Chapter 71: Carbon-based Chip

Year 267.

The fifth year since the birth of General Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Program 012.

The replacement of human labor by Intelligent Machinery showed an accelerating trend.

By this year, human labor in social production had shrunk to a small portion compared to tasks handled by Intelligent Machinery and General Artificial Intelligence.

Across primary to tertiary industries, massive amounts of Intelligent Machinery were deployed. Newly built industrial clusters widely adopted high or even complete automation.

Many Computing Power Centers, constructed to support the computing needs of the Intelligent Era, were completed and put into operation.

Yet, during the snowball-like growth of productivity in the Intelligent Era, the demand for computing power also multiplied rapidly like a snowball.

According to statistics, at this point, a significant part of every unit of productivity growth ultimately went towards increasing computing power.

Moreover, the share of productivity spent on boosting computing power within each new unit of growth showed an increasing trend.

…

Negentropy Research Institute, Information Denoising Research Institute.

Over the past few years, the Information Denoising Research Institute continued to expand.

Despite setting a relatively high entry barrier, by this year, the number of Researchers directly involved in research at the Information Denoising Institute still exceeded fifteen thousand.

It was catching up to the peak period of Research Institute 011.

A small portion of these Researchers worked on assisting the nationwide rollout of General Artificial Intelligence in the Huaxia Nation.

The vast majority, led by Qin Yu, remained devoted to researching new Computing Power Technology and computational devices.

In the Intelligent Era marked by General Artificial Intelligence,

the main factors limiting the development of Human Civilization were now two:

one was energy, and the other was computing power.

Energy needs no further explanation; with the industrial scale and production capacity expanding further in the Intelligent Era,

energy demand grew daily. For now, it was sustained by the increased productivity of the age, funneling resources into extracting energy materials and building and operating energy facilities.

But clearly, this approach couldn’t last forever.

However, Qin Yu and the Negentropy Research Institute had not yet entered this research field, so there wasn’t much else to say about it.

As for computing power,

its importance naturally needed no elaboration.

Beyond being the foundation Qin Yu hoped would lead to Strong Artificial Intelligence, it was the bedrock of the entire Intelligent Era.

The Researchers working under Qin Yu’s leadership understood this significance.

They were certain they were engaged in a great undertaking.

They could also feel the rapid progress of their research under Academician Qin Yu’s guidance.

Therefore, from beginning to end, they remained full of drive.

Even though the research into Computing Power Technology hadn’t yet yielded the results Qin Yu desired in the short term,

the Researchers maintained high confidence.

…

In computing power research,

the focus of the Information Denoising Research Institute, or indeed the field during this era,

was concentrated on several paths:

Silicon-based Chips, Carbon-based Chips, and Quantum Computers.

Silicon-based Chips had essentially reached their limit over the past century or two.

Restricted by their physical properties, their maximum performance was largely predictable.

Under Qin Yu’s leadership, the Information Denoising Research Institute and Negentropy Research Institute had also allocated some research resources to this direction in recent years.

About a year or two prior, the Information Denoising Institute synthesized chip design and manufacturing technology to propose the final optimization plan for Silicon-based Chip related Computing Power Technology.

Even after squeezing out one last performance boost for the most advanced Silicon-based Chips, they had reached their physical limit – they had hit the performance ceiling.

This served as a transitional computing device for many Computing Power Centers under construction.

After that, the Information Denoising Institute largely abandoned research in this direction.

Then came Quantum Computers.

This represented the most imaginative research direction.

Compared to classical computers, Quantum Computers offered performance enhancements of multiple orders of magnitude.

But Quantum Computers also had inherent drawbacks.

They lacked universality. Facing specific problems, Quantum Computers offered extremely rapid computation.

Yet, for many classical problems, their advantage diminished significantly.

Led by Qin Yu, the Information Denoising Research Institute also committed some resources to this direction.

However, focusing solely on Quantum Computers was insufficient.

Even if breakthroughs were made, they might only serve as specialized supplements to the broader spectrum of Computing Power Technology and devices.

Therefore,

the research path focused on Carbon-based Chips remained.

This wasn’t a particularly “novel” direction.

As early as one or two centuries ago, academic teams had been working in this field.

Compared to Silicon-based Chips, Carbon-based Chips offered clear advantages.

Physically, the same manufacturing process could produce performance exceeding Silicon-based Chips by orders of magnitude.

This meant the performance ceiling for Carbon-based Chips was much higher than for Silicon-based Chips.

Nonetheless, developing Carbon-based Chips presented many challenges.

Some critical problems had stumped the academic world for over a century.

Additionally, historically, Carbon-based Chips faced a production hurdle:

the industrial foundation was far less mature than for Silicon-based Chips, making building a Carbon-based Chip industry prohibitively expensive.

However,

in the current Intelligent Era, constructing a new industrial cluster for Carbon-based Chips

was clearly no longer a problem.

The massively increased productivity of the age could easily cover the cost.

As for the inherent technical difficulties in developing Carbon-based Chips,

the Information Denoising Research Institute, under Qin Yu’s leadership, was steadily tackling them.

Aside from these three main directions,

leveraging the Negentropy Research Institute’s unique strengths in biology and the Field of Life Sciences,

the Information Denoising Institute also embarked on a rather

‘unorthodox’ computing research path – the Biological Computer.

Ignoring other considerations,

just in terms of potential computing power growth,

this research direction held significant promise.

The human brain, for instance,

processes information much slower than computers.

But at the microscopic level, its complexity far exceeds them.

In theory,

such a ‘wetware’ computing device might be better suited to giving birth to strong artificial intelligence.

However, research into this ‘bizarre’ direction

was still just in the theoretical exploration stage at the Information Denoising Institute.

A practical ‘wetware’ system remained a distant goal.

Thus,

while investing in multiple research paths,

the Information Denoising Institute worked hard to advance computing power technology.

The main focus, and where Qin Yu contributed most, remained carbon-based chip research.

…

Year 268.

This year,

while further lowering the retirement age to 110,

Huaxia Nation announced another new plan.

They would adjust the number of new humans born annually via the Human Reproduction Device,

aiming to increase the total population to three billion over the next thirty years.

At that time, Huaxia Nation’s population was just under two billion.

This plan signaled a period of explosive population growth.

At first glance, this seemed contradictory to lowering the retirement age.

Lowering retirement stemmed from a surplus of human labor in the Intelligent Era,

so why add even more people?

Actually, these goals weren’t conflicting.

The surplus involved those performing repetitive labor,

while there was a shortage of researchers and innovators.

As civilization entered this new chapter,

the need for scientists and research capabilities grew daily.

In this era,

surges in productivity easily supported society sustaining individuals who contributed less.

But boosting the population base always increased the pool of talent essential for progress.

Before now, despite access to Human Reproduction Devices and Collective Social Rearing,

Huaxia had avoided rapid population growth.

Wasn’t that due to productivity limits?

But now, the Intelligent Era arrived, and its massive productivity gains gradually materialized.

Everything changed.

Concretely, even the Social Upbringing Bureau now had enough caregivers for infants.

Of course,

besides this reason,

another motive lay hidden within this plan.

…

This year, the so-called ‘three sides’ within the HCC (Human Coalition) effectively ceased to exist.

Only Huaxia Nation remained significant.

With the Intelligent Era’s new surge in productivity,

the gap between Huaxia and other nations outside its borders within the HCC grew drastically lopsided.

Statistics this year showed Huaxia Nation’s economic output accounted for ninety percent of the HCC total.

While the other two sides couldn’t officially betray themselves,

many nations formerly within their spheres of influence had shifted allegiance in recent years.

In essence, Huaxia Nation, plus allied nations within its orbit,

completely dominated the HCC’s output – it wasn’t just an advantage, but total coverage.

Following years of debate surrounding Collective Social Rearing,

the world had grown quieter.

Led by Huaxia Nation,

the HCC, once mainly nominal, gained increasing real authority.

During these years,

not a single conflict worldwide lasted longer than two weeks.

Given this context,

once Huaxia Nation’s population became the HCC majority,

many matters would essentially be settled.

Certainly,

other factions weren’t lacking in smart individuals,

but they were powerless.

This was ultimately about overwhelming productivity.

Moreover,

many only now realized

that worldwide adoption of Human Reproduction Devices and Collective Social Rearing

had been almost like an open strategy.

These new generations outside Huaxia’s borders

seemed far less resistant to the changes steered by the HCC under Huaxia’s leadership.

…

Year 269.

Across Huaxia Nation, Computing Power Centers were built in every street.

With enough productivity support, nearly every street had its own Computing Power Center constructed.

This was to support the entire city’s transportation, healthcare, social production, and social operation.

But even at this point, it was not enough to meet the rapidly growing need for computing power.

At the same time, energy pressure also rose.

Ignoring the increased energy demand from growing industrial production, and ignoring the energy needed for Intelligent Machinery and Intelligent Robots to run,

just the energy use of each city’s Computing Power Center was a very big number.

As Computing Power Centers spread,

the building of power grids across Huaxia Nation also kept strengthening.

From the oldest thermal power plants to hydropower plants, wind power plants, solar power plants, and the newest generation fission reactors,

a lot were built in those years.

In terms of scale, this building outpaced what had been done in all the earlier years.

The crowded, crisscrossing ultra-high voltage transmission lines across the land also faced huge pressure.

Although this snowballing growth in productivity

had definitely not ended by then,

people could still expect to get stuck eventually due to problems with energy and computing power.

But luckily that year,

under Qin Yu’s leadership, the Negentropy Research Institute and Information Denoising Research Institute brought good news.

That year,

the Information Denoising Research Institute had grown to thirty thousand members.

It gathered the top geniuses of the time.

Led by Qin Yu,

this group of top geniuses overcame the many tough problems in their research smoothly, along the paths Qin Yu showed.

Huge obstacles that once seemed impossible were always broken down into smaller, tough but achievable ones by Academician Qin Yu’s wisdom.

In this setting,

the many Researchers at the Information Denoising Research Institute

could not help but feel a kind of blind devotion toward Academician Qin Yu.

It seemed no problem could trap Academician Qin Yu.

In the long run, this blind feeling might not be a good thing,

but for then, for those Researchers, it was true.

Working under Academician Qin Yu was probably the best feeling for a Researcher,

watching mountain-like problems slowly give way under their feet,

watching giant barriers turn into smooth roads.

As long as Academician Qin Yu was there, those Researchers felt naturally confident about this research.

This made the whole institute and its research teams work very efficiently under Qin Yu’s lead.

To a large extent, the whole institute in this state acted like an extension of Qin Yu.

Then,

seven years after the birth of the General Artificial Intelligence,

the first

ten-nanometer Carbon-based Chip, meeting the hopes of Qin Yu and the research teams,

after many failures in trial production,

was born in the Laboratory of the Information Denoising Institute.

After going through a series of tests,

this Carbon-based Chip was finally handed to Qin Yu.

When this Carbon-based Chip reached Qin Yu, it was naturally already packaged.

To the eye, it did not look much different from a traditional Silicon-based Chip.

It was just a square, two-finger-wide thin piece,

almost weightless when held in the hand.

But this thin thing cost Qin Yu and the Information Denoising Research Institute a lot of hard work.

Unlike the last improvement made for Silicon-based Chip technology before,

for the Carbon-based Chip’s development, even though the research field already had some foundations,

the Information Denoising Institute still worked through the whole process from chip design to manufacturing technology,

to solve several issues in the development flow.

“This batch of Carbon-based Chips made in the lab had only about a dozen pieces confirmed as good; others in the same batch were damaged for various reasons.”

“Right now, the yield rate of lab-made Carbon-based Chips is still not very high.”

Nearby, another Academician from the Information Denoising Institute research team said thoughtfully, while looking at the Carbon-based Chip in Qin Yu’s hand.

Qin Yu nodded, made a sound in response, and said nothing.

For the Negentropy Research Institute and Information Denoising Research Institute,

since the first qualified Carbon-based Chip had been made, improving the process afterward was easy.

For later mass production with the involvement of Intelligent Machinery,

it was even easier.

Holding this Carbon-based Chip, Qin Yu paused for a while longer, looking at it.