Xueba's computing system

Chapter 2: No Open Source Frameworks Allowed

Lin Yuan found a restroom, took out clothes from his bag and changed into new clothes.

His interview was scheduled for 1:30 p.m., so there was still an hour left, which was plenty of time.

Lin Yuan, who had changed his clothes, walked on the tree-lined road of Zijin Aviation School. He finally no longer felt out of place in the atmosphere here. He looked forward to his life after enrolling here.

There is no disgusting boss, no annoying work. There is only the wind of freedom blowing and the fragrance of youth.

Soon, Lin Yuan arrived at the battlefield where he would realize his dream - the postgraduate interview place.

This is a building affiliated with the School of Computer Science. A glass door in a corridor on the third floor is closed, and there are instructions for graduate student interviews posted on the door.

The interviewees had been waiting here long ago. Some of them looked confident and chatty, but most of them were as nervous as Lin Yuan.

For most ordinary people, a prestigious school like Zijin Aviation School is a watershed in life. If you enter, you will be bathed in glory, but if you leave, you will return to being ordinary.

Most of the people present were busy typing on their computers. Lin Yuan took a few glances and saw endless codes everywhere.

Lin Yuan suddenly felt a headache. What he feared most was the demonstration project.

He relied on the computing system and studied very hard, and finally reached the interview score of Zijin University within half a year. He had no energy to work on any research project.

Lin Yuan recalled his alma mater. There was no computer lab, let alone an AI computing center. The practical training at his alma mater was just tapping on a bunch of old antique computers. The computing power of those antiques couldn't even match the taillights of the computers with GTX graphics cards installed in the Internet cafe.

What’s the point of talking about computing power? It’s good enough if it doesn’t freeze you and cause a blue screen.

As for the software algorithm level, it is even more of a mess.

There are no AI-related courses in his alma mater. AI majors are only offered in famous universities nowadays. The computer courses in his alma mater are still those outdated technologies. Otherwise, Lin Yuan would not have been able to do only CRUD work after graduation.

Due to the atmosphere at the scene, Lin Yuan had no choice but to take out his treasure from his backpack - a second-hand ThinkPad T440.

He bought this on Taobao for writing code. This machine was the best ten years ago. But now, it is really an antique.

The machine is equipped with a GeForce 720M graphics card designed by NVIDIA for mobile platforms, with a video memory capacity of 1G. It is basically unable to run any current AI framework training.

Today’s AI frameworks are all designed to be large in size, and graphics cards with less than 6G of video memory can basically only stand aside.

This graphics card cannot even be used for mining, because mining also has minimum requirements for video memory.

Therefore, this graphics card does not exist.

When Lin Yuan occasionally designs AI training, he can only choose the most helpless method - running it on the CPU.

In the field of AI computing, CPU is just a little brother to GPU.

But given Lin Yuan's current predicament, he doesn't have the spare money to buy a top-level graphics card.

Fortunately, he still has a computing system.

When encountering complex calculations, Lin Yuan can call on the computing system to consume computing power to complete the calculations.

However, the computing power system cannot be called frequently because it will have side effects.

The side effect is: feeling weak and drained.

Every time after consuming a large amount of computing power, Lin Yuan would collapse on the bed, almost like the state after the floor was covered with tissues.

Since he had the computing system, Lin Yuan even gave up his bad habits because his body couldn't take it anymore.

Lin Yuan was holding his antique machine while trying to get close to the people around him.

"Classmate, what is your project?"

"Oh, I'm doing financial big data analysis..."

"This is face recognition..." "This is AI intelligent dialogue that imitates chatGPT..."

Lin Yuan looked at his laptop screen helplessly. His project seemed a bit low-level. His project was the outdated OCR character recognition, which was to let the computer recognize handwritten characters.

This is an open source project he downloaded from GitHub, and then he refactored all the code himself.

Due to the lack of energy due to exam preparation and the limited computing power of this antique machine, this is the limit of what Lin Yuan can do at the moment.

He didn't dare to overdraw the computing system for fear of overheating his brain and burning it.

It's too late to do anything now.

Lin Yuan had no choice but to adjust his mentality and try his best to face the next test.
-
An hour passed and the glass door was opened from the inside. The staff led the candidates into a conference room.

Lin Yuan sat down nervously. As far as he could see, there were five or six people sitting on the podium.

Wait until everyone is seated.

A host-like person announced, "Hello, everyone. First of all, thank you for choosing to apply for the Computer Department of Zijin Aviation School. I believe everyone has read the enrollment brochure. This year we will recruit two classes, a total of 60 students.

There are 113 people here, and you are just today's batch. A group of students had already participated in the interview yesterday, and there will be another batch tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Therefore, the number of places is limited and the competition is fierce. "

At this point, various discussions were already going on in the conference room, all of which were about lamenting the cruelty of competition.

If there are four batches, each with more than one hundred people, then more than four hundred people are competing for 60 places.

These 400 people all passed the written test score line. They were the best of the best, and it was no wonder that everyone present gasped.

"Students who are well-informed should have known about this year's assessment changes in advance..."

Lin Yuan was stunned when he heard this, because he was obviously one of those people who was not well-informed.

The host continued, "Due to the rise of AI, the school has responded to the national call and vigorously promoted AI school reform. Therefore, the assessment method is no longer a simple interview and review of your past projects.

Because AI is a comprehensive subject that tests both theoretical and practical abilities.

So, we will give questions on the spot.

Students who are late in getting the news don’t need to be discouraged, and students who are well-informed don’t need to be complacent.

Because it is impossible for you to get similar test questions from various existing question banks.

In other words, our test questions can be found everywhere.”

Lin Yuan chewed on the other party's words - there was no similarity, but it could be seen everywhere. This was interesting.

The host then pointed the remote control at the large screen behind him and said, "The question is very simple. It is the simplest OCR character recognition."

After saying this, the host deliberately paused and stopped talking.

Lin Yuan was delighted at first, because his training project was exactly OCR character recognition. Was this a blessing from heaven? But then his instinct told him that this matter must be very complicated.

The host waited for everyone to discuss for a while before continuing, "Everyone thinks it's simple, right?"

Lin Yuan even saw the smile on the host's lips from a distance. That smile was full of the kindness of a martial arts master looking at his followers.

The host simply said, "No open source frameworks are allowed."

As soon as these words were spoken, it was like throwing a stone into a calm lake, and the conference hall exploded.

Lin Yuan, however, suddenly realized what was going on - damn, he was actually waiting here.

(End of this chapter)