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Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
Astronauts will soon be able to use a supercomputer to help run science experiments on the International Space Station. The Spaceborne Computer, a joint project between NASA and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, launched to the ISS in 2017. It’s been limited to running diagnostic tests, figuring out how well a computer built for Earth could survive in space.
Now it will be available to process data for space-based experiments, which should save researchers on the ground valuable time. It will also save precious bandwidth in the tightly-controlled stream of data that NASA manages between the ISS and the ground. The exact experiments that the supercomputer will run in the next few months have not yet been disclosed.
Source: A supercomputer on the ISS will soon be open for science experiments
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @11:26AM (10 children)
Isn't outer space the ideal place for overclocking since you have access to extremely low ambient temperatures?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fraxinus-tree on Tuesday November 13 2018, @12:06PM
Short answer: no. You can't have both solar energy and cooling for cheap in space.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @12:15PM (3 children)
Short answer: no. Overclocking and cosmic radiation don't mix very well at all.
(Score: 2) by fraxinus-tree on Tuesday November 13 2018, @12:26PM (2 children)
Problems caused by cosmic radiation are not much related to clocking. I imagine they did some shielding.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AndyTheAbsurd on Tuesday November 13 2018, @01:13PM (1 child)
They actually didn't add any extra shielding on these machines.
Instead, they're relying on redundancies to detect and correct errors. Since it's extremely unlikely that cosmic radiation will affect two systems in the same way, if the mass of a second computer is less than the mass of shielding required for protecting a single computer, it makes more sense to do it this way, as "getting mass to orbit" is still an extremely expensive part of doing anything in space.
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday November 13 2018, @02:52PM
Agreed. Non expert here, but I thought another consideration was IC feature size. I.e., 7 nm chips would be much more susceptible to gamma-induced bit flips than 45 nm for example, so space-destined ICs had to be larger (and maybe older) tech. (?) Anyone know for sure?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @12:22PM
Short answer: no. An object in space primarily radiates away heat since there are very few molecules coming into contact with the object. Compare to air or liquid cooling of CPUs which use conduction and convection.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday November 13 2018, @12:25PM (1 child)
Short answer: No. Why would you ever want to overclock something (which literally means "run outside of manufacturer specifications") on a space mission that cost millions to put up there, even if it's not doing anything critical to life?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @12:37PM
To mine interplanetary crypto?
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Tuesday November 13 2018, @02:04PM (1 child)
No. There's no where to dump the heat. On earth you have convection, conduction and radiation. In space, you only have radiation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_radiation#Selected_radiant_heat_fluxes [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @04:32PM
Is that your short or long answer?