"Google explores building data centers in space using constellations of solar-powered satellites to meet the computing demands of AI machines and models on Earth. Named Project Suncatcher, the research project expects to use the energy directly from the sun to run the data centers equipped with solar panels, which, as a result, can handle more computing power and energy used by machine learning systems and language models on Earth."
"An additional design element for Google's AI data centers in space includes optical links that use light instead of radio waves to send data for faster communication between satellites and reduce delay. Each satellite would fly close to others in a formation about one kilometer wide, and the formation would be managed by machine learning models that control position and movement to avoid collisions."
Project Suncatcher envisions AI data centers in space composed of many small, solar-powered satellites operating as a distributed computing cluster. Each satellite would carry solar arrays, computing chips such as Google Tensor Processing Units, heat pipes, radiators, and free-space optical communication links. Satellites would fly in a formation roughly one kilometer wide, orbiting in near-constant sunlight to maximize power and reduce Earth communication time. Machine learning models would manage relative positions and maneuvers to avoid collisions. TPUs have been tested for radiation and could survive roughly five years in orbit, while cooling and communication latency remain key engineering challenges.
#space-based-data-centers #satellite-constellations #solar-power #ai-compute #free-space-optical-communication
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