Chapter 293 - 225: 60% Video Memory Optimization

Chapter 293: Chapter 225: 60% Video Memory Optimization

December 16th, Tuesday, 2:00 PM.

In the office of Yanhai Company, Chen Lin and Bai Qian sat side-by-side in front of a computer, its screen filled with dense lines of Python code.

At that moment, the two men were in completely different states.

Bai Qian was practically bouncing off the walls, a fanatical light gleaming in his eyes as his fingers flew across the keyboard.

Although he had been working at high intensity for nearly a week straight, he seemed to be getting more and more energized.

Chen Lin, on the other hand, was much calmer. He leaned back in his ergonomic chair, holding a cup of goji berry tea, glancing at Bai Qian’s code from time to time and occasionally discussing a few potential logic flaws with him.

"President Chen, look at this!"

Bai Qian suddenly slammed his hand on the desk in excitement, making the goji berries in Chen Lin’s cup tremble.

"I’ve fixed the last bug in the adaptive weight allocation layer! All unit tests have passed!"

Chen Lin set down his cup and leaned over to look at the string of green "PASS" indicators on the screen, a faint smile gracing his lips.

"Not bad. So, what’s the status of the three core modules?"

Bai Qian immediately switched to the project management interface, pointing at the progress bars on the screen and saying excitedly:

"Adaptive Weight Allocation Layer—100% complete!"

"Linear Recurrent Attention Layer—100% complete!"

"Information Entropy Regularizer—also 100% complete!"

At this, Bai Qian turned his head to look at Chen Lin, his eyes full of disbelief.

"President Chen, I can’t believe we managed to finish all three core modules in just a few days!"

"You have to understand, this is a brand-new neural network architecture!"

"Back in the day, at the Institute of Automation, a project of this scale would have taken at least two months to complete!"

Chen Lin smiled and took another sip of his goji berry tea.

’That’s because when you were working on it before, the underlying mathematical framework itself was flawed, forcing you down a lot of dead ends.’

’But now, I’m the one who did the mathematical derivations. All you have to do is implement the code according to the formulas. Of course it’s fast.’

Chen Lin thought this to himself, but on the outside, he just smiled without saying a word.

Seeing Chen Lin remain silent, Bai Qian continued on his own.

"President Chen, I think I’m now truly witnessing the power of mathematics."

"After working with you, I’ve discovered that if the mathematical derivations are rigorous enough, a lot of so-called ’trial and error’ is completely unnecessary."

"What to write, what not to write—it’s all been clearly laid out in the mathematical calculations from the very beginning."

Chen Lin was about to offer a few humble words when Bai Qian’s tone suddenly shifted.

"Oh, right, President Chen. While I was running performance tests just now, I discovered a very interesting phenomenon."

As he spoke, Bai Qian rapidly tapped on the keyboard, pulling up a set of test data.

"Look here."

He pointed to a data table on the screen.

"I used our new architecture and the standard Transformer architecture to process a sequence of the same length under identical hardware conditions."

"The result..."

Bai Qian took a deep breath, his voice trembling slightly.

"Our new architecture’s VRAM usage was a full 60% lower than the Transformer’s!"

’What?’

Chen Lin froze for a moment.

Although he wasn’t particularly familiar with the specific mechanisms of GPU VRAM consumption, he knew that for training large AI models, VRAM was one of the most precious resources.

Often, the bottleneck limiting a model’s scale wasn’t computational power, but VRAM.

’If VRAM usage could be reduced by 60%...’

"What does this mean?" Chen Lin immediately pressed.

Bai Qian’s eyes were frighteningly bright.

"President Chen, this means that under the same hardware conditions, we can train a model with more than double the number of parameters!"

"For example, someone else using an A100 with 80GB of VRAM could train a 30-billion-parameter model at most."

"But we could train a 70-billion-parameter model, or even larger!"

"This... this is an absolute game-changer!"

At this point, Bai Qian was so excited he shot to his feet.

"President Chen, do you realize what this means?"

"It means that our Yanhai Company can use hardware costs far below the industry average to train a large model that crushes the competition in performance!"

"It means we have an absolute, unreplicable technological advantage in the large AI model race!"

Hearing this, Chen Lin couldn’t help but feel a surge of excitement himself.

Although his main goal when deriving this new architecture was to reduce computational complexity, he never expected it to achieve such a remarkable effect in VRAM optimization.

This was truly a pleasant surprise.

Just then, Pan Si, who was sitting not far away, overheard their conversation and walked over.

He pushed up his glasses, glanced at the test data on Bai Qian’s screen, and his pupils contracted sharply.

"A 60% optimization in VRAM?"

Pan Si’s voice trembled slightly.

Although he and Bai Qian had their disagreements on technical approaches, as a seasoned veteran who had spent years at a major international company like Doggie, he knew exactly what this number meant.

In the AI industry, even a 10% improvement in VRAM optimization was already an incredible achievement.

And now, this new architecture that Chen Lin’s team had come up with managed a direct 60% optimization?

This wasn’t just a game-changer; this was a nuclear-level annihilation!

Pan Si took a deep breath, trying to calm himself.

He looked at Chen Lin and said in an extremely serious tone:

"President Chen, Dr. Bai, I must warn you about something."

"The technical and commercial value of this architecture has far exceeded my expectations."

"Before our model is officially released, the code for this architecture absolutely cannot be leaked!"

"Not even a single line!"

Pan Si’s tone carried an unprecedented gravity.

"If a competitor gets their hands on the core code for this architecture, they could replicate our technological advantage with just a few minor modifications."

Hearing this, a chill went down Chen Lin’s spine.

Pan Si was right.

While the mathematical derivation process for the architecture was extremely complex and incomprehensible to the average person, the code was a different story.

Anyone who got the complete code, even an ordinary engineer, could reverse-engineer a similar architecture from it.

At this thought, Chen Lin’s expression also turned serious.

"Dr. Pan is right."

Chen Lin stood up, looked at Bai Qian and Pan Si, and said in a heavy voice:

"From now on, the code for this new architecture must be handled with the highest level of security."

He paused, then began to issue specific directives.

"First, the code repository will be set to the highest permission level. Only Dr. Bai, Dr. Pan, and I will have access. No one else, including Shen Yan and Sun Yu, is allowed to touch the core code."

"Second, the training servers must be physically isolated, with no connection to the external network. All data transfers must be done via encrypted USB drives or a dedicated internal line."

"Third..."

Chen Lin looked at Bai Qian and Pan Si, his tone becoming even more solemn.

"I need the two of you to sign a special non-disclosure agreement."

Bai Qian and Pan Si exchanged a look. Neither spoke, merely nodding in silence.

Chen Lin took a deep breath and continued,

"Of course, I won’t have you do this for nothing."

"As members of the core technical team, you should enjoy the rewards of the company’s growth."

At this, a smile touched the corners of Chen Lin’s mouth.

"I’ve decided to grant Dr. Bai and Dr. Pan 0.5% of the company’s stock options each."

"The strike price will be based on the company’s current valuation of 300 million."

What?!

Bai Qian was completely stunned.

’0.5% in stock options?’

’A 300 million valuation?’

’What does that mean?’

’It means that the 0.5% of options in his hands are worth 1.5 million!’

’Although he can’t cash them out immediately, as long as the company continues to grow, the value of these options will only increase!’

Bai Qian opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but found he was too choked with emotion to speak.

He never, ever imagined that Chen Lin would offer such a generous incentive.

He’d been with Yanhai Company for less than a month!

Pan Si, sitting to the side, was relatively calmer.

After all, when he had initially negotiated his salary and benefits with Chen Lin, Chen Lin had already promised him stock options.

However, Pan Si hadn’t expected Chen Lin to choose this moment to make good on his promise.

Moreover, he was treating him and Bai Qian equally.

This secretly moved Pan Si.

Although he and Bai Qian had their differences on the technical path, Chen Lin, as their boss, didn’t favor one over the other but chose to treat them fairly.

That kind of broad-mindedness was something not typically found in the boss of a startup.

"President Chen..."

Bai Qian’s voice was choked with emotion.

"I... I really don’t know what to say."

Chen Lin smiled and patted his shoulder.

"Don’t get emotional. You’ve earned this."

"You were the absolute driving force behind the new architecture’s code implementation. Without your efforts during this period, even the best mathematical derivations would have remained just marks on paper."

After speaking, Chen Lin turned to Pan Si.

"The same goes for you, Dr. Pan. Although you’re currently in charge of the rapid prototyping track, which isn’t directly related to the new architecture, the datasets and training experience you’ve provided us are also incredibly valuable."

Pan Si pushed up his glasses, a smile appearing on his face.

"President Chen, you can rest assured."

"Dr. Bai and I will work together to maximize the value of this new architecture."

"And," Pan Si’s tone became incredibly firm, "we will absolutely not leak any technical secrets."

"We will rise and fall with the company."

Bai Qian also nodded emphatically.

"Me too!"

Looking at their resolute expressions, Chen Lin felt a strong sense of trust well up inside him.

Although the company was still small, with a team of only about ten people, Chen Lin believed that as long as everyone worked together, Yanhai Company’s future would only get brighter.