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posted by mrpg on Friday July 27 2018, @10:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the there's-no-up(time)-in-space dept.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Saturday July 28 2018, @12:28AM

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Saturday July 28 2018, @12:28AM (#713886)

    No, because it was more than 200 days old, Microsoft already stopped supporting the motherboard chipset so updates are no longer available for it.

    Somewhere some space IT guy is getting bitched at as if he had been caught with his pants down for not upgrading the unit after 180 days because security, even though the upgraded version loses functionality.

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