China has launched the primary 12 satellites of a deliberate 2,800-strong orbital supercomputer satellite tv for pc community, reports Space News. The satellites, created by the corporate ADA House, Zhijiang Laboratory, and Neijang Excessive-Tech Zone, will be capable of course of the info they gather themselves, somewhat than counting on terrestrial stations to do it for them, based on ADA Space’s announcement (machine-translated).
The satellites are a part of ADA House’s “Star Compute” program and the primary of what it calls the “Three-Physique Computing Constellation,” the corporate writes. Every of the 12 satellites has an onboard 8-billion parameter AI mannequin and is able to 744 tera operations per second (TOPS) — a measure of their AI processing grunt — and, collectively, ADA House says they will handle 5 peta operations per second, or POPS. That’s fairly a bit greater than, say, the 40 TOPS required for a Microsoft Copilot PC. The eventual purpose is to have a community of 1000’s of satellites that obtain 1,000 POPs, according to the Chinese government.
The satellites talk with one another at up-to-100Gbps utilizing lasers, and share 30 terabytes of storage between them, based on House Information. The 12 launched final week carry scientific payloads, together with an X-ray polarization detector for choosing up transient cosmic phenomena resembling gamma-ray bursts. The satellites even have the potential to create 3D digital twin knowledge that can be utilized for functions like emergency response, gaming, and tourism, ADA House says in its announcement.
The advantages of getting a space-based supercomputer transcend saving communications time, according to South China Morning Post. The outlet notes that conventional satellite tv for pc transmissions are gradual, and that “lower than 10 per cent” of satellite tv for pc knowledge makes it to Earth, as a result of issues like restricted bandwidth and floor station availability. And Jonathan McDowell, an area historian and astronomer at Harvard College, informed the outlet, “Orbital knowledge centres can use solar energy and radiate their warmth to area, lowering the vitality wants and carbon footprint.” He stated each the US and Europe might perform related initiatives sooner or later, writes SCMP.