Chapter 214: Ambitious
After an audience member shouted something, voices praising Huawei began to ring out from the audience, and the crisis of trust caused by the accident 6 seconds later was swept away.

"In addition to the computing power advantage just mentioned, the biggest advantage of Ascend 1000 is that our basic material is a brand-new topological semi-metal, which can maximize its effectiveness when you build an AI cluster.

It has no limit, or we have not found the limit of Ascend 1000, nor the upper limit of the AI ​​cluster built on Ascend 1000."

Nvidia's previous DGX A100 system could only combine eight A100 GPUs as a unit, which was unable to cope with the explosive growth in computing power required by large generative AI models.

Later, Nvidia developed the DGX GH200, which connected 256 H200 super chips and up to 144TB of shared memory into one unit through a special connection system, but it still has its limits.

This is due to the nature of optical fiber and silicon-based materials. To break through these limits, a breakthrough in materials science is needed.

And Ascend 1000 has achieved such a breakthrough.

Previously, everyone could only use the China-specific version of H800, and in the past two years, even the H800 is no longer available.

Of course, NVIDIA is also trying to make some breakthroughs based on existing technologies, such as teaming up with Amazon to build an AI supercomputer equipped with 16000 H200 GPUs.

"Everyone is exploring the limits of AI computing power. We are releasing Ascend 1000 to the public. We welcome all colleagues to join the Ascend family and explore its limits with us."

The bigwigs present all thought that using Ascend was just a stopgap measure.

Sooner or later in the future I will have to design and build things myself.

After the emergence of topological semimetals and Huawei's launch of the Ark mobile phone chip, not only major mobile phone manufacturers have started chip research and development, but various Internet giants are also engaged in chip research and development.

It’s just that the Internet giants are investing in AI chips, and everyone envies Nvidia and wants to cut a piece of the pie from it.

Domestic manufacturers had no chance before because their chip manufacturing capabilities could not keep up anyway. Therefore, those who tried to share the cake were Silicon Valley giants, led by the two brothers Microsoft and Google. These two brothers were the most eager to cut the cake from Nvidia.

Take Microsoft as an example. It is ready to go all in on AI. It has stockpiled 2024 million AI chips in 180 alone and claims to invest $ billion in the research and development of AI chips and AI supercomputers in the next three years.

Previously, domestic manufacturers could not get a share of the pie, and only Huawei could barely reap the benefits of Nvidia's advanced chips not entering China.

After Huawei repeatedly verified the feasibility of topological semimetals, major domestic Internet giants have become interested. The conditions were not met before, but now they are sufficient, and we also want to get a piece of the pie.

It is not a loss just to meet their own internal needs, not to mention that Baidu, Tencent and Ali can use AI to provide services to the outside world.

Ali has always invested in research and development in the chip field. They launched the Hanguang 23 in 800 and have been making attempts. After Pony Ma returned to Ali, they announced at the end of last year that they would make AI their number one strategy.

The same is true for Baidu and Tencent, as well as ByteDance, various new energy vehicle companies, and other companies of all sizes, basically all have their own ideas.

Nvidia's revenue of $260 billion in a single quarter is enough to make any company excited.

After Huawei's press conference, everyone was contacting Huawei because it was right for them to develop their own chips, but this was a matter for the future, and they still needed to meet their internal computing power needs.

“We are very happy to reach a cooperation with Tencent and try to use Ascend 1000 to develop super AI computers, but we need to start shipping from the second half of the year.

Huawei's external production capacity of Ascend 1000 in the first half of the year has been fully taken up by Guangjia Aerospace."

Everyone was speechless. Why are you holding a press conference if you have nothing to offer?
I am further curious, has Guangjia Aerospace taken over the production capacity of Ascend 1000? Is Chen Yuanguang also going to enter the field of artificial intelligence? This is not good news.

Everyone knows that Chen Yuanguang is not an easy opponent to deal with. Whether in terms of his own abilities or strategic vision, the most terrifying thing about Chen Yuanguang is that he has never made any mistakes.

"Dr. Lu, everyone is saying that the future is the era of artificial intelligence. All the giants are pouring money into artificial intelligence. Resources are flowing into this field intensively, and Light Armor Aerospace is no exception.

We lack someone who knows enough about artificial intelligence and we lack a leader in this field. I claim to know a lot about artificial intelligence, but the energy I put into it is limited after all.

If you are willing to work for Guangjia Aerospace, you will be the vice president in charge of the artificial intelligence sector. Our annual R&D investment in this field will not be less than 50 billion RMB. You will be directly responsible to me, and there will be no other management level in between. "Chen Yuanguang said.

In a cafe near the Mianyang High-tech Park, after going through layers of inspections, Lu Qi finally met a legendary figure in the entire Chinese world.

Lu Qi took a sip of the American coffee on the table, which was no different from the one served at the independent coffee shop in Shenhaili. He thought to himself, this couldn’t be a coffee shop built specifically for Wright, and then nodded.
“Mr. Chen, since I would take a flight of tens of thousands of miles from California and transfer several times to come back to see you, it means that I have a very strong interest in cooperating with you.

After all the ups and downs in life over the years, my career is not perfect, but it can be considered successful. "

Lu Qi is also a legendary figure. After graduating with a doctorate, he served as a senior executive at Yahoo, Microsoft, and Baidu. When he was at Baidu, he served as CEO and led Baidu's all-in artificial intelligence strategy. He is definitely a working man, and his value is much higher than that of the self-proclaimed working emperor. But compared with Chen Yuanguang, his legendary color has become insignificant. After the American assassination was widely exposed by overseas media, Chen Yuanguang's legendary color has been added.

“Compared with salary, position and power, I am more interested in what I do. Guangjia Aerospace is obviously such a company with a grand vision and, more importantly, a clear blueprint to achieve the grand vision.

I have a few questions I would like to ask you. Since you have taken the time to meet me, you must be familiar with my resume. The companies I worked for in the past were all to C companies, and Guangjia Aerospace's business is obviously not a to C business.

This brings up a question: What is the purpose of Guangjia Aerospace entering the field of artificial intelligence? Is it to do to-C business and generative AI like other technology giants?

Or is there some other purpose?

I need to know what the purpose of Light Mech Aerospace is in the field of artificial intelligence."

Chen Yuanguang said: "No, no, no, that's too much of a leap, and it's not my style to do generative AI just to chase popularity. This kind of thing is too boring.

We are just different from the giants who focus on toC business. We plan to enter the field of artificial intelligence from now on, mainly to meet our internal needs.

That is space mining. In the future, space mining will inevitably be a large-scale and high-volume artificial intelligence operation. This year, we acquired a total of 7 robot companies including Dahua, spending a total of 50 billion RMB.

If the federal government didn't allow it, I would even want to buy Boston Dynamics from Google.

The goal is to combine robots and artificial intelligence to create artificial intelligence for space mining.

In the process of pursuing our goals, there may be some by-products based on actual output, but these by-products must serve our core purpose.”

Lu Qi nodded to show his understanding: "I understand, this goal is quite different from my previous direction.

However, I also did a similar business when I was at Baidu, Baidu's autonomous driving business, which is more of a to b business.

If it's just this, to be honest, it's too difficult, really very difficult.

Now everyone knows the three most important points of artificial intelligence: data, computing power and algorithms. Data and algorithms complement each other, and algorithms can be optimized through training with large amounts of data.

In terms of computing power, judging from the potential shown by topological semimetals, China will be able to resolve this constraint sooner or later.

The only thing about data is that the field you want to work in is too restricted, limited to space mining, which means that all the data you simulated on Earth are useless. Robots cannot use the paradigm under Earth's gravity in the weightless environment of space.

This means that data cannot be collected and can only be collected after the robot is sent into space. The data samples collected in this way will be very small, which will be very inadequate for algorithm training.

Data is going to be a big problem.”

Lu Qi immediately grasped the key to the goal proposed by Chen Yuanguang. He is worthy of being a big shot in the field of artificial intelligence, and has always been working on search engines and artificial intelligence related work.

Chen Yuanguang said: "That's right, that's why we plan to launch a space station in the next two years. After launching the space station, we will send robots into space to collect data.

It’s hard, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.”

After listening to this, Lu Qi nodded repeatedly. On the surface, he took the initiative to resign from Baidu, but in fact, it was because his strategic adjustments affected Baidu's core interests, and a large number of internal opposition voices forced him to leave.

Lu Qi couldn't help but think of his former employer Baidu. It was too easy to make money from the search engine business, and path dependence led to Baidu's complacency and difficulty in transformation.

“Yeah, we can’t not do it just because it’s difficult.

Mr. Chen, I am very happy to receive such an offer at the twilight of my career. I am still ambitious in my twilight years and I hope to make a career.

In the future when humans go into space, I will also be able to make a significant mark.

I have one last question, which is the treatment. I don’t care much about the salary, I only care about the options. Are there options?"

After Lu Qi agreed, Chen Yuanguang felt relieved. Then he couldn't help but laugh when he heard the question: "Options are useless."

(End of this chapter)