Chapter 25: Testing the GPU
Timothy stared at the black, alien-looking GPU, its faint veins of light slowly dimming until it looked inert, like any ordinary piece of hardware. Only it wasn’t. Every instinct told him this was something the world had never seen before.
He forced himself to look away and picked up the blueprints. Page after page of dense technical drawings spread across his desk. Transistor counts in the trillions. An architecture labeled Q-Nexus Parallel Flow. Cooling requirements that referenced materials he had never heard of: graphene lattice thermal sheets, phase-shift conduits, nano-fluidic reservoirs. Even the way the memory stacked was decades ahead of anything he’d read about online.
Timothy let out a shaky laugh. "This... this is insane."
But paper and schematics were one thing. Proof was another. If he wanted to sell this—or even use it—he had to test it.
His mind raced. How do you test a GPU that doesn’t exist on the market?
Timothy rubbed his forehead. No PC, no test. Simple as that.
The Reconstruction System was powerful, but it didn’t make him careless. If he tried to build something too flashy, someone might notice. Better to do it the old-fashioned way—buy a rig, keep it low profile.
The next afternoon, Timothy slipped out into the streets of Tondo. The air was heavy with exhaust fumes, the sidewalks crowded with street vendors selling fried bananas and bootleg DVDs. He passed a row of cramped internet cafés, their neon "PC RENT ₱20/HR" signs flickering above narrow doors.
One café near the corner had a handwritten cardboard sign taped to the window:
"For Sale – Used Desktop Units. Message the cashier."
Timothy stepped inside. The air was thick with sweat and cigarette smoke, the hum of dozens of machines filling the cramped room. Boys hunched over keyboards, shouts of "Rush B! Rush B!" echoing from a game of Counter-Strike.
At the counter, a sleepy-looking man in a tank top raised an eyebrow. "Yes, boss?"
"I heard you’re selling used desktops," Timothy said, keeping his tone casual.
The man jerked a thumb toward the back. "Old rigs. Nothing fancy. ₱10,000 (175$) each. You haul it, it’s yours."
Timothy followed him behind the rows of humming PCs. In the corner, stacked against a peeling wall, were five battered cases. Beige, scratched, one with a dent in the side panel. Outdated, sure—but functional enough to test hardware.
He pointed at one. "I’ll take that unit."
The cashier shrugged. "Cash?"
Timothy pulled out a wad of bills, crisp from the bank. The man’s eyes widened for a second, then he counted them quickly and shoved the tower toward him. "No monitor, no keyboard. Just the case."
"That’s fine."
Getting it home was the trick. The tower was bulky, heavier than he expected. He stepped out of the café and hailed a passing tricycle.
Timothy lifted the PC. "Tondo. Near Pier 4."
The driver whistled. "That’s heavy, ah. ₱120."
Timothy nodded without haggling. He slid into the cramped sidecar, the PC balanced on his lap as the tricycle rattled down uneven streets, weaving past jeepneys and pedicabs. Neighbors peered curiously when he finally arrived, watching as he struggled the tower through the gate and into his bedroom.
Inside, he set the battered desktop on his desk with a thud. Dust coated the vents, and the side panel groaned when he pulled it off. Inside was a jumble of aging parts—worn fans, tangled cables, a mid-range CPU that had seen better days.
Timothy wiped his palms on his jeans and reached for the NeuralCore NX-1. The alien GPU pulsed faintly as if aware of what was coming. He lined it up with the PCIe slot, heart pounding, and pushed.
Click.
The card slid in perfectly, locking into place like it belonged there all along.
He stared at it for a long moment, then whispered: "Alright. Let’s see what you can do."
He reconnected the panel, plugged the power cable into the wall, and pressed the button.
The machine hummed to life.
The fans whirred unevenly at first, sputtering like an old jeepney struggling uphill. Timothy held his breath, half-expecting smoke or a blown fuse. But then, something shifted. The faint glow from the NeuralCore bled through the vents—soft, steady, alive.
The monitor flickered once, twice, then stabilized. Instead of the sluggish boot screen he expected from a second-hand rig, a sleek black interface spread across the display, lined with silver glyphs and code he didn’t recognize.
His throat tightened. "That’s... not Windows."
A message appeared, sharp and deliberate, as if typed by an unseen hand:
[NeuralCore NX-1 Detected. Initializing Quantum-Optimized Environment.]
Lines of diagnostics scrolled rapidly. Temperatures, clock speeds, memory bandwidth—all off the charts. Numbers he knew were impossible. The GPU wasn’t running at gigaflops or even teraflops. The scale went further, units he’d only ever seen in speculative papers. Exaflops.
Timothy leaned closer, heart hammering. "It’s real. It’s actually real."
A second prompt appeared:
[Would you like to initiate Benchmark Mode?]
He swallowed hard and clicked "Yes."
Instantly, the desktop roared to life. The old fans whined, straining to keep up, while the NeuralCore stayed cool, its glow brightening with each passing second. The monitor displayed a simulation—millions of particles colliding, rendering in real-time with no lag. Even NASA-grade supercomputers would struggle with this, yet the NX-1 handled it effortlessly.
After less than a minute, the benchmark stopped. The result blinked onto the screen:
[Performance Index: 20.7 Exaflops. Estimated 2,500x current market-leading GPU.]
Timothy’s knees went weak. He had to grab the desk to steady himself. "Two thousand five hundred times...? This isn’t just ahead. This is..." He trailed off, unable to even finish the sentence.
Another line appeared:
[Blueprint archive available. Predictive simulation functions online.]
He blinked. Predictive simulation? His hands trembled as he navigated the menu. Options unfolded—financial forecasting, molecular modeling, logistics optimization, climate predictions. Each came with submenus, as if the GPU wasn’t just for rendering graphics but for bending reality through raw computation.
"What the heck is this GPU? This is too complicated," Timothy said and added. "Okay, should I email NVIDIA