Earth-bound data centers are going to be around for a while, but Google is just one company looking to put them into space.
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The New York Times points out that while the move is an important one, the satellite will be limited in terms of its processing power. It will feature just four Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) and be similar to a single Earth-bound server in terms of capabilities. It will be powered by solar panels capable of providing a single kilowatt of power to the tensor chips.
While clearly limited, the orbiting server is set to handle AI requests for up to a year, although it will remain in orbit for up to six years. After that, gravity will take hold, and the satellite will burn up during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.
“We don’t expect, to be perfectly frank, that we’ll have anything usefully operational in the next few years,” the SVP told the Times . He went on to compare the venture to Google's driverless cars, saying that Google was testing those "like 15 years before anything showed up." The idea of users accessing a version of Gemini running in space is some way from coming to fruition.
China launches 'Supercomputing-1' AI satellite as orbital data centers gather momentum
Intel's proposed two-tier satellite network puts the brains of satellite constellations in higher orbit
Google reportedly developing 'Frozen v2' chip with Gemini's architecture etched into the silicon — engineers project 6 to 10 times more tokens per watt than latest TPUs
But it's also something that Google and other companies are set to investigate further. Alongside Google, Elon Musk (xAI, Tesla, SpaceX), as well as Jeff Bezos ( Amazon ) and Sam Altman (OpenAI), have been making noises about the prospect of orbital data centers for some time now. China has already put its own AI compute into orbit . Even Intel has a patent for orbital data centers of its own.
Putting servers into space does have its issues, not least the problem of getting them there. Radiation and computers don't get along, and the radiation found in space can cause "bit flips" that change the way chips process data. Google's answer, for now, is to restart the chips every so often to reset them. The company has also devised a cooling system that will vent heat directly into space — since the usual fan-based solution simply won't work without any air.
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- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/google-is-blasting-an-experimental-ai-data-center-into-orbit-first-satellite-will-feature-just-four-tensor-processing-units#main
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