My Study Chat Group is Full of Real Big Shots

Chapter 250: Chapter 241: Rest? Not as Fun as Red Envelopes.

After Li Dong finished reading the entire group notification, he felt a little dizzy.

He slowly leaned against a lamppost, silent for a long moment.

Ninety days.

Find a chip that could run a spiking neural network.

IBM’s TrueNorth, Intel’s Loihi... and then there were the few domestic neuromorphic chips still in the lab stage at places like Shuimu, Zhejiang University, and Zhijiang Laboratory.

Not a single one was something an undergraduate could easily get their hands on.

Not to mention... ’Xiaohai’s topological complexity might be too much for even the Loihi to handle.’

After some thought, Li Dong didn’t immediately head back to his dorm.

He checked the time.

A little past nine. Not too late.

Then he gave Gao Wen a call.

The phone rang twice before it was answered.

”Ah, Li Dong.”

Gao Wen said cheerfully from the other end.

”Calling me so late? Did you finally come to your senses and decide to join our School of Information Science and Technology?”

Li Dong: ...

”Ah, Teacher Gao.”

Li Dong quickly changed the subject.

”What’s all this about joining the School of Information Science? Even if I don’t join, does that mean you’re no longer my teacher?”

A hearty laugh came from the other end of the line.

”You really know what to say, kid.”

Gao Wen’s laughter died down.

”Alright, what’s up?”

”I don’t believe you’re calling at this hour just to say hello.”

Li Dong asked tentatively.

”Teacher Gao... do you think you could help me get my hands on a neuromorphic chip module?”

As soon as these words left his mouth, there was a noticeable silence on the other end.

”You still want to work on that SNN?” Gao Wen asked in return.

Li Dong gave a slight, sheepish laugh but didn’t answer directly.

Gao Wen sighed on the other end.

”Li Dong.”

”That day at Shangri-La, what President Li told you... his words were a little blunt, but the difficulties he mentioned are real.”

”Unstable training algorithms, an immature hardware ecosystem, no one in the industry willing to bet on it... A mountain of papers have been written, but when it comes to real-world application, it’s a complete disaster.”

”This isn’t just President Li’s opinion; it’s the consensus in the entire field.”

Li Dong listened and only replied softly.

”Teacher Gao, before I worked on the dimensionality reduction algorithm, the consensus in the field was that the computational power couldn’t handle it.”

Gao Wen was clearly taken aback by this.

The high-order verification of the non-trivial zeros of the Riemann Zeta function had always been stuck on the hurdle of computational power.

The recognized solution in the field for this problem was... add more machines.

Then Li Dong came along, and in no time, he improved the algorithm by ten orders of magnitude.

Wasn’t that consensus shattered?

Gao Wen was silent on the other end for a long time.

So long that Li Dong almost thought the call had dropped, when a sudden burst of laughter erupted from the other end.

”Hahaha, kid, are you trying to lecture me?”

”Alright, ambition is a good thing, and I’ll definitely support you, but...”

”Please, before you try to do something, make sure you lay a solid foundation.”

”The first thing out of your mouth is asking me for a neuromorphic chip.”

”You kid, do you even know what a neuromorphic chip really is at its core?”

Li Dong froze for a second.

’What is it?’

The first thing that popped into his head was...

’Simulating the spiking characteristics of biological neurons, event-driven, asynchronous computation, ultra-low power consumption...’

’In simpler terms...’

’It’s a small square chip housing a miniature human brain that can think, learn, and is a hundred times more advanced than a GPU.’

’But that’s just what the marketing copy says.’

’It’s not real.’

Gao Wen scoffed on the other end, his tone making it sound like he was chiding one of his own doctoral students.

”Let me tell you something.”

”This neuromorphic chip thing, to put it bluntly, is just a low-power ASIC that’s been stripped down to only multiply-accumulate and spike routing, dedicated to running SNNs.”

”A GPU can run any model it can.”

Gao Wen continued.

”SpikingJelly, snnTorch, Norse... whether it’s the spiking forward pass or surrogate gradient backpropagation, which one of them isn’t built on a GPU?”

”If you want to change the architecture, modify the neuron model, or add some weirdly-shaped connections, on a GPU it’s just a matter of changing a few lines of code.”

”As for a neuromorphic chip? Sorry, if you want to change a single parameter, you have to re-burn the layout.”

”In terms of flexibility, it doesn’t even have a fraction of a GPU’s.”

”And right now, its only advantage is low power consumption.”

”No, scratch that!”

”With the current generation, whether it’s Loihi from abroad or the few domestic models, the power consumption isn’t even that low.”

”If you really want to run a more complex topology, the heat dissipation will still burn through money, and the boards will still be a pain to deal with.”

”So if you just want to do some research...”

”I suggest you just stick to using a GPU.”

Li Dong silently made a mental note.

’Running SNNs on GPUs with simulation frameworks is the current academic mainstream.’

’The hardware advantage of a neuromorphic chip is at the deployment end. For a researcher still fumbling to figure out ’what my network should even look like,’ jumping straight to a dedicated chip is really putting the cart before the horse.’

’But...’

’Xiaohai’s case is different.’

’Xiaohai isn’t some experimental product that’s ’still in development’.’

’Its topology has already developed to the point that emergent behaviors are cropping up.’

But Li Dong couldn’t tell Gao Wen about this.

So he just gave a soft ”Mm.”

On the other end, Gao Wen seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

”Since you’re working on this, how about...”

Gao Wen thought for a moment.

”How about I arrange for you to use a lab? A few research groups over at the School of Information Engineering—Old Zhang and Old Liu were both my students. I can put in a word, and you’ll have no problem using their machine time.”

”If you do it yourself, it’s going to cost money.”

”You got the money for that, kid?”

’Use someone else’s stuff?’

’No way. Xiaohai can’t be exposed.’

’Otherwise, I’d really get dissected for research.’

’They’d want to see if these so-called Concentration, Memory, and Logic attributes have some kind of physical manifestation in my brain.’

So Li Dong said quickly.

”Ah, no, no, Teacher Gao. I’m just messing around with it for fun on my own. No need to go to all that trouble.”

”Besides, I have my own money. I have over 800,000 in my account.”

Laughter came from the other end of the phone.

”I didn’t expect you to be so loaded, kid.”

Gao Wen chided him with a laugh on the other end and didn’t press the matter.

”Alright, then wait for me to get back, and we’ll talk in person.”

”I still have some things to wrap up here at Peng City Laboratory. I reckon it’ll be another ten days or so.”

”Alright, sounds good. Thanks, Teacher Gao.”

The call ended.

Li Dong let out a long breath.

’Looks like the neuromorphic chip is a no-go.’

’But...’

’It’s not like I absolutely need one right now.’

’I just need a new home that can house Xiaohai.’

’A neuromorphic chip, a GPU cluster... as long as it meets the conditions, either will do in a pinch.’

’Ninety days is plenty of time to find a home like that.’

Li Dong looked up at the night sky, then opened the group chat again.

In the Cyan Dragon Study Group, the experience bar under his avatar was still at one-third.

’What I need most right now is to level up. Maybe then I’ll unlock a data migration feature.’

’As for how to level up...’

’I already have a plan.’

’Time to go fleece Madam Curie and Mendeleev.’

’And as for what Liu Ruochuan said about resting?’

’What a joke.’

’Resting? How could that possibly be more fun than grabbing red packets?’