Sample: Dawn No. 1

After leaving Wang Hongfa's office, Wu Chen sat on a bench by the roadside and stared blankly into space for a while.

A gentle breeze stirred across the campus in the early morning.

He had already dug the academic pitfall. Next, he needed to slowly gain Wang Hongfa's trust, then gather evidence of his crimes.

Of course, improving himself was more important in the process!

Looking at the row of "level 0" entries on the system panel, Wu Chen couldn't help feeling a little anxious.

After redeeming the Vengeance No. 1 sample, he had four skill points left.

Whether he used them to improve his attributes or skill levels, they wouldn't bring about a qualitative change. He might as well save them for now and get a better computer first.

His main research field was artificial intelligence. He couldn't keep using that Lenovo Tianyi F41M, could he?

Besides, only with good equipment could he monetize his knowledge and earn more skill points.

Back home, Wu Chen immediately set about preparing to make a sample of a computer from 2025.

But he soon discovered that things weren't so simple.

The hardware in the two existing camera samples hadn't exceeded what was available in 2008. They used a simplified design with an Atmel microcontroller and an OV7670 camera module.

That was why he had been able to make the samples without providing a hardware theory.

But for the 2025 computer he envisioned, there was currently no hardware capable of supporting his theory.

His only option was to use current hardware and future theory to make some extreme modifications.

Simply put, brute force could work miracles: he would use advanced theory to stack existing hardware together.

It was like a car without enough power-just stack two or three engines together to boost its horsepower.

In practice, though, getting multiple pieces of hardware to work together was extremely difficult, and in July 2008, there was no well-developed theoretical foundation for it.

But there would be one in December 2008!

Wu Chen immediately opened Word and began writing a paper to meet the new sample's requirements.

First, for the hardware, the best CPU currently available was the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770, and the best graphics card was Nvidia's GeForce 9800 GTX+.

For the theory, there was the OpenCL architecture that the Khronos Group would propose at the end of the year. It was just the thing to solve the problem of getting multiple CPUs and graphics cards to work together.

But Wu Chen didn't remember the OpenCL architecture particularly clearly, so he struggled through the paper.

Research paid no heed to day or night.

When he was hungry, he ate instant noodles; when he was thirsty, he chugged coffee.

By the time he finally finished, four days had passed.

Wu Chen washed his face and checked his work once more. After confirming that everything was correct, he summoned the system.

"Verify my theory and make a sample!"

[Paper received: "Research on Parallel Processing System Architecture Based on OpenCL Heterogeneous Computing"]

[Evaluating]

[Evaluation complete]

[The theoretical framework provided by the host has minor flaws. A sample can be created. Continue?]

"Create it!"

[Sample created]

A massive computer soon appeared in the sample shop, a full three times the size of an ordinary computer case.

[Unnamed sample two]

[Level: Green]

[Price: 10 skill points]

[Sample description: A computer based on the OpenCL architecture, equipped with an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 processor, four GeForce 9800 GTX+ graphics cards in parallel, and 8 GB of DDR2 memory. Capable of heterogeneous parallel computing using the CPU and GPUs]

[Redemption limit: 1]

[Minor flaw: Does not support dynamic load balancing for complex tasks; a 5% loss of computing power occurs when multiple graphics cards work together]

[Name it now?]

Wu Chen thought for a moment, then said decisively, "Name it Dawn No. 1!"

[Dawn No. 1 named]

[Spend 10 skill points to extract it into the real world now?]

Wu Chen wanted to, but he didn't have enough skill points at the moment.

So he tried modifying the theory, reducing the original four graphics cards to two. After regenerating the sample, the price finally came down to four skill points.

Its performance had dropped by 40%, but he could only grit his teeth and accept it.

"Extract!"

Dawn No. 1 soon appeared before Wu Chen.

When he powered it on, he discovered that it came with Windows XP preinstalled, rather than the latest Windows Vista.

It seemed the system didn't care much for that thing either.

After setting up the environment, he ran a test and found that a CNN model which had originally taken three days to run could now finish in just one hour, converting a blurry picture into a high-definition image.

"It worked!"

Wu Chen couldn't resist taking a huge gulp of instant coffee, and somehow found in it the beauty of an '82 Lafite.

If he took the device apart and sold its components, he could make 30,000 yuan outright, but that would be the end of it.

With the device and his model, he could earn more. He could even start his own company and never again have to worry about funding for industry-sponsored projects in the future.

After making a simple plan, Wu Chen first opened a shop on Taobao, listing its main business as "old photo restoration."

Taobao wasn't yet so developed in 2008. There weren't many similar shops, and their prices were generally around 200 yuan or even higher.

In fact, that price wasn't expensive.

There was currently no image-processing software that could produce high-definition images with one click, so everything depended on manual restoration.

Wu Chen set his price at 69 yuan.

The industrial revolution against hand workshops: a price war was the name of the game.

Besides opening an online shop, Wu Chen also put up some ads on 58.com and local forums.

Only after doing all that did he check the system panel again.

[Intelligence: Level 0 (50% -> 55%)]

[Artificial intelligence: Level 0 (22% -> 25%)]

[Production blueprints currently available: Qiming No. 1 Youth Edition]

[Sample shop: Vengeance No. 1, industrial-grade intelligent visual inspection camera, Qiming No. 1 Youth Edition (new)]

[Current skill points: 0]

To his delight, his intelligence had risen by five points, and his artificial intelligence skill had risen by three.

Although there was no explicit explanation, he felt that his mind seemed a little clearer.

But now his skill points were back to zero.

With nothing in reserve, he felt anxious.

So Wu Chen fought off his sleepiness and revised the paper he had written earlier, "Image Super-Resolution Reconstruction Based on Convolutional Neural Networks," before submitting it to "IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI)."

It was a top journal in the fields of computer vision and pattern recognition. If he succeeded in getting published, he should earn quite a few skill points.

Of course, for now, monetizing technology was probably still the main way to earn skill points.

"Ding-dong~"

Just as he was about to go to bed, the Ali Wangwang notification sound suddenly rang out.

An order already?

Wu Chen was a little surprised.

He clicked it open and, sure enough, someone was asking whether he could restore a photo now.

"Yes, dear."

Wu Chen typed a quick reply.

"Can you finish it in an hour?"

"Guaranteed."

"Then I'll place the order. Send it to me as soon as the restoration is finished."

The customer called "Jiang Jiang" seemed to be in a hurry. She placed the order immediately after typing.

Wu Chen soon received the picture she sent over.

It was a black-and-white photo of an old woman.

Because the photo had been soaked in water, the image was covered in water stains of varying darkness. The overall contrast was unbalanced, and it was full of noise, making the old woman's face look extremely gloomy.

"Fuck."

It was already past two in the morning. Although Wu Chen was brave, the sudden sight of a memorial portrait like this still made his scalp tingle.

After saving the photo and feeding it into the model, he replied, "Dear, it'll be finished in an hour. Remember to come collect it." Then he got up to cook himself a bowl of instant noodles.

If someone restored it manually using Photoshop, it would indeed be difficult. A conservative estimate put it at three to five hours, and they would have to be extremely careful and meticulous.

Wu Chen, however, only had to go about his own business and wait for the result.

He hummed a little tune to drive away his sleepiness as he added one egg cooked in the soup and one fried egg to his instant noodles.

But as he ate, he kept feeling that the old woman looked familiar, as though he had seen someone who looked a lot like her.