China has launched the primary 12 satellites of a deliberate 2,800-strong orbital supercomputer satellite tv for pc community, stories Area Information. The satellites, created by the corporate ADA Area, Zhijiang Laboratory, and Neijang Excessive-Tech Zone, will be capable of course of the information they acquire themselves, relatively than counting on terrestrial stations to do it for them, in accordance with ADA Area’s announcement (machine-translated).
The satellites are a part of ADA Area’s “Star Compute” program and the primary of what it calls the “Three-Physique Computing Constellation,” the corporate writes. Every of the 12 satellites has an onboard 8-billion parameter AI mannequin and is able to 744 tera operations per second (TOPS) — a measure of their AI processing grunt — and, collectively, ADA Area says they will handle 5 peta operations per second, or POPS. That’s fairly a bit greater than, say, the 40 TOPS required for a Microsoft Copilot PC. The eventual aim is to have a community of 1000’s of satellites that obtain 1,000 POPs, in accordance with the Chinese language authorities.
The satellites talk with one another at up-to-100Gbps utilizing lasers, and share 30 terabytes of storage between them, in accordance with Area Information. The 12 launched final week carry scientific payloads, together with an X-ray polarization detector for selecting up transient cosmic phenomena akin to gamma-ray bursts. The satellites even have the aptitude to create 3D digital twin knowledge that can be utilized for functions like emergency response, gaming, and tourism, ADA Area says in its announcement.
The advantages of getting a space-based supercomputer transcend saving communications time, in accordance with South China Morning Submit. The outlet notes that conventional satellite tv for pc transmissions are sluggish, and that “lower than 10 per cent” of satellite tv for pc knowledge makes it to Earth, because of issues like restricted bandwidth and floor station availability. And Jonathan McDowell, an area historian and astronomer at Harvard College, advised the outlet, “Orbital knowledge centres can use solar energy and radiate their warmth to house, decreasing the vitality wants and carbon footprint.” He stated each the US and Europe might perform comparable initiatives sooner or later, writes SCMP.