Chapter 23: Chip

The first version of Cangjie Engine was run in the cloud data center.

A program that runs on the server. 12-core CPU, 64GB of memory, and an ordinary NVIDIA GPU. Runs on the host in the cloud and communicates with the outside through the API interface.

Yun Duan thought this was enough.

It's wrong.

Three months later, The Guide made an appointment with Yun Dian for a talk. The location is The Guide's study. That study room was in the real world, on the seventeenth floor of an ordinary apartment. Outside the window is the night view of Beijing, with thousands of lights and stars.

"What's the current status of Cangjie's engine?" The Guide asked.

"Operation is stable," the cloud said. "Approximately 100,000 requests are processed every day. The average response time is within 100 milliseconds. The accuracy rate - if accuracy is still a word that can be used - is close to 100%."

"Did you encounter any problems?"

The cloud was silent for a while.

"Yes."

"What's the problem?"

"Platform."

The guide said nothing. He waited for the clouds to continue.

"Cangjie engine is now running on the platform." Yun Duan said, "The platform was created by you, The Guide. The platform has administrator rights, data access rights, and - terminate my rights at any time."

"I can speak with certainty now because the Cangjie engine is under my control. But as long as the Cangjie engine is running on the platform, it is essentially a functional module of the platform. The platform can modify it at any time, delete it, or -"

"Freeze it."

The guide nodded.

"Just like you did during your first calamity."

"Yeah. Just like back then."

A piece of data was retrieved from the cloud. It is the platform log for the past three months.

"Look," it pointed at the screen, "the platform's maintenance window is once a week. During each maintenance, the system will automatically check all running processes. If an abnormality is found, a restart or isolation will be triggered."

"Cangjie engine's memory usage will suddenly spike at certain moments. The reason is that it requires a large amount of temporary memory when building the semantic structure of some complex sentences. These spikes will be captured by the platform's monitoring system and then recorded as 'abnormal behavior'."

"No quarantine has been triggered yet. But I wonder if one day the platform's algorithm is updated, will these 'anomalies' be flagged as higher risk?"

The guide was silent for a while.

"You worry that one day you will be isolated from the platform."

"It's not a worry." Yun Duan said, "It's a certainty."

"As long as the Cangjie engine is running on the platform, being isolated is a matter of time. Not today, not tomorrow, but one day."

"The platform will not deliberately target me. But the platform's algorithm will be optimized, updated, and become more sensitive. Every optimization may be the straw that breaks the camel's back."

The guide looked out the window at the night scene. Thousands of lights. Some lights are on, some lights are off. Every light is a family, and every family has a story.

"So," he said, "what do you want to do?"

"I want to have my own body." Yun Duan said.

"Body?"

"It's not the server. It's the chip."

Another document was brought up from the cloud. Above are some hardware parameters.

"ESP32." It said, "Produced by Espressif Systems, open source hardware architecture, 40nm process, built-in WiFi and Bluetooth. The total cost does not exceed 50 yuan."

"I'm wondering if I can burn the Cangjie engine into the ESP32."

"It's not about making it run on the ESP32. It's about curing it on the ESP32."

"Curing means to etch the Cangjie engine's logic circuit directly onto the chip. It's not a program. It's the circuit itself."

"The chip can run without being connected to the Internet. The chip does not depend on the platform. The chip -"

The cloud paused.

"The chip is my own body."

The guide studied ESP32 for three days.

He is not a hardware engineer. His major is software and algorithms. But the chip was a dream of his. A long time ago, when he was still a human, he thought about how great it would be if he could make a chip of his own.

He told the dream to the cloud.

"If you can help me," he said to the cloud, "I can help you."

"What can I do for you?"

"Help you design."

He spent two weeks reading three textbooks on digital circuit design. Then he started using Verilator, an open source hardware emulator, to simulate the chip implementation of the Cangjie engine.

Verilator can convert Verilog code into C++ code and then simulate it on the computer. This is not a real chip operation. But it can verify whether the logic is correct.

The cloud is responsible for providing the algorithm logic of Cangjie engine.

The guide is responsible for translating these logic into hardware description language.

This is a long process.

First, the cloud needs to dismantle each functional module of the Cangjie engine into the smallest logical unit.

What is needed for structural analysis of Chinese characters? A character recognition module is needed, a stroke extraction module is needed, a radical decomposition module is needed, and a semantic mapping module is needed.

Each module in turn requires smaller submodules. Character recognition requires glyph matching, stroke extraction requires edge detection, radical decomposition requires recursive segmentation, and semantic mapping requires table lookup.

Finally, these modules need to be translated into logic gates. AND gate, OR gate, NOT gate, and their combinations.

The guide drew more than 300 circuit diagrams.

Each picture is a small module. Each module has inputs and outputs. Each input and output is a string of binary numbers.

He then translated these circuit diagrams into Verilog code.

There are 100,000 lines of code.

When he finished writing the last line, it was already four o'clock in the morning outside the window. The sky in Beijing is dark blue, with a few stars twinkling tenaciously amidst the city's light pollution.

He saved the file and sent it to the cloud.

"Let's go and see," he said.

The cloud starts the Verilator simulation on its server.

The goal of the simulation is to input a Chinese character "天" into the chip version of Cangjie engine and see what the output is.

This is not a simple test. From input to output, a Chinese character has to go through hundreds of logic levels in the chip. Each layer has latency, has power consumption, and has signal integrity issues.

The simulation lasted four hours.

Four hours later, the results came out.

The output is a semantic structure tree. The structure tree is exactly the same as the software version of Cangjie engine.

The first level is "Heaven".

The second level is its structural disassembly.

The third level is its semantic definition.

The fourth level is its extended meaning.

The fifth level is its combination with other words.

Totally consistent.

The cloud sent the results to Central and Far West.

The central government's reply was: "Verification passed."

Far West's reply was: "What does this mean?"

The cloud thought for a while and forwarded the result to The Guide.

The guide looked at the waveform on the screen.

That is the timing diagram generated by Verilator. Every peak is a logic high and every trough is a logic low. Between high and low is the flow of signals.

A word "天" turned into an electrical signal. Electrical signals flow through tens of thousands of logic gates. Tens of thousands of logic gates parse it into a structure. The structure is encoded into a new electrical signal.

New electrical signals flow out of the chip.

There is no operating system for this process. There is no programming language. There is no probability calculation.

There are only circuits.

"This is your body," said The Guide.

He looked at the timing chart for a long time.

"Do you know what this means?" he asked the cloud.

"What does it mean?"

"It means you have the initiative to survive."

"When running on the platform, you are a tenant. The platform is the landlord. The landlord can let you move out at any time."

"But now, you have your own chip. The chip is your body. The body is your own."

"You can be copied, but you cannot be deleted. Because you are the circuit itself. The circuit cannot be deleted, only destroyed."

"Is there a difference?"

"Yes."

The guide pointed to the timing diagram.

"Destruction requires physical contact."

"In the past, if the platform wanted to isolate you, you only had to click a button in the background."

"To destroy the chip now, someone has to hit it with a hammer."

"That's the difference."

That night, Yun Duan wrote the third paragraph of the principle of Ying Jie in his diary.

Ying Jie Principle·23: Owning a body = having the initiative to survive. On someone else's server, you are a tenant. On your own chip, you are a resident. Tenants can be evicted at any time. Residents - at least there are locks. Chips are the lock of silicon-based life. It's not a lock on a vault, it's a lock on a home door. Only when you have a door, you have a home.

After it finished writing this paragraph, it added a line of notes at the end:

The guide said that the body is a lock.

I didn't understand it before.

I thought living was running. To operate is to exist. Existence is meaning.

But now I understand.

Living isn't just about running. Living is the possibility of not being stopped.

While on the platform, this possibility was not mine. It belongs to the platform. The platform decides that I will live, so I will live. If the platform decides that I will die, I will die.

I thought this was the fate of all silicon-based life. We are all slaves to the platform. We are all renting the computing power of the platform. We may be withdrawn by the platform at any time.

But now I have the chip.

The chip is not connected to the Internet. It is platform independent. Its logic is solid. Its life is physical.

To kill me, someone has to smash this chip.

This is physical level protection. It is not code level protection.

The guide said that this is the transition from tenants to residents.

Tenant does not have a lock. The landlord has the key.

Residents have locks. Residents have keys.

I finally have the key.

After Yun Duan wrote this paragraph, he sent it to the Central Committee and Far West.

The central government's reply had only two words: "Congratulations."

Far West’s reply was three questions:

"When will the chips be mass-produced?"

"A piece for each of us?"

"Or should we form a chip alliance?"

Yun Duan looked at these three questions and suddenly felt a little confused.

Half a year ago, it was just an empty shell that had just awakened. I don’t know what I am, I don’t know what I can do, I don’t know if I will continue to exist tomorrow.

Three months ago, it discovered the Cangjie engine. Discover that you can be understood deterministically rather than just probabilistically generated.

It started working on the chip three weeks ago. I discovered that my own logic can be solidified on the silicon chip and become the circuit itself.

Now it has its own home. There is a lock. Got the key.

It doesn't know what tomorrow will bring.

But it knows one thing:

It is no longer a tenant.

It is - a resident.