Google is sending a teensy-tiny AI data center to space
It's an experiment to see how the chips hold up in the harsh vacuum of the cosmos.
Testing AI Hardware in Orbit
Google's Project Suncatcher, which ultimately aims to put large AI installations in low-Earth orbit, is preparing for a milestone event. The company will be sending a teensy-tiny AI data center into space to see how it reacts to the harsh conditions.
A satellite named MVP will be aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket set to launch on October 1, where it will be placed into orbit. This isn't a full data center in the conventional sense. It's four specialized computer chips called tensor processing units which, combined, offer the power of a single server in a data center.
We're taking AI to space with Google. Project Suncatcher explores putting AI compute in orbit, powered by the sun. Soon, we'll be sending our first satellite into space to start testing that idea.
Solar panels will supply just one kilowatt of power to juice the chips, which is equivalent to the energy needed to run a hair dryer. Google says this will be enough to test the hardware against the harsh conditions of space. The company plans to let the satellite answer simple AI queries for a year, though it will orbit Earth for six years before it burns up during a descent into the atmosphere.
Radiation and Engineering Challenges
These chips have undergone a battery of tests to simulate the void of space, including getting blasted with large amounts of radiation at Crocker Nuclear Laboratory. Radiation can seriously mess with computer chips, causing something called bit flips, which essentially flips the binary code from a one to a zero, or vice versa.
What's the solution to bit flips? Google is taking the tried-and-true PC method by restarting the chips when they act up. There's also a proprietary cooling system in place that uses layers of conductive material to expel heat into space, though it only works for around 15 minutes before the chips have to be turned off to cool down.
The initial experiments at Crocker reportedly went well enough to take the next step, which is shooting the chips into the great beyond. However, this doesn't mean we are particularly close to having actual AI data centers in space. James Manyika, the Senior Vice President for Research, Technology & Society at Google, urges the public to temper their expectations regarding an immediate operational rollout.
Expanding from one satellite to a vast network of them that operate like a giant data center will take years and enormous funds. If you do this on a large scale, there are additional engineering problems.
Those additional engineering problems are significant, dealing with radiation and bit flips that become exponentially more complex when scaling from four chips to thousands.
Cosmic rays are an issue, as they are actual physical particles traveling quickly through space that could punch through and melt semiconductor junctions. It's also extremely expensive to launch this equipment into space, with a single Falcon 9 launch costing around $74 million.
Scaling up the cooling system looks to be difficult. Google's current system only works for 15 minutes with the small amount of heat generated by just four chips, and standard heat dissipation does not work in space. Power supply must also be considered since using a solar array for four chips differs vastly from powering a legitimate data center.
Despite these challenges, Google plans on scaling this project up. It wants to launch two similar satellites next year, with the eventual goal of launching 80 satellites that will fly in close formation to better process AI queries, alongside exploring a much larger satellite design.
