CHAPTER 1121: CHAPTER 441 A BORING WORLD

He wasn’t disappointed; the call was quickly connected, and then he heard the familiar voice of Qiao Ze.

"Professor Dugan, what’s up?"

Actually, Roth Dugan always thought that Qiao Ze’s slightly deep voice was quite pleasant to the ear. Unfortunately, this guy’s voice mostly lacked inflection, devoid of that beauty of cadence, making it sound rather dull and uninteresting.

"It’s like this, I have an idea I want to discuss with you. You see, computing power is in demand everywhere now, but in fact, many calculations are repetitive, which is a huge waste of computing power, so I think..."

Knowing that Qiao Ze disliked rambling, Roth Dugan quickly presented his idea completely over the phone.

After talking non-stop for a full two minutes, the Princeton dean finally stopped. However, there was no immediate response from the other side. After a while, when he couldn’t help but want to ask if Qiao Ze was still there, a voice lazily came through the phone.

"Sounds good, worth a try."

Upon hearing this, Roth Dugan smiled.

See, he knew Qiao Ze would agree.

True scientists are like this, broad-minded. Everyone is working hard for fundamental science, so why disperse the forces?

Sadly, before he could speak the words in his heart with a smile, the other side added: "But there’s a condition."

"Hmm? Of course, what’s your condition?" Although a bit surprised, Roth Dugan didn’t feel that it was anything.

After all, Huaxia has legitimately invested computing resources. In this day and age, computing power can be equivalent to real gold and silver. Who knows how much data needs to be analyzed, confirmed worldwide every day, which are consuming computing power every moment.

Especially artificial intelligence, which is a major consumer of computing power. It’s well known that Huaxia’s AI is already one era ahead. It’s also a major consumer of computing power. Not just Group Wisdom, Dou Dou, but also driverless technology, automated loading and unloading at unmanned docks, unmanned factories, space programs, cloud computing...

Also providing various internet services for over a billion netizens.

To be honest, Roth Dugan was somewhat envious of Huaxia’s ability to provide such a huge amount of computing power.

It must be understood that what’s most fundamentally needed to provide this computing power is not just chips but electricity. The foundation of human modern civilization is built upon electricity. Without stable electricity output, everything in human civilization is a castle in the air.

Truly, the inventor of electricity was Western, but the largest scale and most stable electricity output globally is now in Huaxia.

Roth Dugan knew well that leaving aside such basic civilized facilities to discuss GDP, exchange rates, was actually quite empty. But there was no way. It seemed only by discussing such entities could barely maintain the glory of an aging nation.

Clearly, this is quite a tragic story. But if viewed from the long river of human history, it seems to be an inevitable pattern.

Yes, during the afternoon while waiting to contact Qiao Ze, Roth Dugan thought about many things regarding history, philosophy, human civilization, and then felt quite introspective. When he started talking to Qiao Ze, these insights suddenly welled up, even making this old man a bit sentimental.

"All computational power calculations required for basic research need to submit application materials on your own. The specific material template can be downloaded from the Xilin Institute of Mathematics and Physics website, and all application materials must be in pure Chinese. Besides that, we do not accept any other languages or non-standard format applications."

"That’s of course..." The words "no problem" were stuck in his throat and couldn’t be uttered.

He suddenly thought of a problem, that these standardized application materials might be hard to pass approval if solely translated by machines.

Roth Dugan had witnessed Dou Dou’s translation capabilities, but it seems that smart translation technology like Dou Dou, which can almost entirely eliminate reading barriers, hasn’t been widely promoted in Huaxia, reportedly mainly due to cost considerations.

Simply put, this high-end intelligent translation technology isn’t needed in daily life, but in academic circles, it is definitely needed.

Can’t expect scientists wanting to collaborate with Xilin to all learn Chinese, right? Maybe not, just hire a Huaxia student, and get familiar after a few more applications.

In just an instant, thousands of thoughts turned in Roth Dugan’s mind, finally turning into a sigh: "...No problem. Ah, I will go tell those old stubborn folks."

Do you know? Professor Qiao, I’m even more envious of you now. If you apply for research funding, at least it can cover the cost of computing power. Not like us, when will the old lords in 1600 ever understand that basic theoretical research cannot be measured by output?

With this level of gripe, as usual, Qiao Ze was too lazy to bother with it.

However, he could understand, old people tend to be a bit verbose, Edward Witten is the same.

In his view, the other side’s problems are many, very large, but it’s not just the reluctance to invest in basic research fields. The fundamental contradiction lies in the lag effect after everything is handed over to marketization.

As Su Lixing would say, company profitability inherently possesses legitimacy. That’s because the concept of a company is for profit from the moment it was created.

In this case, telling stories entirely market-oriented and deciding investment directions is nothing more than a natural thing. After all, people invest in supercomputing centers also to make money. It’s impossible to be like Huaxia, which directly starts promoting the construction of supercomputing centers through various means to implement Smart City.