Lin Wei had been in a daze ever since he received the call from Academician Gao Wen yesterday afternoon.
’A breakthrough in the underlying algorithm architecture? One that can solve the real-time computational bottleneck for fluid-thermal coupling?’
On the strength of that one sentence from Academician Gao, Lin Wei immediately canceled two full days of high-level meetings, had his secretary book the earliest flight, and flew to Kyoto overnight.
Inside a private conference room at the Yan University School of Information Science and Technology.
Lin Wei sat on a sofa, tightly clutching the latest issue of *Mathematics of Computation*.
He had been reading the paper the entire trip.
The more he read, the deeper his frown became.
As a tech titan who had graduated from Fudan University’s physics department, Lin Wei certainly understood mathematics. But he simply couldn’t figure out how a pure number theory paper about calculating the non-trivial zeros of the Riemann Zeta function could possibly be related to the computational fluid dynamics inside their lithography machines.
One was in the heavens calculating prime numbers, while the other was on the ground calculating fluid flow. The two couldn’t have been more unrelated!
Of course, another thing that puzzled him was the author’s name on the paper...
[Dong Li (Li Dong)]
Lin Wei stared at the name, his expression turning exceptionally strange.
’Could they be the same person?’
’No, that’s impossible...’
Just then, with a KLICK, the conference room door swung open.
Academician Gao Wen walked in with a cheerful smile, a student trailing behind him.
The two stared at each other, wide-eyed and speechless.
The air in the conference room suddenly went still.
Li Dong stared at Lin Wei, who was sitting on the sofa, and his jaw dropped.
’Seriously?’ Li Dong ranted in his head. ’I came all this way to study at Yan University, and I still run into you?’
Academician Gao Wen, oblivious to their thoughts, enthusiastically pointed to Lin Wei and began the introductions.
"Li Dong, come, let me introduce you. This is the R&D Director of Huaxuan Technology, President Lin Wei."
"Hello, President Lin."
Li Dong managed a greeting.
Lin Wei took a deep breath.
A storm may have been raging in his heart, but he had weathered plenty in his life.
He composed himself, a wry smile touching his lips as he extended a hand toward Li Dong.
"Li Dong, hello. We... meet again."
Academician Gao Wen turned his head, his face a picture of astonishment.
"Huh? You two... know each other?"
Lin Wei let out a sigh and a wry smile.
"Academician Gao, we do more than just know each other..."
"That ’dual-beam laser interference maskless’ lithography proposal..."
Lin Wei pointed at Li Dong.
"He was the one who proposed it."
"What?"
Now it was Academician Gao Wen’s turn to be rattled.
The way he was looking at Li Dong grew stranger and stranger.
’Maybe I should unilaterally tear up that joint program agreement?’
Feeling that this was a rather underhanded thought, Gao Wen shook his head and quickly got back to business.
"Ahem..."
"President Lin, since you two already know each other, that simplifies things. Let’s get straight to business."
"The bottleneck problem you mentioned before—at an extremely high scanning speed of 1200 mm/s, the immersion lithography system requires a real-time numerical solution for the strong fluid-thermodynamic coupling within 1 millisecond, correct?"
Lin Wei nodded.
"That’s right. It’s an incredibly difficult hurdle to overcome."
Hearing this, Li Dong began to understand what was going on.
He had told Lin Wei during the Huaxuan Cup that his proposal couldn’t be implemented. With existing CFD algorithms, solving the 3D N-S equations required solving a large-scale sparse system of equations at every time step and then waiting for the coupled iteration to converge.
The computational cost would be astronomical, making it impossible to meet the hardware’s strict real-time control requirements.
’I can’t believe President Lin is still determined to make this plan work.’
Just then, Lin Wei continued speaking.
"You said on the phone that Li Dong’s algorithm has a chance of solving this problem? But... it’s for calculating Riemann zeros..."
"President Lin, you’re only seeing one side of the coin."
Before Academician Gao could reply, the conference room door was pushed open once more.
Dean Liu Ruochuan of the Yan University School of Mathematics strode in, beaming with delight.
He had just come from a national seminar for deans of schools of mathematics.
And he hadn’t felt the least bit stifled during the meeting. On the contrary, he had been walking on air! After all, a student he had taught...
He conveniently ignored the fact that he’d only given Li Dong a single introductory lecture. ’If I’ve taught him, he’s my student.’
Therefore, when his student produced major research results, it was naturally a testament to his excellent teaching.
Upon entering, Liu Ruochuan first greeted Lin Wei.
The two were old acquaintances, as Huaxuan Technology and the Yan University School of Mathematics had deep collaborations on numerous industry-academia research projects.
"Old Liu, you’re just in time. Why don’t you explain the mathematical logic here to President Lin?"
Gao Wen said with a smile, stepping aside.
Liu Ruochuan didn’t stand on ceremony. He pulled over a whiteboard, grabbed a marker, and began to sketch.
"President Lin, you might see that Li Dong is calculating the Riemann Zeta function while you’re working on 3D N-S equations, and think the two are completely unrelated."
"But if we strip away the physical phenomena, their core bottlenecks and underlying optimization logic at the large-scale numerical computation level are completely homologous!"
"In essence, they are both problems of large-scale numerical solutions and global precision control for high-dimensional complex systems within the Hilbert space framework!"
Liu Ruochuan pointed to the whiteboard.
"Your pain point is that as the scanning speed increases, the fluid field changes more dramatically, causing the mesh computation load to grow exponentially."
"And Riemann zeros? The higher their index, the more violently the function oscillates, and the computational load for traditional algorithms also explodes exponentially!"
"The key to breaking this impasse lies in the dimensionality reduction and pre-convergence techniques that Li Dong pioneered in this paper!"
The more Liu Ruochuan spoke, the more excited he became. He turned to look at Li Dong, his eyes brimming with admiration. ’What a brilliant student I have!’ he thought.
Hearing this, Lin Wei began to taste the implications.
"Dean Liu, are you saying..."
Academician Gao picked up the thread from the side.
"President Lin, your original algorithm requires discretizing the immersion chamber into a mesh with millions of points, which naturally has a massive computational cost."
"But what if we apply Li Dong’s ’sparse dimensionality reduction framework via non-linear FFT mesh expansion’?"
"We just need to input the fixed boundary constraints of your lithography machine’s immersion chamber and the trajectory of the scanning stage as known parameters."
"By using this algorithm to perform proper orthogonal decomposition and sparse representation, it’s theoretically possible to compress the millions of degrees of freedom in the mesh down to just a few hundred!"
"And that’s not all!"
Academician Gao pointed to the second section of the paper.
"Your original method needs over ten iterations to converge, but Li Dong’s algorithm contains a global pre-convergence logic."
"The scanning trajectory of the lithography machine is planned in advance, and the fluid field data from the previous time step is also known."
"If we migrate this logic, the algorithm can directly generate a high-precision initial fluid field for the current time step, converging in a single step to within the industrial precision threshold required for lithography! It might even directly yield an analytical approximate solution that satisfies the control precision requirements!"
"Add to that this freakishly powerful hard real-time parallel scheduling algorithm, which completely eliminates communication latency..."
Gao Wen and Liu Ruochuan exchanged a look and delivered their final conclusion.
"President Lin, as long as we can extract the underlying logic from Li Dong’s work and then remap and adapt it for the specific boundary conditions of your lithography machine..."
"...running a real-time solution for the N-S equations at a sub-millisecond level..."
"...is theoretically feasible."
Upon hearing this, Lin Wei’s breathing grew ragged.
This was the crushing boulder that had been weighing on him, on the entire National Power Equipment Group, and even on the heart of the Huaxia Semiconductor Industry!
They had spent countless days and nights grinding away in their labs to solve this fluid-thermal coupling bottleneck, yet it felt like they were just running blindfolded in the dark.
And now, two of Yan University’s top academicians and deans were telling him, in no uncertain terms:
The path was clear!
Lin Wei took a deep breath to calm his racing heart and turned to Li Dong, who was still sitting there.
"Li Dong!"
Lin Wei’s voice trembled with excitement as he walked to stand before Li Dong.
"You heard what Academician Gao and Dean Liu just said."
"Even though it’s just a theoretical direction for now, and the subsequent boundary mapping and fluid-field model reconstruction will require a tremendous amount of adaptation work..."
"...as long as we have this lead, with your underlying algorithm as the backbone, we have hope!"
Lin Wei said with the utmost seriousness.
"Li Dong, on behalf of Huaxuan Technology, I formally invite you to join our ’Dual-Core Task Force for EUV Light Source Wavefront Stabilization and Immersion Lithography Fluid Field Control’!"
Li Dong rushed to refuse. He was tired of being fleeced by Huaxuan Technology.
Throughout his life of fleecing others, Li Dong had never met his match—with the exception of Lin Wei and Newton.
"President Lin, I’m still a student..."
"I know you’re a student. You can serve as the project’s Special-Term Consultant and Chief Algorithm Architect! It won’t interfere with your studies."
"As long as you’re willing to join and guide our team with your algorithmic logic as we move forward..."
"I can offer you an annual consultant fee of 5 million RMB!"
"And if this algorithm is actually successfully implemented in the end, well..."
Lin Wei smiled meaningfully.
"It won’t be about money anymore..."
"No! Let’s just talk about the money!"
Li Dong quickly cut off his pie-in-the-sky promise.
Lin Wei froze for a second, then chuckled and said,
"Let’s just say, a ’small goal.’"
"Hiss—"
Li Dong sucked in a breath of pure, unadulterated Wang Jianlin.
Standing to the side, Academician Gao Wen and Dean Liu Ruochuan couldn’t stop their eyes from twitching when they heard that figure.
"So..."
Lin Wei’s gaze burned as he looked at Li Dong.
"Li Dong, are you willing?"

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