Rebirth of the big era of online games

Chapter 451 "Boiling Supercalculation" Established

In fact, there is another important reason why Fang Jie plans to build a supercomputing center.

Just last month, my country's self-developed first supercomputer with the world's largest computing power, "Tianhe-2570", was officially installed and deployed at the Tianjin Supercomputing Center, which can reach [-] trillion computing operations per second.

This is of course something to be proud of.

However, "Tianhe-[-]" and several previous national-level supercomputing centers are mainly used for national-level scientific research projects. For some reasons, they are not open to the public and will not be used for commercial use.

For example, it is responsible for the calculation of the launch trajectory and home route of the "Chang'e-[-]", which is planned to be launched on the National Day two months later, and the "Tiangong-[-]", which is planned to be launched next year.

Another example is the weather forecast... Of course it is not the weather forecast in the news, but it is used for national defense and military weather forecasts, as well as large aircraft development, aerodynamic experiments, nuclear weapon simulations, gene sequencing and many other projects.

So "Tianhe-[-]" is very busy, not to mention state secrets, even if there is no concern in this regard, they are too busy.

At least, it is absolutely impossible to use "Tianhe-[-]" to draw renderings for private workshops.

As the "Light of Huaguo", Boiling Group will certainly not drag the country's hind legs, and must inherit the fine tradition of "self-reliance, adequate food and clothing".

That's why Fang Jie made up his mind to build a supercomputing center himself.

National supercomputing has an important task of national supercomputing, and the supercomputing center of Boiling Group is used for civil and commercial purposes.

Of course, if the country needs it, it is naturally obligatory. For example, during the annual Spring Festival travel season, the supercomputing center can be used to plan and dispatch various means of transportation and transportation routes in a more scientific, reasonable and efficient manner, and it can also ensure that the online ticket sales will no longer freeze.

But to build a supercomputing center, the investment will be huge. Anyway, Fang Jie has no money to undertake this project by himself, even if he has recently made a lot of money in the holographic projection business.

The key is that there are not so many technical talents and resources in related fields, and he definitely cannot handle this matter alone.

So it is still the old way, set up a stage to sing and go around for alms, and lobby related companies and institutions to join the pit.

First of all, in terms of state-owned assets, Boiling Group approached several major departments such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences, State Grid, the four major banks, and telecommunications, and reached cooperation intentions.

Among them, Telecom and State Grid needless to say, these two state-owned enterprises are bound to be involved in "calculating from east to west". Anyway, this project will only help them make money and improve their performance, and it is also beneficial to the country and the people. Naturally, there is no reason to refuse.

Many non-secret research projects of the Chinese Academy of Sciences also need the support of the Supercomputing Center. Although the country has "Tianhe-[-]" and some supercomputers deployed before, it still cannot meet the needs of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Many research projects have to queue up to apply for a limited time The right to use supercomputing.

Now that there are private companies willing to invest huge sums of money to lead the establishment of a supercomputing center, there is really no reason for the Chinese Academy of Sciences not to participate. Anyway, they don’t pay much, and they mainly invest in technology.

"Tianhe-[-]" was originally jointly developed by the relevant subordinate units of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National University of Defense Technology. For supercomputers, they don't lack technology, but what they lack is money. Boiling Group is relatively rich, and what they lack is computer hardware technology. , so hit it off.

As for the four major banks, for the sake of risk control, they did not directly invest in this supercomputing project that has not yet been affected, but expressed their willingness to provide low-interest loans in accordance with relevant national preferential policies. At any time, you can take out 20 billion first to support it.

20 billion loans each, adding up to 80 billion, not too much, even very little, but this is only the first installment of loans, and the four major banks said that they will add more in the future according to the progress of the project and revenue. Rabbits don't scatter hawks.

Fang Jie also expressed his understanding of this. After all, it is impossible for the leaders of the four major banks to make a decision directly. The 80 billion that can be used now depends on the face and family background of Fang Jie and the Boiling Group. If there are too many, then the actual benefits must be brought out.

This is different from the four major banks’ investment in 51mai. 51mai’s “Transaction Treasure” is related to financial security and must be involved.

Secondly, for the sake of risk control, what banks avoid the most is to give charcoal in the middle of nowhere, and what they like to do most is to add icing on the cake. 51mai has always made money, and its revenue accounts are clear. Banks are naturally flocking to it, and supercomputing projects, now looking at The risk is high, and the profit is nowhere in sight. It is better to wait and see the effect.

After talking about state-owned assets and raising almost tens of billions of funds, Fang Jie began to negotiate with large domestic computer and Internet-related private companies.

In fact, there are mainly four large companies: Tencent, Huawei, NetEase, and Baidu.

The reason for this situation is mainly that the boiling group in this life has replaced too many well-known enterprises in the previous life.

Boiling Games is equivalent to a complex of many game companies in the previous life, and it is also the core subsidiary of Boiling Group that truly has a monopoly position in the industry. In the production and distribution of domestic games, Boiling Games is almost inseparable.

Boiling Entertainment is equivalent to a collection of many video platforms, music platforms, and live broadcast platforms in the previous life. In addition, it is also involved in variety shows, film and television dramas, and artist brokerage. It can be said to occupy half of the domestic entertainment industry.

Booming Digital has become a well-deserved Chinese Pixar, and its CG technology such as 3D animation special effects, with the strong support of Boiling Engine System, is no less than foreign special effects companies.

Boiling Technology, its electronic hardware products have a domestic market share of more than 40%, especially high-end mobile phones and servers, with a market share of more than 70%, which is equivalent to replacing and completely surpassing the market position of Lenovo in the previous life.

As for boiling business, boiling logistics, boiling cars, boiling travel, no more nonsense, everyone who understands understands.

And these subsidiaries, if viewed independently, or compared to the corresponding representative companies in the previous life, they all have a great demand for computing power.

Give a few simple examples.

For example, 51mai of Boiling Commerce, if it holds the "Singles' Day Promotion" event like the previous life, the transaction amount in a day will be hundreds of billions, and the amount of data that needs to be calculated and exchanged is a huge amount. With the computing power and throughput of the Tencent Internet IDC data center , simply cannot afford such a sudden surge in business volume.

But if the data that is only used for background calculations and does not need to be updated in real time is handed over to the supercomputing center for completion, then the problem will be solved.

Another example is boiling travel, the peak travel period or the impact of the weather, the order volume suddenly increases, and the help of the supercomputing center is also needed.

The same is true for online games. In the past, new games were easy to blow up when they went online, but if this matter is handed over to the supercomputing center, it can ensure that all players can enter the game as soon as possible, so that the server will not crash.

Taking it a step further, if a game is supported by a supercomputing center, it will not get stuck if there are tens of thousands of people on the same screen, and even one game server area can hold all the players. War is no longer a luxury.

The "Ark" game is actually based on this idea. Its supercomputing center is composed of countless server arrays on the seabed.

So all in all, the Boiling Group has seized these tracks, and the others will naturally have nowhere to go. At present, there are only a handful of well-known technology companies in the country that are left.

Moreover, besides Huawei, Boiling Group is the major shareholder of these four companies, and the two companies are regarded as brother companies.

However, although Huawei does not have a shareholding, the two parties are not brothers, but they are better than brothers. Many businesses under the company have launched extensive cooperation. The joint venture between the two parties, Boiling Technology, is one of them, so the relationship is even stronger.

Regarding Fang Jie's plan to build a supercomputing center, several other companies naturally gave their support.

This is different from the previous life.

In the previous life, these companies were all independent, especially in the research and development of big data and AI artificial intelligence. They were in a competitive relationship with each other, scattered resources and talents, and caused a certain amount of redundant construction and waste of resources.

But now, there is the Boiling Group to match up, and everyone has the same interests, so naturally they don't mind taking the stage to sing together.

Of course, it's useless even if you object. If you want to fight alone, you will definitely be left behind in the end. It's better to cooperate and win-win.

Moreover, these companies also have a very large demand for computing power. The general IDC center can only meet their business needs, but cannot support the work of technology research and development.

Especially for big data computing and AI artificial intelligence research, the current computing power has become a stumbling block for these two research and development directions.

There is no need to explain too much about big data calculations. Since it is "big" data, it will definitely require massive calculations.

And AI artificial intelligence...

Let's put it this way, the whole process of turning an AI artificial intelligence from an ignorant brain-dead, trained and self-learned into an alpha dog capable of defeating the world's number one Go player is all supported by astronomical computing power. Its learning growth rate is determined by computing power.

Therefore, if you want to make achievements in the direction of artificial intelligence, you can't do it without a supercomputing center.

In addition, Baidu's search engine, Tencent's social software and its small program development platform, NetEase's news platform and game development, as well as Huawei's communication technology, chip research and development, and driverless driving, all cannot do without the support of powerful computing power.

As for Boiling Group itself, let alone, it is equivalent to a complex of dozens of well-known Internet and Internet of Things companies in the previous life. It has a more urgent need for a supercomputing center, and it can even be said that it has reached the point where it has to build a supercomputing center. Otherwise, it will cause great obstacles to the future development of the entire group.

After some negotiations, the registered capital of "Boiling Supercomputer" was 200 billion yuan when it was established.

Boiling Group invested 120 billion, accounting for 60% of the shares, Huawei invested 20 billion, accounting for 10% of the shares, the other three private companies jointly invested 20 billion, accounting for 10% of the shares, the Chinese Academy of Sciences invested 5 million in capital and technology, accounting for 10% of the shares, the power grid and Telecom invested 5 million respectively, accounting for 5% of the shares.

Of course, this is just the registered capital, which is only enough to lay a foundation. Subsequent financing will continue as needed, and the shares will also change accordingly, but the initial shareholder structure is basically the same.

Of course, the 120 billion of the Boiling Group is not all of its own money. Among them, 80 billion is a bank loan, and the collateral is the Boiling Industrial Park. Among the remaining 40 billion, 10 billion is invested by Boiling Technology with hardware equipment. The real money that came out was only 30 billion.

The 30 billion is the current liquidity that Fang Jie can take out. If there is more, he can only go to the secondary market to collect money or sell a lot of shares on hand.

"Boiling Supercomputing" was established. After the funds were in place, the construction speed of the project was quite fast. Basically, it multiplied rapidly at the abnormal speed of building a supercomputer room in a week.

This is mainly because the Boiling Supercomputing Center does not need the title of "No. [-] computing power in the world", nor does it need to have a supercomputer with the performance of "Tianhe-[-]" in the supercomputer room.

"Tianhe-1" is mainly to show off its muscles, and to announce to the world that my country not only has the ability to independently develop supercomputers, but also has the computing power to reach No. [-] in the world with the same energy consumption.

But this thing is too high-tech, and the cost is too high, especially the core components such as supercomputing chips, which are too expensive, and most of the chips are imported from Citigroup.

As a private supercomputing center, there is no need for Boiling Supercomputing to do such a thing that takes face and suffers.

We don't want to name names, we only seek profits, develop in a low-key manner, and do whatever is cost-effective.

For example, if supercomputing chips can be replaced by domestic chips independently developed by Boiling Technology, then all of them will be replaced.

Although this method consumes a lot of energy under the same computing power, the advantage is that there is sufficient supply of core components, no need to ask for help, no fear of being stuck, the technical content of the installation is relatively low, and the later technical maintenance is convenient and simple.

Moreover, the use of domestic chips is also of great benefit to promoting the development of the domestic chip industry and technological progress. As for the high energy consumption...

We use solar energy. Once the photovoltaic industry is scaled up, the cost of solar power generation will be much lower than that of thermal power generation. Even in the longer term, the cost of solar power generation will be infinitely close to zero. What’s more, with the technological innovation of the chip industry, the supercomputing center’s Energy consumption will also gradually decrease.

So as long as you have money to spend, dare to spend money, and survive the labor pains, these problems are not a problem.

Therefore, the supercomputer in the Boiling Supercomputing Center is just a low-end version of "Tianhe-200". The computing power provided by each computer room is only 2 million cores. , The footprint and volume are also reduced by 3 or [-] times.

But one computer room has 200 million cores, what if ten computer rooms are built?What about a hundred computer rooms?
If the hardware conditions are not enough for the time being, the crowd tactics can be used, and countless "Tianhe-[-]" can be piled up.

What's more, the computing power of 200 million cores in a computer room is not too small, which is equivalent to the computing power of 200 million single-core CPU computers, or 100 million dual-core computers, or 50 quad-core computers!

Imagine what a concept this is!
Still using the renderings as an example, if a computer room’s supercomputer is used to render, one rendering can be completed in 0.00005 seconds. If 1 artists use the supercomputer to render at the same time, it still only takes half a second to see the rendering result!
The income it brings is also easy to calculate. For a computer room with a computing power of 200 million, the gross profit per hour is 5 million * 200 = 0.05 yuan.

Of course, if the current electricity, personnel, and equipment costs are subtracted, the actual net profit may be zero or even negative.

But the real account cannot be calculated like this.

Although the supercomputing center has kept its capital or lost some money, Boiling Energy, which provides electricity, has made money; Boiling Technology, which provides hardware equipment, has made money; Telecom, which provides network services, has made money; Huawei, which provides communication equipment, has made money; Making money, these further bring more taxes to the country and provide more jobs.

More importantly, with the supercomputing center, Boiling Games and Boiling Digital's holographic projection business can "print money" in large quantities, online games with millions of people can also be developed, and scientific research projects of many domestic research institutes can Continued progress, the AI ​​artificial intelligence research project of the technology company can be launched!
As the demand for computing power increases, technology will advance in all aspects, which in turn will reduce the cost of chips, photovoltaic materials, and electricity. Finally, supercomputing centers can also make money.

This is to affect the whole body, forming a large circular industrial chain with the supercomputing center as the core of the industry and jointly promoted by many industries.

Therefore, even if the supercomputing center continues to lose money in the short term, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, and it is in line with strategic needs.

Since the requirements for the performance of supercomputing equipment are relatively low, more than 95% of the components and accessories can be completely self-sufficient, and the construction speed of the computer room is naturally fast.

In addition, the basic construction of the supercomputing center is not much different from that of the IDC center. The infrastructure madmen who have cooperated with Tencent Internet for many years are already handy in this aspect, and have accumulated rich construction experience. There is no tractor room in infrastructure The hind legs of construction.

They even have time to think about adding some energy-saving and environmentally-friendly new technologies in the design of infrastructure projects.

For example, in the previous IDC computer room, the cooling system only used large exhaust fans to directly discharge hot air, or built it underwater for cooling.

However, due to the huge energy consumption of the supercomputing center, even with exhaust and heat dissipation, the indoor temperature can still reach 70-80 degrees for a long time, and in the west, water resources are relatively tight, so the construction of the computer room simply adopts a thermal cycle system, that is, using The heat energy discharged from the computer room generates electricity, and a part of the energy consumption is recycled.

Secondly, a solar system is installed on the top floor of the computer room, which can be raised and lowered and rotated according to the sunlight angle, making full use of the abundant solar energy resources in the west to achieve the purpose of energy saving, emission reduction and cost saving.

Needless to say, the complete set of solar power generation system is naturally provided by Boiling Energy Design.

Correspondingly, Boiling Energy is still near the supercomputing center, and has deployed a large-scale solar power station and storage power station to provide electricity for the supercomputing center.

As for the supercomputing servers in the computer room, the hardware is basically provided by Boiling Technology.

In other words, it seems that Boiling Group has invested more than 100 billion yuan, but in fact a large part of the funds are left-handed and right-handed, and the profits of its subsidiaries should be a lot, so the project is completed, not to mention how much money it makes. At least the working capital can be recovered a lot, and the confidence is still strong, and the capital chain is not afraid of breaking.

For the entire supercomputing center project, Fang Jie decided to establish the project in August, and finished the cooperation negotiation in early September. At the end of September, Boiling Supercomputing was established and the funds were in place. In mid-October, the site selection work was completed and the design plan was finalized. By November, the first A supercomputer room was built, and its construction efficiency was like a rocket. I am afraid that this kind of construction miracle can only be seen in China.

There is no need to wait for the supercomputing center to be fully completed before it can be put into use. One computer room will be put into use as soon as it is completed, and the computing power resources it provides may not be needed.

For the Boiling game alone, he paid in advance to purchase two supercomputer rooms with 200 million cores, and signed a 5-year contract. This is not for private workshops, but for the company's own office needs.

But Boiling Supercomputing only delivered the first supercomputer room to them. As for the remaining computer rooms, they were asked to wait slowly, because many other customers were also queuing up and eager to get them, and they even quarreled endlessly about it.

For example, Boiling Internet Cafe, just the first phase of the purchase plan, is a one-time purchase of 8 years of computing power for 10 supercomputer rooms.

The reason why it placed such a large order in one go is very simple. In recent years, the number of home computer network users has increased greatly, and fewer and fewer people go to Internet cafes to surf the Internet.

Moreover, all kinds of high-end and mid-range smartphones with Huawei smartphones as the core technology have almost occupied the entire market share of domestic mobile phones, and smartphones that can play games and access the Internet have also brought a great impact on the traditional Internet cafe industry. .

Although Boiling Internet cafes are still slightly profitable at present, people without foresight must have near-term worries. If this continues, it is estimated that Boiling Internet cafes will not be able to operate in less than five years. Can only go bankrupt.

Of course, the deeper reason is that the market makers simply dismiss the predictable future profitability of boiling Internet cafes, because they can’t tell good stories and can’t deceive stockholders and audiences, so boiling Internet cafes may never have a chance Listing money.

But failing to go public, for the management of Boiling Internet Cafe, it would be like digging their ancestral graves, and they were so anxious that they didn't say anything, and they were furious.

Our boiling Internet cafe has no status in the boiling group. Now that we have even cut off our plans to make a fortune, how can we bear it?
Therefore, we must upgrade our industry, and we must use this to tell a good story!

The direction of industrial upgrading is the concept of "cloud Internet cafes" proposed by the leader many years ago.

The concept of "cloud Internet cafe" is actually a super version of a diskless workstation. Isn't this a supercomputing center?

At present, the boiling Internet cafes in various parts of the country operate independently and set up their own diskless workstations, but now there is no need for it. As long as a few supercomputer rooms are centrally managed and maintained, all diskless workstations can be replaced, greatly reducing the cost. various costs.

Secondly, the current games are becoming more and more refined, especially those high-quality stand-alone games, which cannot be played by ordinary home computers. If you don’t have a computer configuration, you can only log in to the cloud Internet cafe and spend a small amount of money to rent a cloud computer to play “cloud games”.

Technically speaking, the supercomputing center provides computing power for players to run high-quality games, and the results of the game are fed back to the player's home computer through the network. Players only need to use a web browser to enter the game experience, or real-time In the way of live broadcast, you can indirectly control the characters in the game to play the game.

Of course, due to the problem of network transmission rate, the actual game experience is definitely worse than playing games directly on the computer, but it is better than not being able to play the game. Some games, even if there is a slight sense of delay, do not affect the game operation and progress. .

For example, "Dyson Ball Project" and "Oxygen Deficiency" are typical examples. This kind of seemingly simple, but in fact, resource-intensive open-ended strategy management games cannot be played by ordinary computers or the experience is extremely poor. Playing games through cloud Internet cafes, None of this is a problem.

In addition to game projects, this is especially true for other projects. Watching videos, novels, stock trading is nothing to worry about, and even multi-window multi-projects are no problem at the same time.

As for the profits brought by cloud Internet cafes, it is easy to calculate clearly.

Your own 1-core computer can't run the game, can it?

Cloud Internet Cafe provides you with 8 computing power, which easily outperforms all games currently on the market, and the cost is only 1 yuan/hour.

Among the 1 yuan, in addition to the 0.4 yuan computing power purchase cost for Boiling Supercomputing, the other costs are estimated to be less than 0.1 yuan, which is almost negligible.

Because cloud Internet cafes do not need to rent venues like traditional Internet cafes, do not need to decorate, do not need to buy computers, chairs and benches, do not need to pay Internet fees, do not need to pay electricity fees, do not need to hire network management cashiers, these costs are boiled Supercomputing and cloud users have borne it themselves.

Therefore, the net profit of cloud Internet cafes is as high as 50%, and the profit margin is much higher than that of traditional Internet cafes!
This is a very good story concept. Once the cloud Internet cafe business is fully rolled out, market makers will definitely change their original views, and the listing of Boiling Internet Cafe will be just around the corner.

Therefore, the executives of Boiling Internet Cafe have an urgent need for supercomputing centers, and they ordered 8 supercomputer rooms in one go. This is only the first phase of the cloud Internet Cafe's plan.

After all, the total computing power of 8 supercomputer rooms is only 1600 million cores. If it is allocated according to the 8-core cloud computer standard, it can only satisfy 200 million cloud players online at the same time.

And this year's official "Internet Report", the number of Internet users this year has reached 5.7 million. Even in the previous life, this number has reached 4.6 million. A mere 200 million cloud users is nothing at all.

Boiling Internet cafes need a lot of computing power due to industrial upgrading, and many subsidiaries of Boiling Group also need a lot of computing power for various reasons. This is only the internal demand of the group.

Outside there are Tencent, Huawei, Baidu, as well as laboratories and research institutes across the country, not to mention countless private workshops.

In general, in the initial stage alone, the computing power of at least 100 supercomputer rooms is needed to meet everyone's basic needs.

But even at the rate of one computer room a week, the construction period of one hundred supercomputer rooms is close to two years, so the problem now is not that the computing power cannot be sold, but that it is too tight, and each company is fighting for it. Many people brought their complaints to Fang Jie directly.

Especially the executives of Boiling Internet Café, whose life and death and future fortune plans were at stake, were so anxious that their butts were smoking, but the money was paid in advance, and the full amount was settled immediately, but the first computer room was not given to them!
Look down on us, don't you?

Tolerable or unbearable!
Let's go directly to the boss!
Facing a group of high-level executives of the boiling Internet cafe, especially when they called the old leader Xia Hao to support the scene, what can Fang Jie say, many of these people are his own best friends, let alone special care, At least a bowl of water should be flat, right?
"You should also know in your heart that games are the core business of our Boiling Group, so it is right for the first computer room to be given to Boiling Games. Don't think it is unfair."

"As for how to distribute the supercomputer rooms that will be built later, so many subsidiaries, brother units, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which we can't afford to offend, are all asking me for..."

"But apart from the boiling game, it's not convenient for me to intervene in other things. It's not up to me alone. It depends on the attitudes of several shareholders..."

"Otherwise, except for the first computer room, the computing power fee of the other computer rooms is not fixed, and a bidding mechanism is adopted..."

(End of this chapter)