mesbooks Chapter 545: Scientific Computing Center of University of South China
Chapter 545: Scientific Computing Center of University of South China
As the head of the Gaul team in the "Nanyang-Gauul Science and Technology Cooperation Program", Professor Pierre has a very high status.
He comes from the world-renowned "Chundu Radium Institute" and graduated from the Chundu Higher Normal College, the temple that gave birth to mathematical and physics giants such as Laplace, Lagrange, Cauchy, and Fourier.
Before the war, ENS only admitted more than a hundred top students from around the world each year. The value of its academic qualifications was, in that era, a passport to the top of the pyramid in the physics world.
How could Zhang Chi, who is well versed in the essence of "borrowing chickens to lay eggs", allow a treasure like Pierre to be "idle" in Southeast Asia?
An order was given that on a fixed day every week, Pierre and several other core scientists in his team, including a mathematical genius and an experimental physics expert, who were conducting atomic energy research in a secret base code-named "Huanghong", would be picked up by a low-key luxury car.
In front and behind, there were two jeeps loaded with elite soldiers from the "Security Department of the Intelligence Department of the South Seas United States" closely guarding it.
The small convoy will travel through jungles and mountains, eventually arriving at the heavily guarded Nanhua University campus on the outskirts of Michigan.
Pierre's mission was clear: to teach, lecture, and guide research, so as to spread the fire of wisdom of Gallic physics in this land thirsty for knowledge.
As for scientists involved in nuclear programs, how can their personal safety be guaranteed when they appear on campus?
Zhang Chi could only say, "He's a Gaul, isn't he?" And he even prepared bait at Nanhua University to lure Pierre...
For the teachers and students of the University of South China, it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to communicate and learn face-to-face with a world-class physics master like Jean-Pierre.
Therefore, every one of his classes was full, and even the corridors were crowded with students attending the class.
After class, there is always a group of young people who are still eager to learn and surround him, asking one imaginative or extremely difficult question after another.
"Professor, regarding the decoupling of the Dirac equation in strong magnetic fields..."
"Mr. Pierre, what do you think of the new progress in experimental verification of the debate between Bohr and Einstein on the completeness of quantum mechanics?"
"Professor, this observational data on cosmic ray showers seems to be biased by our existing models..."
Facing these eager students, Pierre felt more and more moved.
He saw the amazing energy and focus of a country on the rise.
Everyone, from students to professors, seemed to be working towards a common goal - to rapidly promote the scientific strength of Nanyang.
This cohesion and this focused spirit of progress made him involuntarily recall the atmosphere of the golden age of academic research in Chundu before the war, but with an almost wild and aggressive momentum that is unique to emerging countries.
Comparing this with the current frustrating political quagmire and silence of the academic community in his native Gaul, Pierre felt an indescribable bitterness in his heart.
After class, Pierre did not go directly to the lounge to drink coffee as usual. You should know that the second floor of the Spring Garden Restaurant of South China University provides very good freshly brewed coffee every day.
But today, he walked directly to a square-shaped, heavily guarded building deep in the campus - the Scientific Computing Center of the University of South China.
The level of security here is completely different.
The periphery is patrolled by soldiers wearing black security uniforms and armed with live ammunition, and there are double-layer sentries at the entrance.
All entrants, regardless of their identity, must wear uniformly issued white lab coats and shoe covers, and undergo strict document verification and registration.
Pierre was already familiar with the procedure and cooperated by showing his special "Distinguished Professor Pass", which had his photo, fingerprint code and a striking "Highest Authority" logo printed on it.
The guarding soldier looked serious and completed the inspection meticulously before raising his hand to salute and let them pass.
Pushing open the heavy soundproof door, Pierre subconsciously looked forward. The light in the room was deliberately dimmed, with only the faint light emanating from the rows of long tables.
The scene before him would still give him a shock that transcended his time even if Pierre came here every week.
The huge space is well planned.
Rows of specially made long tables are like factory assembly lines, but what is inlaid on them are not spare parts, but cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors flashing with a faint green light!
In front of the screen is a control console filled with densely packed buttons and knobs.
The most eye-catching thing is the input device covered with buttons in front of the console - the keyboard. In an era when most places in the world are still using punched cards or complex switch arrays to operate computers, Nanyang has taken the lead in adopting this intuitive and efficient input method.
This is naturally the work of the "prophet" Zhang Chi.
At this moment, dozens of students and several lecturers and professors are sitting in front of their respective "workstations", leaning forward slightly, staring intently at the green screen with jumping characters and numbers.
Their fingers tapped quickly on the keyboard, making a "crackling" sound like a sudden rain, forming a unique electronic symphony.
The entire hall was filled with an almost sacred atmosphere of focused academic study, with no other noise except the dense sounds of keyboards and the low hum of the machine cooling fans.
What is running here is the first general-purpose electronic computer on the planet - "Pangu-1".
Its huge body is placed in the more hidden, constant temperature and humidity main machine room next door, and is connected to these operating terminals through complex cables.
Its terrifying computing power—about 90,000 additions per second or 7,000 multiplications per second—is cleverly divided and distributed to every operating terminal in the scientific computing center.
This speed is dozens of times faster than the ENIAC, which White Eagle has just begun to assemble and has not yet been fully put into use.
That’s right, the previous Pangu-1 has been transferred to the University of South China.
As for the core project that Pierre was really working for - the atomic bomb research base code-named "Huanghong", it was naturally replaced with more advanced equipment.
Running there is an improved version of Pangu-2, whose computing power has been increased to an astonishing 20,000 multiplications per second. It is specifically designed to handle massive and complex nuclear physics calculations that concern the fate of the country.
However, Zhang Chi was not satisfied with this.
However, Zhang Chi was still not satisfied. After all, in history, in the 60s, White Eagle used transistors to develop the IBM 7030 Stretch, whose computing power reached a milestone of 1 million times per second.
Therefore, at a top-secret meeting, he mentioned the transistor computer project that White Eagle was secretly promoting, and predicted that there would be a huge breakthrough in computing power in the near future.
Therefore, the newly established "Nanyang United Radio Industry Third Research Institute" is working day and night to not only research more advanced parallel computing architectures, but also frantically develop larger capacity and more reliable storage devices (magnetic core memories). The goal is to maintain Nanyang's absolute leading position in the field of electronic computing.