119: Chapter 120: The Defective Product Slammed into the Recycling Bin, and the Computational Fortress That Alarmed the Provincial Governor

Sheshan underground laboratory.

Inside the 22-degree constant-temperature server room, the air was filled with the monotonous and dull roar of industrial cooling fans.

Victor Zima grabbed the cup of cold black coffee from the edge of the table and took a gulp.

The bitter liquid made his bloodshot eyes widen slightly.

His slender fingers tapped rapidly on the ThinkPad laptop keyboard, staring at the tape-out feedback logs that had just finished running.

"75 percent."

Victor pinched the bridge of his sore nose, tore off the few pages of thermal paper test reports that had just printed out, and pushed them to the other side of the table:

"Arthur, the yield rate data for the first batch is too ugly."

Arthur Pendleton was looking down, using anti-static tweezers to hold a chip slice that had just finished wave soldering.

Hearing the voice, he pushed up the goggles on his forehead, his gaze falling on the line chart.

"The leakage rate of the underlying pins wasn't suppressed, and the physical interference of the edge nodes still exceeded the original simulation estimates."

Arthur put down the tweezers and turned his stiff neck from side to side, his cervical spine emitting two slight "crack" sounds.

In Silicon Valley in 2012, for any wafer fab to run a brand-new bottom-core tape-out test after breaking away from the mainstream architecture, a 30% yield rate on the first batch was enough for engineers to pop champagne.

75% data was an absolutely overflowing indicator under current industrial standards.

"How should we handle the remaining 25% of defective products?"

Arthur pointed to the edge of the workbench, to the anti-static tray filled with hundreds of chips:

"According to industry rules, if we shield the physically damaged computing units and perform frequency reduction castration, they can completely be sent to the packaging factory as mid-range computing cards."

Victor leaned against the back of the metal chair and glanced at the dedicated network flashing light on the wall that led directly to the Jiyuan Technology server room.

"We don't have the extra manpower to write a separate set of castrated firmware scheduling code for these flawed products."

Victor reached out his right hand, picked up the tray full of defective chips, and felt the weight of the silicon-based material:

"The research funding account approved by Mr. Shen is open. In this laboratory, our time cost is far more expensive than these silicon wafers."

After speaking, Victor did not hesitate at all.

He pulled open the red industrial recycling bin labeled "Physical Scrap" under the workbench with one hand.

With a flip of his wrist, he poured the entire tray of defective chips—which, if flowed to the outside world, would be enough to make any second or third-tier packaging factory fight over them like gold—into it.

"Clatter—"

Accompanied by a dense sound of hard objects colliding, the heavy red plastic bucket lid was kicked shut heavily by Victor, completely cutting off that layer of metallic luster in the shadows.

Shanghai Municipal Party Committee Office.

Rain connected into lines, sliding rapidly down the thick double-glazed windows, refracting several flowing shadows on the edge of the large mahogany desk.

Secretary Shen Hai pressed the half-burned cigarette into the white porcelain ashtray, and the pungent smell of tobacco slowly dissipated above the desk lamp.

He reached out to rub his tight temples, his eyes carrying the fatigue left by reviewing official documents for a long time.

"Secretary, there is new movement on the Sheshan side."

The heavy wooden door of the office was pushed open a crack.

The person in charge of observing the movements of Yu Mountain walked in sideways and locked the door behind him.

He walked quickly to the desk and pulled a confidential briefing that still had pressure marks from his black briefcase.

Secretary Shen Hai raised his eyelids, and his knuckles resting on the desk tapped twice, neither lightly nor heavily.

"Early this morning, two compact box trucks with fake license plates came out of the side gate of the Sheshan base."

The person in charge unfolded the briefing and pressed his right fingertip on a line of records:

"The comrades watching over there followed them all the way outside the pass. We watched them unload the goods directly into the semiconductor packaging factory with the best technology in the country. According to the equipment specifications captured by technical personnel on the periphery, what was transported out seemed to be some kind of server core hardware."

Secretary Shen Hai leaned back in his chair, his palms, which were originally lying flat, clenched silently on his knees:

"Are there any clues from the packaging factory?"

"That is a high-level clean room; our people can only monitor from the periphery. But the other party took the top-level urgent green channel. Just half an hour ago, this batch of goods completed all surface packaging and was transported intact to the headquarters server room of Jiyuan Technology."

The person in charge took a micro-recorder out of his bag and placed it on the table, the muscles in his cheeks twitching slightly due to tension:

"According to the comprehensive calculation passed back by the technical department, the signing party for the entire delivery process is locked firmly under the name of Shen Du's personal laboratory."

Secretary Shen Hai stared silently at the black recorder on the table. He didn't reach out to take it, and the muscles at the corner of his eyes twitched slightly involuntarily.

"After leaving the factory, Jiyuan Technology's server room directly gained fifty sets of fully loaded server cabinets."

The person in charge's Adam's apple slid violently, and his voice sounded a bit tight in the quiet office:

"They are filled with thousands of computing cards that have just finished packaging."

Secretary Shen Hai's brows twisted into a deep " river" shape.

He knew very well that for an ordinary internet company, fifty sets of server cabinets might just be a hardware expansion of a few million.

But looking at the bloodless face of the person in charge, he knew that things were definitely not that simple.

"According to the recently abnormally soaring industrial electricity consumption in Jiyuan Technology's server room, as well as the new dedicated network bandwidth they applied for from the telecommunications company, we performed reverse calculations..."

The person in charge flipped the briefing to the last page and pushed the set of bold black-body numbers under Secretary Shen Hai's eyes:

"Once this batch of packaged chips sent there is all networked and lit up, it can provide computing power equivalent to a 500K QPS supercomputing server cluster!"

Secretary Shen Hai's pupils shrank sharply to the size of a needle tip. The veins on the back of his right hand resting on the mahogany desk bulged one by one.

500,000 QPS.

In 2012, a node where mobile data had just started, this was simply a physical indicator that challenged common sense.

According to the current market quotes for top-tier IBM or HP enterprise-grade blade servers, to build a supercomputing power matrix of the same scale at the physical layer, one would need to invest at least seven or eight hundred million, or even over a billion in pure cash flow.

And now, Shen Du only had people pull two inconspicuous compact trucks out of the basement in Sheshan. In just a few days, he had abruptly created a computing power fortress worth billions out of thin air.

Secretary Shen Hai stared fixedly at the string of numbers on the briefing. A drop of cold sweat slid slowly down his temple, "patter," and dripped onto his dark suit collar, blooming into a circle of water stains.