The West Coast Supercomputer Project

One point that few people notice is the biggest difference in personality between the Stark Family father and son.

Howard Stark is a self-made man. To have built his business to its current scale, he possesses exceptional skill and shrewdness, and is fearless in taking risks. No matter what problems arise, he can always find a solution, living up to his reputation as a genius.

But each company was Howard's life's work, and he was reluctant to let go of any of them. This is why, by the time he handed over the reins, Stark Group was not only bloated but also chaotic.

Tony Stark inherited all of this without any preparation, and even with some resistance. Therefore, once he had a clear goal, he was very decisive in whatever he did.

He is equally fearless in taking risks, but not because he is confident he can handle every situation. It's just that he has a "selling his father's land without a care" attitude, which makes Tony Stark's actions seem impulsive to some.

As the saying goes, "The soft fear the hard, the hard fear the ruthless, the ruthless fear the stubborn, and the stubborn fear the reckless." To outsiders, this young master currently falls into the "stubborn" category.

There's nothing we can do; they haven't been hardened by society, and their social skills haven't been honed to a level of sophistication, yet they're already at the top of the pyramid. The fact that they don't bully men or women, or unleash their dogs, is already enough to show they're kind enough.

So Tony Stark, having made up his mind, immediately discussed with Henry what kind of configuration this image processing computer should have.

A group of managers couldn't get a word in edgewise. Those who tried to physically restrain the young master and remind him to be mindful of his opinions were quickly pulled away by Tony's bodyguards.

The engineers were completely lost, unable to understand Henry and Tony Stark's discussion because they couldn't keep up with their thought processes.

You might just figure out the meaning of a term, only to find that the other two are already light-years away discussing it. Engineers can't even make their presence felt.

Henry and Tony Stark's discussion had strayed far from the realm of commercially available products, encompassing motherboard layout and slot configuration. Both seemed to have the attitude that they could even manufacture their own chips if needed.

They haven't yet tackled the chip manufacturing process; for other components, if commercially available options don't work, they'll make them themselves. In any case, for Tony Stark, this is also a training exercise for the computer division.

Henry, on the other hand, wanted a computer with thirty-two CPUs, memory measured in GBs, and hard drives configured not only as RAID arrays but also with capacities in TBs. He was also seriously discussing how to implement such an architecture.

Tony Stark, who had initially been caught up in the discussion, also found the exchange of ideas quite interesting. After all, in his life, he rarely encountered someone with whom he could discuss professional knowledge. Most people couldn't even keep up with his train of thought.

But Henry not only kept up with his thoughts, but sometimes also offered very interesting insights that stimulated his inspiration.

Moreover, both of them were working towards feasible solutions, not immediately aiming to build spaceships to conquer Mars.

To record their ideas, they even had whiteboards brought out—as many as they could find. The two of them brainstormed ideas on the whiteboards, and they even wrote on the two screens that were originally used to show videos with Mike.

But as Tony Stark looked at the gradually taking shape design, he suddenly calmed down, pondered for a moment, and said, "Have you considered the issue of marginal utility?"

"According to Moore's Law, the efficiency we achieve now with sheer quantity will be achieved in eighteen months with half the number of parts."

"And with your relentless pursuit of performance, how much will you spend on 'one' computer? What If...? it were just pure research and development, then there would be nothing to say."

"But What If...? you want to rent out post-production equipment, it certainly can't be solved with just one or two machines. Not to mention, if you want to achieve market scale, you even need to find ways to promote it."

"So how many do you plan to build? How long do you expect this equipment to be phased out? Before it's phased out, is it possible for the revenue to cover the costs? How can you minimize waste during the idle period?"

"You couldn't have been so careless as to not have thought about these most basic questions. What If...? you could solve these problems, I wouldn't object to building a supercomputer."

Hearing Tony Stark's complaints, Henry laughed and exclaimed, "Wow, a supercomputer? That's incredible!"

"Don't you want to re-evaluate your performance requirements? In some aspects, even existing supercomputers don't meet your demands. You're treating RAM like a hard drive, like trying to fill a warehouse."

Henry pulled over a whiteboard with no more useful information on it and quickly erased the writing. "Do you know that paper from '74? <Normative Conditions for Virtual Third-Generation Architectures>."

"A collaborative paper by Gerald J. Popek and Robert P. Goldberg? You're working on a system virtual machine?"

Henry explained, "Yes, that's it. Actually, back in the 1960s, IBM's mainframes had CMS (Interactive Computing Single-User Operating System)."

"It uses time-sharing of threads to give all users the illusion of using it simultaneously. With current hardware and software technology, we can do even better."

"For example, we can create multiple virtual hosts on a single host and allocate different hardware resources. Who uses more resources and who uses less, and how the resources are allocated, can be determined entirely by the number of users and the cost."

"Furthermore, this has another advantage: once the renter has finished editing their film, they can directly disconnect the virtual host they rented. This way, there's no need to worry about data leaks."

"In terms of specific design, we have two directions to consider. One is a system virtual machine, which can have complete control over the allocated virtual resources. The other is operating system-level virtualization, which is more flexible in use."

As he spoke, Henry began writing and explaining on the whiteboard how to construct this virtual layer. However, he noticed that Tony Stark was asking fewer and fewer questions, as if his thoughts were not keeping up with his own pace.

So after speaking for a certain period, Henry stopped there, so as not to give the young master the impression that he was showing off. Instead, he said, "What If...? possible, I would also like to build a supercomputer."

"But I haven't seen that kind of thing, and I can't find any relevant papers. So I can only consider how to improve performance based on commercially available personal computers. As for where the balance between cost and expected benefits is, I'll have to calculate it to know."

Tony suddenly asked, "What does CK mean?"

"Isn't that Calvin Klein?"

"Fuck! It's you!" Tony threw down his pen, his face full of displeasure.

"What do you mean, 'I am'? What are you talking about?" The Kryptonian continued to play dead.

"Most people, when asked this kind of question, would first question it, and some might just guess an answer. But you seem to have prepared an answer long ago, which is why you can answer immediately, even if that answer is misleading."

"Heh." At this point, Henry didn't know what to say except to play dumb.

Could it be that the concept of Docker has been exposed? This was one of the technologies used to create the Joker BBS. People on the internet are still using the old term, "Honeypot," to refer to that computer trap.

Although it has been exposed for a long time, the core technology has not been widely disseminated. This is because those capable of cracking it usually have their own work to do and do not have the time to think about how to further explore that technology.

Some people have implemented similar functions based on the description, but no one has reached the same level yet. The main reason is that, apart from creating network traps and defending against Hacker intrusions at the cybersecurity level, no one knows how else this function can be used.

He truly deserves to be called a genius; his sensitivity to technology is so keen.

Despite his displeasure, Tony didn't seem to want to pursue the matter further; he simply wasn't interested in continuing the discussion.

The young master said with an annoying expression, "I will have someone give you the design blueprints for the supercomputer that Stark Industries built in New York, as well as the relevant patent information."

"Based on those ideas and today's thoughts, please put together a design plan for me. I also happen to be thinking of building a supercomputer on the West Coast. Otherwise, there's a lot of work I can only do on the East Coast."

"Don't you want to discuss the design plan?"

Tony, whose face practically screamed "unhappy," said, "What's there to discuss? When your proposal comes out, I'll just tweak it a bit, like a teacher grading a student's homework, and it'll be built. You just need to prepare the software."

"We'll allocate some resources to Stark Studios to develop digital film post-production software. Once we start allowing people to rent out post-production capabilities, we'll see how the market performs and decide on our next steps."

"Wow, grandpa, do you really think of me as an employee?"

"I paid for the construction of the supercomputer!"

"Alright, boss, it's your decision. I have no objections. Money talks."