Santa Clara County, California, United States.
In the Nvidia competitor research team's laboratory, a brand-new computing accelerator card rested on an antistatic mat.
It had a silver-gray cooling enclosure, a black printed circuit board, and an intricate cutout logo at one corner.
Sili-Lumin L100, Made in China.
The engineers and researchers in the lab paid little attention to the computing accelerator card, even though the director had personally ordered the tests and set a firm deadline.
To the engineers, though, it was just "another one."
Another challenger benchmarking itself against Nvidia's flagship, another startup claiming it could take on Nvidia.
They had seen far too many.
Every year, some new company popped up claiming to have developed a new computing chip.
Companies from the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.
And, of course, most of all, China.
But no matter how flashy the launch event or how astonishing the numbers on paper, the results in the lab were always at least fifty percent worse-sometimes ninety percent worse.
Two engineers, properly dressed in antistatic suits, were connecting the cables.
One of them spoke up. "What, another 'H100 killer'?"
The other shook her head without speaking. She couldn't be bothered with pointless mockery when the designers weren't even there. She just wanted to finish the tests.
When the first engineer got no response, he fell silent too.
After connecting the monitoring equipment, they returned to the console.
The first engineer flipped through the sample registration form and found something that interested him.
This accelerator card wasn't a sample officially submitted for testing. It was a production card Nvidia had purchased on the open market.
A production card-and one they had never heard of.
Interesting.
"Hey, take a look at this." He beckoned to his silent colleague.
She came over and looked,