove it by saying that Microsoft's quantum technology was not as advanced as Google's, which directly provoked the other party? Or was it because he wanted to control the negotiation conditions?
If it was the former, Qiao Yu really wouldn't mind.

After all, that was an internal competition between the two super technology companies in the empire. It had nothing to do with him, so he could just watch the fun.

As far as he knows, when Google announced that it had achieved quantum supremacy, the president of IBM also poured cold water on it.

But if it was the latter, Qiao Yu would not be very happy.

He has been having a smooth life recently and has not encountered any setbacks. There is no reason for him to be criticized by Microsoft.

Especially since he had been negotiating well with other companies from the perspective of strength. If Microsoft suddenly jumped out like this, it would be difficult to negotiate with others if he didn't respond.

This made Qiao Yu alert. He decided to keep a few more trump cards in his hand. He couldn't throw all the trump cards away at once.

In this way, when someone jumps out to challenge his authority, he can follow up immediately.

Fortunately, it doesn’t matter this time.

He also does not think that the quantum chip that Microsoft is about to release will bring about any significant changes to the development of quantum computing in the world.

This is a very simple truth.

If he was really that powerful, when he announced the new progress in quantum simulation computing at the conference, it would have directly affected the stock prices of a number of high-tech companies. Why didn't he announce it quickly at that time?
Instead, they talked to him first and decided to announce it only when they were not satisfied. This is a low point and it is enough to show that Microsoft itself is not so confident about this product.

Therefore, Qiao Yu was too lazy to check the papers published by Microsoft scientists in recent years like those professors did. After all, he was not interested in hardware research.

However, Qiao Yu naturally had his own channels to get information, such as Peter Schultz.

This great German mathematician happens to be collaborating with Microsoft Research. Although it has nothing to do with the research on quantum chips, Qiao Yu feels that these cutting-edge research are all interconnected.

Qiao Yu doesn't believe that Microsoft has no idea of ​​using quantum computing to prove mathematical theorems. Fortunately, the timing is still right.

Although it was only seven in the morning in the United States, China's time zone was only six hours ahead of Germany. Even taking into account the unique daylight saving time in the West, this time should be the time for lunch and rest in Germany.

Of course, the premise is that Peter Schulz is indeed in Germany.

However, Qiao Yu felt that there was no need to be so cautious between friends, not to mention that Peter Schultz had already begun to regard him as an idol...

When idols meet their fans, they don't need to worry about time differences. So Qiao Yu raised his hand and took out his cell phone to call Peter Schultz.

Facts also proved that Qiao Yu's analysis was correct, because Peter Schultz answered his call after only two rings.

This was enough to prove that the aloof German mathematician was very happy to receive his call at this time.

"Hi, Joe, this is your first call to me. I'm honored."

"Haha, Peter, if you say that, I might harass you anytime in the future! For example, the time I finish breakfast is usually when you are sleeping soundly."

"Okay, Joe, what's up?"

Apparently, Qiao Yu's joke was too much for Peter Schultz to handle.

There was no way. Although the time difference was mutual and he could find time to harass Qiao Yu, he knew how difficult it was to get through to Qiao Yu on the phone.

This guy seemed to like enabling the Do Not Disturb mode on his phone. If he chose the wrong time, he would not be able to disturb Qiao Yu even if he called.

"Have you noticed the latest news released by Microsoft? They said that they will release a new quantum chip, Majorana, today. They also said that the new technology can subvert the world's quantum computing landscape. Do you know about this new product?"

"Huh? Why are you suddenly interested in this? Are you planning to do hardware?"

"It's not that I'm interested in hardware. Well, you may not know yet, Microsoft took the initiative to contact me to discuss cooperation on quantum simulation computing. They want to hire me as a technical consultant. Do you know about this?"

"Um...I know." Peter Schultz responded hesitantly.

Qiao Yu probably also knew the reason.

After all, it not only involves cooperation, but also gossip about him...

"As a result, before we had even fully reached an agreement, they suddenly announced that they were going to release this product. I think they might be provoking me. What do you think? So I want to ask, how much do you know about this quantum chip?"

"Well... well, actually I have a lot of friends at Berkeley. If you read your email... the condition you proposed, to be honest, is indeed an unprovoked disaster for Berkeley."

"When did you get this news? Peter, your friends didn't tell you, and given Berkeley's reaction, I've forgiven them.

I only ask them to recover the benefits they have given to Professor Frank over the years. Is this request not excessive at all?

And the reason why I failed to reach an agreement with Microsoft was not because of this matter, but other things. Peter, do you think I am a person who likes to vent his anger on others? "

"Ah? Well... I'm sorry about that. Actually, that Professor Frank, your... Oh, never mind. I don't know much about Majorana.

However, as far as I know, this chip is currently mainly used in the laboratory for some AI collaboration work. When we were doing condensed matter mathematics research, we also tested using this chip to do some mathematical verification work.

By the way, this includes the high-dimensional space optimization problem of the generalized modal axiom system. And currently the main application of Majorana is in this area. You should know better than me that before there is a corresponding algorithm for the ecosystem, there is not much that quantum chips can do.

However, in terms of vision planning, there are still many applications. The laboratory is also trying to rely on Majorana to generate various types of synthetic data, and trying to do real randomness training and train complex AI models.

Of course, what I have said above is still in the research stage. In fact, there are still many technical obstacles in our use, such as memory overflow, resource limit overrun and algorithm incompatibility.

But Majorana does have some advantages. At least in overcoming decoherence, this chip is definitely the best. Of course, if you don’t consider that this chip currently only integrates eight qubits.”

Peter Schultz told us everything he knew about the chip without reservation.

This efficiency is obviously much higher than professors looking for papers previously published by Microsoft, and it also allowed Qiao Yu to quickly grasp the key points.

"You mean this chip is actually useless right now? At least it's not very useful in current business scenarios, and it's not much more advanced than Google's technology.

So Microsoft is challenging my authority in quantum computing by releasing this chip at this time, right? "

Apparently Peter Schultz once again failed to follow Qiao Yu's way of thinking.

What he seemed to mean was that although Microsoft's current generation of quantum chips represents the latest technological direction, it will not pose a threat to Qiao Yu's quantum simulation computing for the time being.

But Qiao Yu understood something completely different...

Well, for Peter Schultz, Microsoft is a partner after all...

After a moment of silence, Peter Schultz could not help but ask, "Qiao Yu, I don't quite understand you. What do you want?

If it's about money, I think Microsoft should be very generous to you. If it's about power? I think it's too early for you to pursue these things at your age...

If you are being competitive in academics, there is no need for that. Microsoft is not an academic institution. We do not need to rely on academic achievements to prove ourselves. In fact, I believe you know this better than anyone else.

If it is because of your family affairs, you have chosen to give up causing trouble for Berkeley, which means that the matter has already passed, so I am really curious, Qiao Yu..."

At this point, Peter Schultz emphasized his tone and asked again: "What do you want?"

Peter Schultz felt that this was not just his doubt, he thought Qiao Yu himself might not have thought this issue through.

Otherwise there wouldn’t always be so many messy thoughts.

But he was obviously wrong, because Qiao Yu's answer was simple, straightforward and confident: "Do I even need to ask? What I want is respect!"

After that, as if to take care of Peter Schultz's feelings, Qiao Yu explained seriously: "Peter, you grew up in a normal family, so you definitely don't understand what a child like me who grew up in a single-parent family thinks.

Sensitive, fragile, suspicious, even inferior, paranoid... these stereotypes people have about children from single-parent families are all true. So I care about self-esteem much more than the average person, do you understand me?"

(End of this chapter)