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
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Back in 2017 two high-powered GNU/Linux computers were sent into orbit and are still running. They are long overdue for retrieval but are, more than 530 days later, still working. The goal of the project was to test the durability of such systems in preparation for travel to Mars, where data must be processed on site because of the delay in sending it to Earth and then transmitting the results back to Mars. So far autonomous management software has handled all of the hardware problems.
The servers were placed in an airtight box with a radiator that is hooked up to the ISS water-cooling system. Hot air from the computers is guided through the radiator to cool down and than circulated back.
Mr Kasbergen said there had been problems with the redundancy power supply as well as some of the redundant solid-state drives.
But he said the failures were handled by the autonomous management software that was part of the experiment.
The devices will need to be inspected back on Earth to find out what went wrong.
Earlier on SN:
Supercomputer on ISS will soon be Available for Science Experiments (2018)
HPE "Supercomputer" on the ISS Survives for 340 Days and Counting (2018)
HPE Supercomputer to be Sent to the ISS (2017)
(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?
(Score: 3, Informative) by suburbanitemediocrity on Tuesday November 13 2018, @02:10PM (2 children)
Super computers are used for batch processing, long running, non-interactive tasks. Better suited for sometging on th =e ground where power and cooling are plentiful and cheap. The space environment is better for data collection. Increasing the space station bw and lowering latency would make more sense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @10:07PM
You are correct. This is an example of what plagues the ISS, which is that "microgravity is of micro-interest."
Fifteen years later, this is sadly still the case. "Figuring out how well a computer built for Earth can survive in space"???? OMFG!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @10:30PM
Edge computing man, if you're not computing on the edge you're taking up too much bandwidth!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14 2018, @12:07AM
I even link it up for you if unfamiliar with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewar! [wikipedia.org]