Chapter 1001: Using Software Advantages to Promote Hardware Development

Since the facts were too clear, the minor incident when the results were released quickly subsided.

However, the afterglow of this episode will linger for a long time...

The next day was the official opening day of the conference.

Because the number of participants in this conference far exceeded everyone's expectations, the two-story conference hall that was booked at the beginning could not accommodate them all.

So some "less important" people had to be arranged in other rooms in the same building, and then watch the meeting through the closed-circuit television system -

On the scene, but not completely.

Later, after the Beijing Foreign Affairs Office joined the planning work, it even said that it could help coordinate a gymnasium as the main venue.

However, under the strong protests of security comrades such as Zhu Yadan, this plan was still abandoned -

As the initiator, main sponsor and special guest of the entire event, Chang Haonan needed to sit in the first three rows set up separately with the other twenty or so important figures.

Or strictly speaking, in the middle of the first row.

As an academic conference, you can't set up a perimeter inspection with a guard every three steps and a sentry every five steps.

So the more people there are in the central venue, the greater the pressure for them.

Now these hundreds of people are still within the controllable range.

If there are really thousands or even tens of thousands of people in the same venue, they will have to apply for additional measures from the higher authorities...

In short, the whole plan was finally maintained as it was.

However, this also brought an unexpected benefit.

That is, the distance between people was physically shortened...

"Professor Jameson, good morning!"

Chang Haonan found Anthony Jameson in the crowd with almost no effort.

The latter was wearing a peaked cap, deliberately lowering the brim of the hat, and did not sit in his seat, but stood against the wall.

It seems that he didn't want to be noticed too early.

But with Chang Haonan's voice, which was specially raised a little, the eyes of the people around him were still attracted...

"Uh... Professor Chang, good morning."

Seeing this, Jameson knew that he couldn't hide anymore, so he had to walk up and shake hands with Chang Haonan.

Compared with his high-spirited appearance a few days ago, his face now looked a little haggard, and even his hair seemed to have turned a little grayer...

"Are you recovering well?"

Chang Haonan's concerned face showed no sign of falsehood, and his tone was full of sincerity--

This was specially rehearsed last night.

If this scene was seen by someone who didn't know about it, they would sigh with emotion "the inheritance of two eras" and so on.

But only Jameson knew the pain in his heart...

"Fortunately...Fortunately..."

Jameson's body actually didn't need to recover.

But the mental trauma was hard to say.

"The opening ceremony is about to begin, let's go to the special guest seats."

Chang Haonan enthusiastically pulled Jameson and walked towards the center of the venue.

As he walked, he said:

"I specifically asked the conference team to arrange a seat in the middle of the first row for you..."

"..."

In fact, after learning that the final result was going to collapse, Helts immediately bought a ticket and flew back to the United States to prepare for the aftermath...

Uh...the impact afterwards.

Even Jameson himself had a moment of thinking about escaping the meeting due to illness.

That’s why he chose not to participate in the event last night.

However, after a night of struggle, he finally gave up the idea.

It’s too embarrassing.

The participants are all top practitioners, and they all live in a few concentrated places.

One person tells ten people, ten people tell a hundred people.

At the latest, by the end of the meeting, everyone will know what happened.

In this case, don’t even say you’re sick.

Even if you’re really sick and can’t attend, it’s a complete evasion of responsibility in the eyes of others.

You don’t have to mix in the academic circle in the future.

On the contrary, if you face the reality, then this matter is just a research loophole.

At most, it’s a marketing collapse, which is very embarrassing.

But who hasn’t lost face in research?

As for commercializing imperfect technology...

That was a wrong decision made by COMSOL, and it has nothing to do with Jameson himself.

At best, he returned the funds given by the other party...

But psychological construction is psychological construction.

When he was actually sitting in the meeting, it was a completely different story.

Any random glance from anyone next to him could make Jameson feel that there was something strange in their eyes.

And any two people talking in a low voice together would make him wonder if they were making up a discussion about him...

In short, it was literally like sitting on pins and needles.

So when the opening ceremony finally reached the stage of announcing the results of the competition, Jameson even felt a little relieved...

Anyway, sticking your head out will get you a knife, and shrinking your head will also get you a knife.

So why not let this knife come faster...

...

As the athletes' march sounded, the curtain in front of the conference hall began to release detailed information about the winning teams one by one according to the ranking.

According to general practice, the top three will receive trophies, certificates and medals, while the fourth to eighth places will only receive a certificate.

Considering that everyone is a decent person, the results and rankings of all teams were not released on the spot like last night.

Of course, it was only not available on site.

Similar to the situation in the preliminary round, all the results of the competition can be seen on the website, including the engineering documents submitted by each team.

For a small circle like numerical computing, the speed of spreading information on the Internet is not even as fast as word of mouth...

Although only a dozen special guests witnessed the release of the results and the subsequent spot check of the results last night.

But in just one night, this matter is no longer a secret...

Of course, there are always some people who are not well-informed.

"Speaking of which, how come Stanford University, which ranked first in the preliminary round, didn't even make the top eight in the final?"

A student-dressed participant whispered to his companion next to him.

"You don't know?"

The latter showed a somewhat surprised expression:

"Not only did it not make the top eight, Stanford didn't have any results in the end..."

"Ah?"

The questioner was shocked:

"How... could this be?"

Stanford has always been ranked among the top in the United States in the field of numerical computing, and with the dazzling preliminary results, it is regarded by many as a hot favorite for the top three.

"Then I'm not sure... But numerical calculations are very luck-intensive and experience-intensive, and anything can happen..."

The person being asked was obviously not a smooth-talking person, and didn't know the whole story.

Fortunately, another person next to him also interrupted:

"I heard this morning while eating that not only Stanford, but all the groups that used COMSOL for calculations in this finals failed to produce results... It seems that the two-phase flow calculation will trigger a bug in their software, resulting in no results at all..."

"You are..."

"Oh, I'm just a nobody, you probably haven't heard of me..."

"Oh..."

The other two didn't seem to take it too seriously.

As a result, the other party changed the subject:

"But the big boss of our laboratory is Suhas Patankar..."

"Oh?"

With this relationship, the credibility of the previous statement suddenly changed.

"Two-phase flow is a very important part of CFD calculation. If there are serious bugs in this aspect, then the actual stability of COMSOL... I'm afraid it's not very optimistic..."

"But the preliminary round..."

"The preliminary round questions are simple, and they are lucky to have drawn the part they are best at, but the problem was exposed in the final..."

"..."

Similar conversations are happening simultaneously in multiple places inside and outside the venue.

Even the award ceremony on the stage seems a little bleak in comparison -

It's just an award, not for yourself.

How can it be more important than eating melons?

Moreover, after countless rounds of transmission, the content of the message has been obviously distorted.

In fact, COMSOL's calculation loopholes are only likely to be triggered in specific situations with high calculation weights.

Otherwise, Chang Haonan would not have to spend so much effort to set up such a game, and even "customized" a question for them.

But after just one night, the version everyone heard has become "COMSOL can't do two-phase flow calculations."

This is something that even Chang Haonan, the initiator, did not expect...

Anyway.

At least in the foreseeable future, COMSOL has completely lost its right to eat at the table...

Most people didn't even notice when the award ceremony ended.

It was not until Chang Haonan began to announce Torch Group's new plan for the next five years that everyone's attention was drawn back to the stage.

After COMSOL was actually eliminated, considering that ANSYS had no intention of challenging Torch Group in a large field, but chose to dig deep in the field of chemical application, then for a long time in the future, the entire numerical calculation will return to the state of one-man-dominant between 1997 and 2000.

For users, it may not be a good thing.

Therefore, everyone is also paying attention to what actions Torch Group will take later.

"First of all, TORCH Multiphysics will launch a new version 2.0, and convert the previous 1.0 professional version into an educational version, permanently providing unlimited free trials to students around the world."

Chang Haonan threw a trump card at the beginning.

TORCH Multiphysics certainly had an educational version in the past, but it was based on the public beta version of that year. The functions were very imperfect and the UI was basically at the level of 1998, which made the user experience extremely poor.

It is precisely this problem that has allowed COMSOL to retain a considerable market share in research institutions and universities.

Now that the 1.0 professional version has been converted to an educational version, it is equivalent to directly blocking the way for later learners to learn COMSOL.

Of course, the educational version is literally for educational purposes only.

If you want to use the software to publish research results, you still have to buy or rent the genuine version.

On the other hand, this also means that the improvement of version 2.0 must be obvious enough.

Otherwise, users who have spent money to use the 1.0 version for several years may not agree.

And this is exactly what Chang Haonan is going to say next:

“The upgrade focus of version 2.0 is to introduce a new conservation level set method for interfaces with drastic changes in topological structures, including multiphase interface simulation and topological optimization problems, and propose a new and more accurate turbulence model for the increasingly sophisticated aerodynamic design needs, which can more stably describe the movement of fluid micro-groups under high flow conditions...”

“I will elaborate on these two specific technical issues in the report later...”

“...”

The release of TORCH Multiphysics 2.0 was something that had been announced long before the conference.

However, at that time, COMSOL Multiphysics 2.5 was in the limelight, and everyone generally believed that this would be a positive expansion of a comet hitting the earth.

Unexpectedly, it turned out that Torch Group unilaterally cleaned up the battlefield.

Didn’t you see that they also specifically mentioned the upgrade for two-phase flow problems...

It was completely a scourge.

On the stage, Chang Haonan’s speech was still not over.

"In the past few years, we have also received a lot of feedback from users. The problem is concentrated on the compatibility of 3D models and meshing. For this reason, Torch Group has reached an agreement with Dassault Systemes and Kompas to jointly promote the seamless connection between CAD modeling and numerical computing..."

"In addition, three years ago, Torch Group and Sugon Group launched the Sugon 1000T supercomputer and server cluster, which is more compatible with TORCH Multiphysics software at the hardware level, and achieved a good response."

"However, since the computing power of Sugon computers was relatively average at that time, the advantage of this combination lies mainly in cost performance rather than performance."

"But with the development of Sugon series supercomputer performance, we will continue this business model of hardware adaptation software. We plan to launch the specially optimized Sugon 3000T within the year. The computing efficiency is one-third higher than that of Sugon 3000, and the Sugon version of TORCH Multiphysics comes with more functions than the professional version..."

"..."

When his speech ended, thunderous applause rang out in the entire audience.

As the final winner of this round of competition, Chang Haonan did not mention anything that worried everyone the most, such as raising prices or new payment models.

Instead, he was almost entirely discussing the further development of numerical simulation technology.

Many users have taken out their notebooks and written down the name of Sugon Group, preparing to investigate the specific situation after returning.

As for the representatives of Sugon Group sitting in the special sponsor seat and the representatives of the Ministry of Science and Technology sitting in the special guest seat, they couldn't help laughing at all--

On the surface, this is just a cooperation between two companies.

But in fact, with the continuous increase in revenue from supercomputing and server businesses, Sugon Group can continue to feed back to almost the entire upstream on the basis of solving its own development problems.

Especially the semiconductor manufacturing industry, which was almost strangled in its infancy since the 1980s.

Although it is still in the stage of purchasing foreign equipment and raw materials for simple OEM, in any case, the entire chain from research and development to commercialization has been rebuilt.

This is almost a breakthrough from 0 to 1!