But at the same time, Xia Duo also realized a problem. Besides arcane strings, what other materials could withstand the long-term operation of a magic computer?
What we are currently experimenting with is just a two-string 5-ring lifting ring calculator. Using mithril to make it is completely sustainable, but what about the future?
Is it possible that Chengdu can only make such a small-sized calculator?
This is almost a deadlock. The core calculation component of the magic computer is not an energy-guiding component that can reflect the rules of the magic network's energy operation, but it still needs to bear a large flux of energy exchanges.
The material must be good, but not so good that it can be assimilated by the magic network!
When Xia Duo realized this problem, his vision almost went dark. If this problem was not solved, he could imagine what the future magic computer would be like——
High cost and frequent maintenance!
Not to mention the extent of the advantages, these two shortcomings alone made him very pessimistic about the application prospects of magic computers.
The high cost does not matter to him in the future. As long as the elemental composition of mithril can be found, the corresponding factor is nothing more than production capacity. This is not a too serious problem.
The problem is that frequent maintenance will greatly damage the usefulness of the magic computer, unless all problems encountered in the future can be calculated in a short time, but how is this possible?
There must be some problems that require long-term calculations, and many of his ideas are even based on the fact that magic computers can operate for a long time.
If it requires frequent maintenance, what value does it have?
It is conceivable that if Mithril is used as the material of the core computing component, as long as the size is large, it is likely to start maintenance once it is turned on and lasts for a few seconds.
How can such application prospects not make people feel pessimistic?
As for the use of David strings, which are inferior to the Austrian strings, there is indeed no need to worry about being assimilated by the magic network, but the stability of the material itself is even worse, and its existence requires additional support devices.
If used in a magic computer, perhaps the support device would be larger and more expensive than the computer. This is a bit like an ordinary laptop on earth, but it has a whole building of support devices.
By then, will this still be considered a magic computer?
This question is worth pondering. Anyway, Xia Duo knows that if that is the case, ordinary people will obviously not be able to use magic computers.
Even a considerable number of researchers will not have the opportunity to use it. This kind of computer with extremely high maintenance costs will only be allocated to some important strategic areas on a small scale.
Suddenly, Xia Duo discovered that this magic computer was somewhat similar to the controllable nuclear fusion on earth. There were no problems in theory, but it could not be implemented in practice due to many engineering problems.
If you want to make a large-scale magic computer, you need a relatively special material. The properties require that the energy-conducting property should at least reach the level of standard mithril. The most important thing is that it is not prone to elemental transmutation reactions and will not be affected by the magic network.
assimilation.
These three requirements are somewhat similar to the "Impossible Triangle" in economics on earth. If two of the requirements are met, the third one will be almost impossible to achieve.
If the energy-conducting attribute reaches the standard mithril level, elemental transmutation reactions will not easily occur. These two points, the latter are necessary conditions for a magic computer. Once it is not met, the frequency of maintenance will increase significantly.
However, the transmutation reaction of elements is unavoidable for any material. If you want to reduce it as much as possible, you need to use materials that are energy in nature. However, the higher the properties of such materials, the easier they are to be assimilated by the magic network.
And if we only consider that elements are not prone to transmutation reactions and are not assimilated by the magic network, then there are too many choices. The most typical one is gold, but the energy-conducting properties of gold are obviously much worse than mithril.
If a gold conductor wants to reach the energy conductivity level of standard mithril, it needs to make up for it with volume. The gap is at least two orders of magnitude. In this case, the cost is too high and the volume is also large.
It is conceivable that the magic computer under this situation will probably develop in two directions -
A material that uses mithril and other materials that have good energy-conducting properties but are not stable enough as core computing components comes at the cost of frequent maintenance.
The other is to use materials such as gold that have good stability but insufficient energy conductivity properties. The price is high material cost and large computer size.
Frequent maintenance is actually costly. In contrast, using gold as the core component material of computers seems to be more suitable!
But Xia Duo was unwilling to accept it, "Is this the only way?"
Although using gold seems to be a good choice, isn’t gold also an industrial material on earth? But who on earth uses gold as iron?
If the core computing components of the computer reach the million-element level, which is the same size level as Mythra, this is not difficult to achieve. With guidance, development will be very fast.
A little calculation can tell that a computer of this level requires more gold than the total wealth obtained by the Saville Territory + the Great Xia Territory in the past.
To a large extent, the wealth obtained by the Daxia and Savile lands in the past was not obtained in the form of physical gold, but was reflected in transactions.
Converted into transaction volume, it is also an extremely huge number, almost 100 million gold coins. Most of this comes from the mithril transactions during the construction of the Floating City, and a small part comes from the sale of magic items mass-produced by the Tower of Time.
.
Spending 100 million gold coins to build a magic computer that may not be very advanced, Xia Duo thought that if he got drunk one day, he might try it.
It is impossible for him to make such a decision whenever he is awake. This is simply not a decision that a normal human being can make.
If 100 million gold coins is not intuitive enough, the converted weight is almost 900 tons. Who is so naive to use 900 tons of gold to build a magic computer? Xia Duo can't do it himself anyway.
Of course, it is just a calculator at the moment. If it is not large, it is not a bad idea to use gold as the core computing component material. The intermediate consumption should be regarded as the cost of researching "converting the magic effects caused by all calculations into elemental release effects."
alright.
"What a pity! What a pity!"
Sha Duo realized that before the material problem was solved, there was a high probability that the magic computer would not be born. This was not a conventional magic item.
In other words, he might not be able to wait for the magic computer to process the ethereal layer detection data collected by the Plane Exploration Center for quite some time.
When this thought came to him, he even hesitated to complete the idea of completing the ring increase and decrease calculator. After all, this thing was of little use to him.
"Let's do basic research!"
Basic research does not need to be limited to a temporary period. Xia Duo plans to build a double-stringed five-ring calculator first, and then focus on plane exploration.
As for the problem of calculation effect conversion, let's leave it to study in our normal leisure time. This problem seems a bit too advanced when it is difficult to achieve even a magic computer.
As for the issue of new materials, Xia Duo himself is not prepared to jump into this big hole, but he can support David and even more people to study it.
He believes that if David was able to create David strings before, he will definitely be able to create new materials suitable for the core computing components of magic computers in the future!