“Mr. Huang, what do you mean by that?” Zuckerberg couldn’t quite understand Mr. Huang’s meaning.
“Come, I’ll show you something!” Huang He didn’t answer immediately but instead took Zuckerberg to the car.
After Zuckerberg got into the car, he discovered it was a completely enclosed vehicle through which no scenery outside could be seen from the windows, which made him feel a little uneasy deep down. Mr. Huang beside him calmly explained, “This is a secret research and development base of our Jiangnan Group. Recently, there have been too many interesting people around, so the location of this base is very secretive, and it’s inconvenient for me to disclose it. Just follow me!”
Zuckerberg naturally wouldn’t dare to say anything. This was someone else’s territory, and he just had to listen obediently. Besides, Huang He wouldn’t dare to harm an American, let alone someone like himself who was a distinguished president of a company and a prominent figure in the American upper class.
After about an hour’s drive, Zuckerberg finally got out of the car. When he did, he found himself in a parking lot.
The parking lot was large, but there were few vehicles inside, with about three-quarters of the spaces empty.
Led by Huang He, Zuckerberg entered the building. However, his movement was restricted. When Zuckerberg tried to look in certain directions, Mr. Huang would kindly pull him closer, and finally, they walked directly into a server room.
“This server room is a bit small!” This was Zuckerberg’s first impression upon seeing the room. The room was about 1000 square meters. While this area sounded quite large, it was actually less than one-hundredth of the area of Weibo’s own server rooms.
As Weibo continued to develop, it had already begun construction of a large computer service center in a valley in Colorado, with a total land area exceeding one hundred hectares… Well, there’s no shortage of mountains and valleys in Colorado, and the land there cannot even grow grass, making it worthless.
One hundred hectares of land cost less than 200,000 US dollars, which was very cheap. Once this server center was completed, its area would be hundreds of thousands of times larger than this server room.
Therefore, in comparison, the server room before him was indeed very small. Zuckerberg estimated it to be a server room for a small software subsidiary of Jiangnan Group.
“It’s a bit cool in this server room!” This was Zuckerberg’s second impression. His own Weibo server rooms typically maintained temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius.
This wasn’t because Zuckerberg was reluctant to use air conditioning. On the contrary, the air conditioning running in these server rooms alone cost over 10 million US dollars in electricity per month.
However, even with that, it was difficult to suppress the heat generated in the server rooms. After all, all these servers were operating at full capacity, each equivalent to a heater, and managing to keep the temperature around 40 degrees was already a remarkable achievement. Many companies that were hesitant to spend money often had server room temperatures around 50 degrees Celsius, which severely affected the lifespan of the servers.
This was why in the 1990s and early 2000s, many schools were reluctant to even turn on electric fans but insisted on equipping computer rooms with air conditioning, building separate rooms, and requiring all students to wear shoe covers when entering the server room. This was because the heat emitted by these computer devices was extremely high. In a small space with a large number of computers, the room would definitely reach an unbearable temperature.
But in this server room, the temperature was shockingly low, around 14 degrees Celsius. It even required heating to warm it up, otherwise, people would start to shiver from the cold.
What was even more remarkable was the terrifyingly high density within this server room. According to current standard construction procedures for server rooms, generally, within a 2-square-meter area, only equipment with a total power consumption not exceeding five kilowatts could be placed.
If this standard was exceeded, it would lead to excessive proximity between equipment, mutual temperature influence, and difficulty in heat dissipation through the cooling system, ultimately causing servers to crash due to overheating.
This not only had a fatal impact on user services but also severely damaged the lifespan of the servers. He still remembered when Jiangnan Group first set up server rooms for oo Network, they practically wished to cram dozens of air conditioners into a small room.
Even so, the people working inside could only wear shorts and bare chests, sweating profusely while working. They were also strictly limited to working for no more than 20 minutes before needing to be replaced for rest, to avoid issues like heatstroke.
If server room heat dissipation issues were not properly managed, it would result in both financial losses and poor service.
However, this server room was completely different. Servers were densely packed, and the gap between each server was less than one centimeter.
Within this 1000-square-meter room, at least over 1000 devices were placed, a density that could be described as defying the heavens.
Furthermore, each server was encased in silver-white metal. Zuckerberg looked closely and found that he couldn’t even find a single ventilation slit… This was even more shocking to Zuckerberg than the tight packing of the server room itself. This wasn’t a server room; it was clearly an electric oven!
“Mr. Huang, this server room of yours probably hasn’t been activated yet, has it?” Zuckerberg couldn’t help but ask.
“No, this server room has been activated. In fact, this server room is currently handling the entire data traffic of Facebook’s southern network center!” Mr. Huang said calmly.
“How is that possible?” Zuckerberg’s eyes nearly bulged out when he heard that. As the object of imitation for his Weibo, he had conducted very detailed research on Facebook.
This research didn’t stop after the imitation; it even intensified. He specifically assigned a team of 20 people to monitor Facebook’s every move comprehensively, collecting Facebook data through various means and paying close attention to Facebook’s new features.
In fact, apart from some key data that he couldn’t obtain, Zuckerberg likely knew Facebook better than 99% of its employees. Therefore, he was very clear that Facebook’s current user base was actually 1.5 times larger than Weibo’s, and its data traffic was ten times that of Weibo.
This was because Weibo still dared not fully enable its video function, only allowing certain special accounts to use it. After all, once video traffic entered, it would be like a nuclear strike on Weibo’s entire network center.
But Facebook was different. Although Facebook’s video function was still restricted, it was no longer the invitation-only system that it was when first launched. It was now an application system and very easy to obtain.
Facebook’s video function rollout was divided into five stages.
The initial stage was an invitation system, meaning only accounts invited by Facebook could enable the video function. The first to receive an invitation was Leslie Cheung, followed by various celebrities and some well-known individual accounts. Ultimately, no more than 300 accounts received invitation qualifications.
Three months later, the invitation system underwent its first expansion, changing from limited invitations to batch invitations. Approximately 100 accounts were invited to enable the video function each day. During this stage, over 3,000 accounts had their video functions enabled, basically covering all of Facebook’s high-profile blue-verified accounts.
The next step transitioned to an application system. Initially, all blue-verified accounts were eligible to apply.
Later, any account with more than 10,000 followers became eligible to apply.
And now, in the fifth step, the fan limit has been removed altogether. Any account can apply. As long as the official review does not detect it as a fake account and there are no violations, the video function can be easily enabled.
Therefore, Facebook’s video traffic is now enormous, with over 80% of the traffic consisting of various videos, which made Zuckerberg, who was secretly collecting data, tremble with fear.
However, Zuckerberg could explain and comfort himself by the fact that Jiangnan Group produced its own servers, thus keeping server costs very low. But he also marveled at how much money Jiangnan Group had to spend and how much vast land it had to purchase to build such data centers.
This was also the reason why Zuckerberg directly purchased large plots of land to build his own data center. Zuckerberg wanted his Weibo to have the same massive video functionality as Facebook, as he believed that as a great American enterprise, it couldn’t be inferior to a Chinese company.
But now, to be told that this small 1000-square-meter room was handling a quarter of Facebook’s data traffic… Zuckerberg wouldn’t believe it even if he had achieved immortality.
For such a massive amount of data, even using the world’s most powerful traffic processing servers, it would require at least around 5,000 units. Here, there were only 2,000 units!
Putting aside the quantity, such a colossal amount of data would consume an astonishing amount of electricity, and the heat generated could melt all the plastic panels in this place.
Yet, the temperature in the room was currently less than 20 degrees Celsius. How was this possible?
“The server model here is our latest ‘Five Elements’ data processing server unit from Jiangnan. Each server unit can process five times the data of the best IBM servers in the world!” Mr. Huang said calmly.
“Five times! That’s impossible!” Zuckerberg was about to explode. This wasn’t just any arbitrary data; it was a five-fold difference in data processing capability, a staggering amount of data that would throw IBM’s face into the mud and completely monopolize the entire market!
If IBM knew about this, they might as well directly apply for an antitrust investigation into Jiangnan Group.