Black technology starts from the steel suit

Chapter 193 193 Find him to make a cameo another day

"Yes, that's right, it's this thing." Wang Feng waved his hand to let the classmate sit down.

"Now that guy is in our capital, I believe many people have already got the news." Wang Feng continued to introduce: "Since everyone is so interested in that guy, I'll ask him to come over and have a chat with you some other day. That guy is doing really well in computational chemistry."

"You can talk about it when you go down, whether it's computing science or chemistry, you can come and listen. Anyway, there is no harm in listening more."

"Teacher, what specific day did you mean to reschedule?" A classmate stood up and asked. You can't blame the student for being serious. After all, many instructors said reschedule until the end of the semester.

"Maybe it will be the fifth or sixth class. I've been busy with work recently, so I may not have time." Wang Feng thought for a while and decided on the time.

"When it comes to the role of supercomputing in computational chemistry, David Xiao is a person who can never be avoided." Wang Feng continued: "This guy is not a man in the pool. In which year, he opened his own hedge fund DE Shaw & Co. LP., focusing on quant trading, uses high-speed computer networks and the instantaneous effectiveness of the market to conduct high-frequency statistical arbitrage.”

"The overcrowded situation of high-frequency trading in the sky is different: at that time, the computers were very broken, and those with megabytes of memory were medium-sized servers, and the computer language and components were also relatively obscure. You can write a website and edit a game, and then tell the old men born in the 12s that you can’t do it.”

Therefore, people who can master high-speed network programming and large-scale parallel computing, in addition to being able to calculate ballistics and simulate nuclear explosions, can also become the first batch of people to do high-frequency trading. What they do is basically risk-free arbitrage — using the market Ineffectiveness, shearing the wool of the market, the speed of making money depends only on how fast you can shear. "

Shaw, a top expert who specializes in ultra-large-scale parallel computing, took the lead in high-frequency trading. He is a rogue who knows martial arts.By 2015, his personal net worth had reached 41 billion US dollars (David Shaw - Forbes), reaching the top 500 in the global wealth list. "

"The next step is the beginning of his legendary career. What is the concept of the top 500 in the global wealth list? This means that he has a net worth of several billion US dollars, and everyone in the fund industry should be very clear that more cash assets are used as the basis." Lord. Which means he has enough money to do whatever he wants."

"After you have money, what do you want to do the most?" Wang Feng asked curiously: "Of course, you don't need to tell me or tell anyone, as long as you think about it in your own mind."

"Why do you say that this guy doesn't follow the usual path? Other hedge funds, after they make money, are happy and happy. If you don't know much about it, I recommend you to watch a movie called " The movie "The Wolf of Wall Street". It can be said that it is very real."

"But this guy, after making money, he didn't indulge in these vulgar pleasures. He is a model of really not forgetting his original intention."

The uncle is financially free in his early 40s. According to ordinary people's thinking, he can stop writing models and plunge into the debauchery of New York to date real models.However, as the famous Newton life article "Newton" on the Internet said:
What is beyond the imagination of the world is that science is actually far more coquettish than any girl. Playing with science is much more enjoyable than playing with women. The pleasure gained from getting a result is strong and long-lasting. It not only gives pleasure, but also a huge sense of self-identity. Far better than the boundless emptiness and loneliness after those few seconds of shivering.

Of course, it is enough to think about these words in his heart. As a teacher, he must not say them out.

"Geek's gene shakes the empty nerves of Uncle Shaw after he became famous in the depths of his body. He returned to the world of science with a carbine, took off his suit, and revealed Geek's true colors:
Unlike the dick geek Sheldon, this is a local geek with amazing destructive power. Shaw no longer has to kneel and lick NIH and NSF officials to ask for a little poor research funding.He can do whatever he wants; what he thinks is the frontier is the frontier.He took out a large-scale parallel computing machete, trying to find a field that needs computing most but is currently the least powerful. "

"Yes, you guessed it right, this is the night before Anton is born."

"As I said before, the use of computers in computational chemistry at that time was actually very narrow, and there were almost no special uses. The main reason was that the performance of the computers was too backward. So Xiao's machete fell to the sluggish computing In chemistry: He wants to build a supercomputer dedicated to computational chemistry, which is thousands or tens of thousands of times more powerful than existing supercomputers."

"Many people may ask, today's supercomputers often have hundreds of thousands of CPU cores and so on, and their computing power is very powerful. Why do we need to build a supercomputer for computational chemistry?

The answer is that ordinary computers are very smart, but not suitable for computational chemistry.

Academically speaking, general purpose computing cannot efficiently perform molecular dynamics simulations.For example, today's computer is like an all-round robot, you can ask him to cut wheat, cook, play football and so on.Let him do a lot of things, he can do everything, he can do it faster than others, and he is indeed very smart.

This is what is called general purpose computing: a machine with different software written to perform various functions.

But in the matter of harvesting wheat, it is difficult for this all-round robot to surpass the speed of a professional large combine harvester.Because although the large combine harvester is stupid, it is completely born for harvesting wheat, so the hardware is tailor-made and extremely optimized.

This is the so-called special purpose computing: a professionally customized machine, and the software is also specially customized to achieve only one function, but it is brutal and efficient.

Shaw is to build a "large combine harvester" in computational chemistry.This harvester is called Anton.It's expensive, expensive, but that's Shaw's advantage, anyway, he doesn't pick up girls or have mistresses, and he can't run out of money.Besides, scientific researchers are actually very cheap. "

"Teacher, we are very curious, how expensive can it be?" Some students in this industry asked curiously. They have also rented ordinary supercomputers, and the price is indeed very expensive: even the most ordinary supercomputer , the price of renting a day is also more than 100 million.

"I haven't calculated how expensive it is specifically, but according to the information I have obtained, at that time we probably had to perform more than 16 hours of calculations every day, and spent more than 1000 million US dollars in seven days... This is just It’s the cost of use, and it doesn’t include other expenses, such as depreciation of the machine, site fees, personnel expenses... By the way, the electricity bill doesn’t seem to be included either.”

classmates:…

The seven-day use fee exceeded 1000 million US dollars, and it was only a part of the use cost. Although they knew that this guy's fee was very high, it was outrageous to be so high!
"Wait a minute, teacher, what did you mean when you said that scientific researchers are very cheap?" A classmate caught Huadian.

"It's very simple, literally. Everyone thinks that the scientific research environment abroad may be better, but it is not the case. What you see is actually just what others want you to see. There are many truths, but they are not You may not be particularly aware of the aspects that have not been shown.”

"Here is a funny and bitter thing: Contrary to the public's understanding, in the United States, most of the pure science doctors can't find a job after graduating. Can barely make ends meet.

And David Shaw turned out to be Meng Changjun in New York.He recruited a group of Ph.D.s who couldn't get a job—these people were pure financial losers—and paid them $10 a year.

What is the concept of $10 a year?This is the entry salary + bonus of a 21-year-old analyst in an investment bank. On Wall Street, it is the bottom layer. He wears a suit on the outside and crotch pants on the inside.

But for these 2-year-old scientific idiots, this is 3-[-] times the salary they can find in research positions, which is a maintenance price that they could never dream of. "

"Yes, you heard that right. Even now, this situation has not fundamentally changed. When you choose a university major, economics, finance, medicine, law, etc. are still the most important. The most popular subjects, philosophy can’t select people from these popular subjects, they will go to those science and engineering subjects.”

"The threshold for the former is relatively high, and students are required to have certain social connections and social status. Otherwise, even if you learn these things, it is not easy to get a job. For the latter, the threshold is lower, and only requires IQ .So the wages are relatively lower.”

"Although I really don't want to admit this, but there is no way, I can't talk nonsense."

"Teacher, why do so many people say that the research environment abroad is better?"

"It's very simple. First of all, the comparison here is the absolute investment, not the relative investment. Compared with this, we are definitely not as good as others. After all, they are indeed rich, and they invest much more in scientific research than we do. Because they The profit is high enough."

"The second reason is probably human psychology. It took a lot of effort to weed out so many talents, get the opportunity to go abroad, and put in so much effort to stay in the local area. Even if it is It’s not as comfortable as I imagined, and I can’t show it.”

"Okay, let's not think about those contents. Let's continue to talk about our things. We are not children, and we should have a strong balance in our hearts. It is indeed understandable to pursue a comfortable life. I can't say anything. But I hope that if we In other words, I can provide you with similar conditions. Well, I hope everyone can accept it."

"They have David Shaw to provide the price of nurturing, you and me, I can also give you a good price of nurturing. At that time, there were top doctors in computational chemistry, biophysics, and electrical engineering flocking to David Shaw for nurturing ;Today I also hope to have these doctors, who can come and ask me to take care of them.”

"From around 2004 (please correct me), the DE Shaw Research (DESRES) established by Shaw began to operate officially. Under the careful care of David Shaw, more than 30 unemployed Ph.D. In the environment, I read papers for a full year and a half and came up with Anton's sketch.

Afterwards, more diaosi joined in and devoted themselves to the research and development of Anton. In 2007, almost a year earlier than expected, dicks and geeks from all over the world released the first generation of Anton.

The biggest black technology in computational chemistry is born: it is about 10 times faster than the average supercomputer.It is also 000 times faster than the best supercomputers.Yes.1 times abnormal, four zeros, four orders of magnitude.

What does 10000 times mean?

In computational chemistry, the duration of simulated molecular trajectories is very important.Use the simulated tennis game as an analogy: before the "supercomputer" calculated for a month, we could only simulate the moment of hitting the ball for 1 second, but now that Anton is born, we can also simulate the whole game of tennis in one month. trajectory. "

"Since 2007, DE Shaw's team has gained fame, using this harvester to pour water in the top international academic journals "Nature" and "Science" every year, and its academic reputation is unstoppable. With Anton in hand, you can rest easy, as if someone else is using it on the ground Tape measures draw maps, and they make maps from aerial photography.”

"Students, this can be said to be a historic progress. The birth of Anton means that our computational chemistry has entered a new era. That big guy can be regarded as a black technology now, let alone more than ten years ago. Years ago. Everyone should be very aware of how fast the semiconductor industry is updated. More than ten years ago, we were still using PHS, and now we are using Huawei mate40 equipped with the latest Kirin."

"Logically speaking, they can rest on their laurels now. Because until today, more than ten years later, no team or company has done better than their generation. And They didn't, they didn't stop in their tracks."

"Soon, anton2 came out at the first time. It is more powerful and dazzling than the first generation, and it is also more difficult to catch up with. When everyone is still trying to catch up with the footsteps of the first generation of computers, their status in the world has been completely destroyed. It has stabilized. I can tell you secretly that the anton page 3 is about to come out..."

classmates:……

I don’t know if it’s our illusion. I always feel that there are some py transactions in it, but it shouldn’t be. After all, one is a well-known French scholar, and the other is a Wall Street capitalist.

Who could have imagined that fate is so magical.The intersection of disciplines and the inevitability of history brought these two people together...

(End of this chapter)