SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
HPE supercomputer is still crunching numbers in space after 340 days
HPE's mini supercomputer launched into space last year has survived the harsh conditions of zero gravity and radiation for almost a year. The Spaceborne Computer isn't the greatest supercomputer and has a performance of one teraflop, runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and is built out of two HPE Apollo Intel x86 servers with a 56Gbps interconnect.
NASA wanted to see if a computer would last for a year - roughly the time it takes to reach Mars - inside the International Space Station (ISS). So, HPE offered to tuck its Spaceborne Computer aboard SpaceX's CRS-12 rocket and send it into the abyss. "It has now been in space for 340 days", said Mark Fernandez, America's HPC technology officer at HPE and co-principal of the experiment, during a panel talk at the ISS Research & Development Conference on Wednesday in San Francisco.
[...] The machine hasn't been radiation hardened, and relies on a few software tricks to stop it from corrupting, something Fernandez calls "autonomous self-care". Continuous health checks helps keep the computer in check, and when it detects any potential hardware failures, it runs at a slower pace or enters "idle mode", where it powers down.
Previously: HPE Supercomputer to be Sent to the ISS
Related: Rodent Research-9 Experiments Sent to the ISS
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Friday July 27 2018, @11:20PM (2 children)
Congrads to all involved in this stress test. However, the objective is to run the computer during a Mars mission and the Van Allen belt will not be available to protect the machine from radiation. I wonder if there will be a next step involving a computer leaving low earth orbit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 28 2018, @12:14AM
It was a test... definitely not run anything critical... maybe mine some bitcoin?
If your test was successful, at least you have some bitcoin... go buy your engineers and assemblers some beer and chips!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 28 2018, @01:11AM
It's a lot easier to shield the machine to its present level than to shield it to the level found on Earth.