Chapter 92: Transistor Count
He didn’t know where Aegis got these ideas from, but for some reason, it really wanted Zephyr to choose from its suggestions. There were at least thirty different funky names Aegis had come up with, but Zephyr was not willing to even consider them at all. He had the beginnings of an idea for a name forming in his head already, but he put it aside for the meantime. ’I can always do that later.’ he thought to himself.
Right now, what he really wanted to try was spellcasting.
He immediately started up the mana barrier spell that he was most familiar with, expecting the usual lag from thought to actualization, but instantly, within a second, the mana barrier materialized, covering his entire body.
"Wha—!!" Zephyr jolted in shock. The speed at which the spell actualized from his intention was so quick, it threw him totally off guard. From Aegis’ explanations when he was learning about the FinFET transistor design, he knew for sure that his casting speed was going to get exponentially faster. But knowing it, and seeing it in action were two very different things.
The mana barrier even seemed more solid than he’d ever been able to make it, glowing with a soft yellow light. He didn’t like the yellow light though. It seemed too flashy. So with a thought, he urged the instance of the spell to change color to something more imperceivable, something more transparent and unseen. And slowly, it began to change with his intent, and within a few seconds—three to be exact, it became totally imperceivable to the naked eye. But it was still right there, covering Zephyr’s body.
"Holy shit..." Zephyr whispered in amazement. This made the little magic he’d been able to cast previously look so useless now. And this was without even having words like Logic Gates, or Registers embedded in his mana node inherently yet. This was simply origin working as his compiler—his clutch. But the fact that he already had the Transistor embedded into his mana node inherently meant origin could work with what he had on ground.
And he had a lot. A whole lot of transistors.
In this world, at this moment, Zephyr could confidently say there was no Exalted or Half-Exalted that had comprehended the word Transistor... or Flux switch—as the natives called it, more than he had.
Within his single mana node, Zephyr had been able to squeeze in up to fifteen million individual transistors at the very least. It was slightly higher than that, but he rounded down to a round figure of fifteen million.
This was all due to his FinFET design that made use of every available space of his mana node in a three dimensional form by stacking. His design was like a megacity with skyscrapers that allowed more to be done with less space compared to the planar design that was default for everyone else. Theirs was like a city of bungalows, taking more area per transistor, and leading to less efficiency because of the more spread out design. Communication between each transistor would take longer distances and use more mana for the journey to achieve the same effect, while also increasing the probability of loss of mana loss during the journey.
Zephyr had no such issues with his tight and vertical design. If he had gone ahead with the planar design, the limit of what he would’ve been able to fit on his mana node would have been at most two million transistors. But now he had almost eight times that!
It was basically like saying he had eight mana nodes. Eight peak mana nodes. If he estimated by what he thought normal geniuses might be able to comprehend—somewhere between 1 and 1.5 million transistors, then he was even closer to a sixteen node awakened, with better efficiency too!
Zephyr, still brimming with excitement, with the mana barrier covering his body, visualized the fire arrows spell that he had failed to cast for months. And instantly, without any difficulty, a fire arrow materialized in the air right above his hand, brimming with heat. The glow of the flame reflected off Zephyr’s gleaming eyes as he watched the spell. It looked like the most beautiful thing to him. This was his fire arrow spell. His. Finally. Something he’d been battling with for so long... yet now, within the snap of a finger...