Chapter 79: Benchmarking Software Crashes; Performance Surpasses Two Generations of Gaotong.

The four rows of high-pressure halogen lamps on the ceiling baked the skin on one's scalp until it felt tight.

The air was filled with the sour, musty smell of carpet soaked with foot sweat.

Lu Jingming stood in the center of the stage.

The roar of Paul from across the Pacific seemed to crawl along the internet cable.

He placed the wafer back onto the velvet tray.

"Chu Xuan, what are you dawdling for?"

Lu Jingming waved his hand toward the backstage, tapped his fingertips twice on the microphone stand, and said, "Bring up the number one test unit."

Chu Xuan scurried out from behind the curtain like a thief, clutching the xinghai pro with various data cables attached to it.

His greasy center-parted hair was plastered to his forehead, and his leather shoes tripped over a cable on the floor.

"Whoa, damn it—"

Stumbling, he quickly clutched the phone tightly to his chest.

"Lu, Boss Lu."

Chu Xuan leaned in, his voice lowered and stuttering, "Are, are we really going to run it? This is a hot-off-the-line chip."

He swallowed dryly, his eyes darting toward the foreign reporters off-stage who were staring at the screen.

"What if, I mean, what if..."

"Once this benchmarking software starts, the machine starts smoking black smoke on the spot, where will we put our faces?"

Lu Jingming didn't respond, instead snatching the data cable from his hand.

He jammed the connector into the big screen's converter.

"If it smokes, I'll stuff you into the furnace to be burned as charcoal first."

The foreign reporters off-stage whispered to each other, their shoe soles scuffing against the floor.

Charles from The New York Times loosened his tie.

A patch of red rash erupted on his neck, and he raised his thick arm.

"Benchmark! Open the 3D Bench test!"

He shouted, spraying spit while yelling in English.

"A silicon wafer ground by inferior machine tools will melt your motherboard in ten seconds!"

Lu Jingming raised one eyebrow.

On the screen, he swiped open the desktop with his finger.

The crisp sound of the icon being clicked echoed throughout the venue.

The interface of the internationally authoritative 3D benchmarking software popped up.

"As you wish."

Lu Jingming pressed the green "START" button.

On the giant screen, the muffled background sound effects blasted out.

A heavy 3D rendered animation jumped into everyone's retinas.

It was the GPU test scene, "Knight Fights Dragon."

In the past, when running this scene on a Qualcomm flagship phone...

The knight's sword-swinging motion was like a shadow play, stuttering and lagging, with jagged edges covering the screen.

But now.

The particle effects of the dragon breathing fire exploded on the screen as smooth as flowing water.

The frame rate monitoring number in the top right corner was locked tightly at "120FPS."

Unmoving.

Charles's Adam's apple bobbed.

"Impossible... this screen refresh rate... I must be seeing things, it must be a video playback!"

He dropped his notebook and scrambled to the edge of the stage.

Niu Dazhuang took a step across, his thick arm blocking the way.

"What are you doing? Trying to grab the machine?"

Dazhuang glared with his bull-like eyes, the veins on the back of his hands bulging high.

Lu Jingming tapped Dazhuang's shoulder with the back of his fingers.

"Let him touch it."

He pushed the wired xinghai pro forward.

"Reporter Charles, test the temperature."

Charles tremblingly reached out his hand.

His fingertips just touched the dark blue glass back panel.

It felt ice cold to the touch.

Like touching a pebble just fished out of well water.

No heat.

No heat flow to burn one's hand.

The animation had reached the climax of maximum load.

Not even a hint of warmth came through.

Charles's face went pale instantly, as if all his blood had been drained.

"This violates the laws of semiconductor heat generation..."

He collapsed onto the edge of the stairs, his trousers getting covered in dust.

"It doesn't even have a fan, how can it not be hot?"

Old Zhou poked half his head out from the backstage, holding a chipped tea mug.

He sipped some cold tea and grinned.

"The underlying energy consumption scheduling written by Chief Engineer Xia, plus that layer of graphene heat spreader."

He whispered to Old Li beside him.

"These foreigners don't know a damn thing about heat dissipation."

The progress bar on the giant screen was as fast as a wild horse off its leash.

The last flash of light and shadow passed.

The screen cut to the results interface.

The number wheel began to spin wildly.

"10000..."

"25000..."

"40000..."

The breathing of the tens of thousands of people in the venue stopped.

The camera flashes also forgot to go off.

Everyone stared fixedly at the constantly jumping scoreboard.

When the number surpassed the score of Qualcomm's latest flagship chip, it didn't even pause.

Suddenly.

"Zzzzt—"

A harsh sound of a short circuit burst from the speakers.

The UI interface on the giant screen suddenly tore into several colorful, distorted lines.

The numbers overlapped, turning into a pile of distorted garbled text.

The borders were misaligned, and the entire software layout collapsed instantly.

"It crashed! It burned out!"

Someone in the foreign media section shouted at the top of their lungs.

Lu Jingming raised his hand and gently tapped his index finger on the phone screen.

The underlying system forcefully intervened.

The garbled text was forcibly smoothed out.

A final score, so huge it made people's hearts stop, smashed lonely onto the black background board.

"89542".

The air froze.

Charles crawled backward on his hands and feet, knocking over the folding chair of a colleague behind him.

"The software... the underlying data of the benchmarking software overflowed..."

He clutched his head, his eyes unfocused.

"The data was too large, it blew up the software's UI framework."

This score.

Was more than twice as high as the chip Qualcomm bragged about to the heavens.

Crushing.

A one-sided physical massacre without any suspense.

Across the ocean.

In the banquet hall of the Qualcomm headquarters in California, the air conditioning blew against the floor-to-ceiling glass windows.

A layer of fine water droplets formed.

Paul stood beside the debris of the tablet shattered all over the floor.

The half-smoked Cuban cigar in his hand slipped from his grip.

"Plop."

The cigarette butt with sparks fell down.

It landed straight on the crotch of his expensive trousers.

The sparks burned through the high-end wool fabric.

The burnt smell of searing flesh wafted out.

He didn't feel pain.

Or rather, his brain had already cut off the perception of pain.

His knees went weak.

Paul, like a broken sack with its bones removed, collapsed with a "thump" onto the leather chair.

The chair wheels slid back half a meter, hitting the wall.

The big-bellied fund manager's knife and fork dropped onto the porcelain plate, clattering crisply.

"Pre, President Paul..."

He stammered, shrinking back.

Cook stood up abruptly.

His gold-rimmed glasses slid down to the bridge of his nose, and he didn't even look at Paul.

He turned and walked toward the banquet hall door with long strides.

His steps were chaotic and without order, his leather shoes crushing a glass goblet.

Paul slumped in the chair, his eyes fixed on the crystal chandelier on the ceiling.

The light stung his eyes, causing tears to well up.

"Not hot to the touch... and twice as high..."

His lips trembled, the two pieces of flesh touching, emitting a leaking murmur.

"These yellow-skinned monkeys... using broken machine tools..."

His fingers dug into the crevices of the leather seat, his nails splitting.

Tom, clutching his bleeding cheek, leaned over, wanting to help him pat off the cigarette butt still smoking on his crotch.

"Boss, let's... let's quickly issue a statement saying their data is faked, shall we?"

The assistant said with a crying tone.

Paul swiped Tom's hand away.

He tilted his head back, his Adam's apple rolling violently twice, and let out a hoarse, miserable laugh.

"Fake? The whole world's eyes are staring at that piece of ice glass."

He turned his head, looking at the empty banquet hall door.

"It's over."

Paul clutched his tie tightly, loosening it.

"Tom, don't you understand yet?"

His voice trembled like a withered leaf in the cold wind.

"We... we have been eliminated."