Circuit boards, wires, soldering gun, diodes, transistors, resistors…
A whole bunch of tools and raw materials. After adding everything to the shopping cart and making the payment, more than $7,000 vanished instantly, leaving John Han with less than $6,000 in savings.
After another three or four days of self-study, the packages began to arrive. On this morning, John quickly washed up, took his pocket knife, and rode his electric bike out the door.
In these times, even in broad daylight, John didn't dare leave the house without his knife.
A few hundred meters away was a small food stall, with a makeshift canopy and several outdoor tables and chairs, already filled with customers.
John sat down and called out familiarly, "Aunt Wang, a large bowl of noodles, no egg!"
Thinking it over, John decided against adding an egg. It cost two dollars each. With the materials costing so much, he didn't know when he could finish, so he had to save money.
"John, you're here. Sit tight, it's almost ready!"
The large bowl of noodles was served, and John was pleasantly surprised to find it fuller than usual, with a layer of oil on top.
"John, eat more. If it's not enough, just ask for more."
Warmth filled John's heart. "Thank you, Aunt Wang."
After finishing the noodles, John took out his phone and paid six dollars—the price of a large bowl of noodles was five dollars.
"Why did you pay an extra dollar? Take it back, take it back. If you do this again, I won't let you eat here anymore."
As John was about to leave, Aunt Wang caught up with a one-dollar bill, insisting he take it back. Unable to refuse, John accepted.
"Thank you, Aunt Wang."
"Such a good boy. Go on now, be careful on the road."
John rode his bike further. Passing by Butcher Shawn's meat stall, he felt Shawn glance at him, and the chopping sounds seemed louder.
At the delivery point, after confirming his identity, John finally received several large boxes.
Even in these chaotic times, the logistics system remained reliable. The business moguls in logistics likely understood that reliability was key to making more money.
Bringing the boxes home, John carefully unwrapped the packaging, stacking the plastic bags and cardboard neatly for selling later. Looking at the pile of circuit boards, capacitors, and resistors, John took a deep breath.
It was time to start building.
He picked up a universal board and a diode, aligned the pins, and with a gentle touch of the soldering gun, the diode was soldered in place.
After over three months of labor, the handmade chip was finally completed.
What lay before John was a device divided into four sections, each stacked five to six layers high, connected by flying wires, with numerous capacitors, resistors, and some indicator lights, looking very messy.
John took a deep breath and flipped the power switch.
He had input some code into the CPU in pure binary. This code was supposed to make the indicator lights flash sequentially.
The next moment, the code executed, but instead of sequentially lighting up, all the lights turned on at once.
"What's the problem?"
John was baffled. It took him five days to find out that he had soldered one diode backwards.
After fixing it and trying again, it still didn't work. John continued troubleshooting. After two more months of repetitive testing and checking, this time, when he flipped the switch, the lights flashed in the sequence he had programmed.
The code executed successfully, which meant he had finally handmade a functional computer chip.
In the next moment, the pile of circuit boards vanished, replaced by the abacus that had always floated in his mind, merging into his brain.
Suddenly, John felt an immense computational power. Problems that had been complex, even with the abacus, could now be solved in an instant.
At the same time, his mind felt clearer. Memories he had almost forgotten resurfaced vividly.
His memory had also improved.
John estimated that this chip had a frequency of about 20 kHz and could be overclocked to around 35 kHz at most.
He looked at his ordinary home computer. Its CPU could reach a frequency of up to 5 GHz. By comparison, the chip he had made and integrated into his brain had a frequency about 1/150,000 of that.
This home computer's CPU was made with a 3-nanometer process. He had heard that some large supercomputers used 2-nanometer chips, and the Itans possessed even more advanced technology, possibly quantum computers.
John's handmade chip, in terms of manufacturing process, could barely be considered 5 millimeters.
As is well known, the smaller the process in computer chip manufacturing, the higher the technological level and performance.
And 5 millimeters is 2.5 million times larger than 2 nanometers.
Though the gap between these two was like comparing a primitive stone tool to a spaceship, John was still thrilled with his achievement.
So what if the performance was poor? The combination of human brain and computer capabilities was far more powerful than a simple addition of the two.
John even felt that all the knowledge he had learned in the past two years could now be absorbed in just a month.
"This must be kept strictly confidential. If the Itans find out, I'll be dead."
After the initial joy, John realized the gravity of the situation.
Determined to keep his secret, John began thinking about his future path. Soon, he concluded, "I need to find a way to make money quickly."
Fighting the Itan civilization and liberating humanity was a massive task that had to be approached step by step. Initially, he needed some power and resources.
Clearly, money was essential.
Moreover, now that he had confirmed his unique ability, he needed to find ways to enhance it further. He had to think about developing more advanced, high-performance chips. One day, he might even scale up production, manufacturing chips on an industrial scale.
This would require even more money. Forget about a chip factory; right now, the $13,000 he won from the casinos was almost gone, and John barely had enough to buy more diodes, resistors, and universal boards.
He was almost out of money, unable to afford even Aunt Wang's plain noodles soon.
Six months had passed, with expenses for rent, utilities, food, and internet. John had been frugal, but the money only stretched so far.
Returning to the casinos was out of the question; he had to find a new way to make money.