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There was one key difference in temperament between the Stark father and son that very few people ever noticed.
Howard Stark was self-made. To build an empire of that scale from nothing required exceptional skill and calculation—and a fearless appetite for risk. Whatever problems arose, he always managed to resolve them. His reputation as a genius was well deserved.
But every company under his banner was his own flesh and blood. He couldn't bear to let any of them go. That was why, by the time succession came around, Stark Industries had grown bloated and chaotic.
Tony Stark, on the other hand, inherited everything with no preparation at all—and with a strong sense of resistance. Once he clarified his own goals, every move he made became decisive.
He was just as unafraid of risk, but not because he was confident he could cover any loss. Rather, it was a kind of "selling Grandpa's land without pain" bravado. In the eyes of some outsiders, Tony Stark's style already bordered on reckless.
As the saying went: the soft fear the hard, the hard fear the fierce, the fierce fear the reckless, and the reckless fear those who don't care about their lives.
Right now, Tony Stark clearly fell into the "reckless" category.
It couldn't be helped. He'd never been beaten down by society. Before he'd had the chance to polish his rough edges, he was already standing at the very top of the pyramid. The fact that he didn't bully the weak or sic attack dogs on people already made him downright benevolent.
So once Tony Stark made up his mind, he immediately started discussing the configuration of this image-processing computer with Henry, right there on the spot.
The management-level executives couldn't even get a word in. Anyone who tried to grab the young heir and remind him to consider their opinions was promptly pulled aside by Tony's bodyguards.
The engineers were even more completely sidelined. They couldn't follow the discussion at all—Henry and Tony were thinking too fast. By the time they'd barely grasped the meaning of one technical term, the two of them were already light-years ahead. The engineers couldn't even pretend to be involved.
The discussion between Henry and Tony had long since left the realm of consumer products. They were talking motherboard layouts, slot configurations—and both of them carried the attitude that if off-the-shelf components weren't good enough, they'd just make their own chips.
Aside from semiconductor fabrication itself, nothing was off-limits. If the market didn't sell it, they'd build it. To Tony Stark, this was just another live-fire exercise for the computer division.
Henry, meanwhile, was seriously entertaining the idea of stuffing thirty-two CPUs into a single machine, measuring memory in gigabytes, configuring disk arrays with terabytes of storage—discussing in earnest how such an architecture could be realized.
At first, Tony Stark found this kind of intellectual collision fascinating. In his life, it was rare to meet someone who could actually discuss professional topics with him. Most people couldn't even keep up with his train of thought.
Henry not only kept up—sometimes he even offered perspectives that sparked Tony's inspiration.
And they weren't just fantasizing. Everything they discussed was aimed at feasibility, not building a spaceship to conquer Mars.
To keep track of their ideas, whiteboards were hauled in—one after another. When they ran out, they even used the two projection screens that had been showing film clips, scribbling all over them with markers.
But as the design plan gradually took shape, Tony Stark suddenly cooled off. After a moment of reflection, he said:
"Have you thought about marginal utility?
"According to Moore's Law, the performance we stack together with brute force today can be achieved with half the components eighteen months later.
"With your endless pursuit of performance, how much are you planning to spend on a single machine? If this is purely for R&D, fine.
"But if you want to rent post-production equipment, one or two machines won't cut it. To scale the market, you'd need promotion.
"So how many are you building? How long before they're obsolete? Can the revenue before obsolescence cover the cost? And how do you reduce waste during idle periods?
"You're not telling me you haven't thought about these basic questions. If you can answer them, I won't object even if you want to build a supercomputer."
Hearing Tony's complaints, Henry laughed.
"Wow, a supercomputer? That's a bit exaggerated, don't you think?"
"Then maybe you should reflect on your performance demands," Tony shot back.
"In some respects, even existing supercomputers don't meet your requirements. You're basically using memory like hard drives, and hard drives like warehouse space."
Henry pulled over a whiteboard that no longer had useful information on it and wiped it clean.
"Do you know a paper from 1974? Formal Requirements for Virtualizable Third Generation Architectures."
"Popek and Goldberg?" Tony asked. "You're talking about system virtual machines?"
"Yes, that one," Henry replied.
"As early as the 1960s, IBM mainframes had CMS—the Conversational Monitor System.
"It used time-sharing threads to give users the illusion of simultaneous access. With today's hardware and software, we can do far better.
"For example, we can create multiple virtual machines on a single host and allocate hardware resources independently. Who gets more, who gets less—it can all be decided by user demand and pricing.
"And there's another benefit. Once a renter finishes editing their film, their virtual machine can be destroyed outright. No risk of data leakage.
"In terms of implementation, there are two approaches. One is full system virtualization, which has complete control over allocated resources. The other is OS-level virtualization, which is more flexible to use."
As he spoke, Henry sketched the architecture of the virtualization layer on the whiteboard.
But he noticed that Tony Stark's questions were becoming fewer and farther between—like his thoughts couldn't quite keep up anymore.
So Henry stopped at a certain point, not wanting to look like he was showing off. He added:
"If possible, I'd love to build a supercomputer too.
"But I've never seen one up close, and I can't find relevant papers. So I can only base my thinking on commercial PCs and how to push performance further. As for cost and expected returns—that has to be calculated."
Tony suddenly asked,
"What does 'CK' stand for?"
"That's Calvin Klein, isn't it?"
"Fuck! It is you!" Tony threw the pen in his hand away, clearly irritated.
"What do you mean, it's me? You're talking nonsense," Henry said, continuing to play dumb.
"If I asked a normal person that question, they'd either challenge it or randomly guess. You answered instantly—like you'd been prepared for a long time. Even though the answer was meant to mislead."
"Heh," Henry chuckled weakly. At this point, playing dumb was his only option.
Had the Docker concept slipped out? That had been part of the technology used to build the Joker BBS. Online, people still called it a honeypot—a computer trap.
The concept had been exposed for a while now, but the core technology hadn't spread widely. People capable of cracking it were usually busy with their own work and hadn't bothered to explore its deeper applications.
Some had recreated similar functions, but none had reached the same level. Mostly because outside of cybersecurity and hacker traps, people didn't know what else it could be used for.
Truly worthy of being called a genius—Tony's technical intuition was terrifying.
Still, annoyed as he was, Tony didn't seem interested in pressing the matter further. He simply lost interest in continuing the discussion.
With a thoroughly irritating expression, he said,
"I'll have people send you the supercomputer design blueprints Stark Industries built in New York back then, along with the relevant patents.
"Use those, plus today's ideas, and put together a design proposal for me. I've been wanting to build a supercomputer on the West Coast anyway. Otherwise, too much work still has to be done on the East Coast."
"No discussion on the design?" Henry asked.
Tony, his displeasure practically written on his face, replied,
"What's there to discuss? When your proposal's done, I'll just mark it up like a teacher grading homework and have it built. You focus on the software.
"Then we'll allocate part of the resources to Stark Pictures for digital post-production development. If rentals take off, we'll let the market decide the next steps."
"Wow, sir, you really treating me like hired labor?"
"I'm the one paying to build the supercomputer!"
"Alright then, boss. You're right. Money talks."
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