It was probably always when, not if, Google would add its name to the list of companies intrigued by the potential of orbiting data centers. Google announced Tuesday a new initiative, named Project Suncatcher, to examine the feasibility of bringing artificial intelligence to space. The idea is to deploy swarms of satellites in low-Earth orbit, each carrying Google's AI accelerator chips designed for training, content generation, synthetic speech and vision, and predictive modeling. Google calls these chips Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs.
Although the TPU chips withstood radiation simulations in a particle accelerator, Google still faces hurdles ahead. According to Google's research paper, which Pichai posted in a thread, the final product would involve fleets of solar-powered satellites connected by optical links to exchange data, said the paper. Pichai said in the X post that thermal management and reliability are both challenging.
