Top Student at Their Peak-Chapter 838 - 287: The Unknowns of a New Era (Part 2)
Seeing the word "Christmas," Zheng Xiweng suddenly recalled that the schedule Qiao Yu set for the press conference made it difficult for many Western tech giants to truly enjoy their holiday.
After all, for Westerners, Christmas is roughly equivalent in importance to Huaxia’s Spring Festival.
This kid is probably doing it on purpose, Zheng Xiweng thought, then picked up the phone and dialed Qiao Yu directly.
He should hurry and make this guy satisfied, to prevent daily troublemaking.
...
Soon, the time reached late December, and Beijing had noticeably become much livelier.
During this period, the news on the internet almost turned into a tech fest, with reports every day saying that some president or CEO from XXX company had arrived in Huaxia for a certain number of days of visits.
Naturally, all these schedules included attending the new computer launch event hosted by the Quantum Simulation Computing Alliance on New Year’s Day.
This directly sparked world-class widespread attention towards this new computer product launch.
Of course, this was foreseeable.
With so many world-class mega-companies’ presidents, covering almost every corner of computer manufacturing, gathering in one product launch event, it was inherently a hot topic.
Moreover, quantum computing had become a recent hot topic on the internet. And since the release of the Huaxia Sky Shield exercise wasn’t long ago, many foreign online users were still awed by the fast development of Huaxia’s technology, thus the attention naturally skyrocketed.
How high did it go?
Initially, DouYin was trying to sign an exclusive broadcasting agreement with the Huaxia Quantum Simulation Alliance, hoping to sync the global live broadcast through both domestic and foreign software.
Considering DouYin had previously collaborated with Qiao Yu, and both parties had a pleasing cooperation, DouYin felt hopeful about it. Even spending more money seemed doable.
But this plan ultimately failed. The reason was simple: The Central Media also wanted to broadcast this new product conference live.
Not only on television, covering both domestic and international channels, but also by synchronizing a network live broadcast.
Therefore, obtaining exclusive broadcasting rights was impossible.
Of course, for the Quantum Simulation Computing Alliance, this was absolutely good news. The Quantum Simulation Computing Alliance wasn’t relying on this conference to make money, so the more media comes to do live or rebroadcasts, the better.
Even so, various publicity activities didn’t stop.
One could only say there were too many internet-savvy individuals within the Quantum Simulation Alliance. During this time, almost every two days, a mysterious promotional video was released.
Accompanying various rumors about the new-style computer based on quantum simulation computing technology flooded the internet.
For example, a recently widely-circulated video starts with darkness, until the first light turns on, and then countless lights form into a Tai Chi pattern, with a voiceover synchronizing.
"When computing transcends the boundaries of classical physics, we redefine the dialogue between humans and technology."
The camera rapidly switches to a laboratory where researchers in white coats watch a floating transparent crystal panel, gesturing to reorganize and reorder the information on the screen.
"Saying goodbye to coding and keyboards, in the Quantum Era, what we do is meet all your imaginations of the future."
The suspended transparent crystal in the video suddenly changes to dots of light, quickly reassembling into various scenes.
A farmer-like person uses gestures to control the growth of simulated crops, alongside information about temperature, humidity, future weather, etc.
In a busy financial trading market, a trader focuses on a graph on the screen, and with a few actions, the system automatically predicts several possible future trends, with brief analyses, recent news, and probabilities in small letters beside.
Within a cubicle, a programmer with full hair types a command on the keyboard, and the next moment, the screen provides several complete code options...
The voiceover continues: "When uncertainty becomes a controllable resource, we begin to simulate the world with quantum thinking."
The last scene is of a cute child just learning to speak, looking up, curiously at a pile of math formulas floating in the air, then reaching out to touch.
The formulas instantly collapse, then blossom into a brilliant starry sky.
Then comes the concluding tagline: "From this moment on, you and I parallel with the future! See you on January 1, 2032!"
Undoubtedly, this is a highly sci-fi video. It is also a video of great debate.
After all, this video sets expectations too high for everyone.
Like the interaction mode shown in the video, it seems the new-style computer has the function of holographic display.
This is the kind of interaction mode most common in sci-fi movies, but clearly, it hasn’t truly been realized on any device so far.
The reason is simple: it’s incredibly challenging. Which also sparks the most controversy.
Both on Huaxia’s platforms like Zhihu and similar Q&A platforms abroad, there’s been a wide discussion about this technology. Even industry bigwigs step up to explain the difficulty of achieving holographic displays.
"Ladies and gentlemen, theoretically, according to Fourier optics, a hologram requires recording all the spatial frequency information of an object. This means to achieve a visual field angle equivalent to the naked eye, plus retina-level resolution, the data volume needed would reach PB/s levels.
Which current device can have such computation and transmission capabilities? Even though I don’t know how quantum simulation computing works, even if the computation power is sufficient, the transmission capability would still be challenging!
Furthermore, the speckle effect from laser interference greatly reduces the image signal-to-noise ratio. The most advanced solution so far, using a combination of random phase plates and vibration diffusers, can only suppress noise to a threshold acceptable to the human eye.
Moreover, generating a 4K hologram using traditional point cloud methods requires 2.5 trillion floating-point calculations per frame. Even on NVIDIA’s OVX computing platform using ray tracing algorithms, it still takes 5 seconds per frame, whereas real-time display requires at least 120 frames per second.
Additionally, one must consider the performance ceiling of optical modulator devices, the energy dissipation of medium materials, and the haptic feedback effect of realizing this technology...
Overall, I believe holography is just a gimmick in the video. Everyone can spread out, trust science; quantum simulation computing might be the cutting edge of research, with very strong capabilities, but it cannot solve everything."
This response is logical, clearly from a true industry expert. Moreover, this was an answer from a foreign optics professional forum.
For ordinary people, it’s likely hard to understand what he’s saying. But it indeed gives a sense of profoundness.
However, the reason this answer went viral online wasn’t because it was professional enough.
In fact, for this kind of hot topic, the more professional an answer is, the harder it is to attract attention, with a high reading barrier.
Quite the opposite, those witty and emotionally charged answers are more easily disseminated. Because those answers are not only understandable, but people can also engage with them.
Whether you support it or oppose it, you can showcase your skills in the comments section.
Few people understand professional optical theory; after all, the threshold is indeed high, but when it comes to being sarcastic or trolling online, many excel at it.
The reason this answer went viral was because of a comment below it by a user certified as a new-style quantum computer engineer.
"The answer is very professional. I have read your papers and agree with some of your insights, like the idea that quantum simulation computing isn’t omnipotent.
But if pure technology cannot achieve it, can quantum simulation computing combined with all clever methods do it? We should remain humble towards technologies we do not understand."
Undoubtedly, this top-upvoted comment, although somewhat sarcastic, speaks the truth!
