China Is Building an AI-Powered Supercomputer Network in Space
byNoor Al-Sibai
May 23, 1:37 PM EDT
CASC
They’re all the rage right now.
Space Computer
China is launching a space-bound AI supercomputer — and the first batch of the satellites it’s comprised of was just sent up.
As the South China Morning Post reports, the so-called “Three-Body Computing Constellation” project launched the first 12 of its planned 2,800 satellites last week from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China.
The orbital supercomputer network will, when complete, allow for rapid in-orbit data processing rather than relying on terrestrial computing facilities to relay information to Earth and then back up to space. It also doesn’t require the copious amounts of water ground-based computers need to stay cool.
Each satellite, the SCMP notes, carries an eight-billion-parameter AI model that can process raw data in orbit. Paired with the satellites’ massive computing power of one quintillion operations per second, the constellation is expected, when complete, to rival the world’s most powerful terrestrial supercomputers.
Orbital Processing
Launched from northwest China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, each satellite carries, per a statement from the ADA Space startup that helped launch the constellation, unique scientific payloads that can do everything from detect gamma ray bursts to create “digital twins” of Earth terrain for emergency services and other industries.
While the concept of orbital computing is nothing new, this project is, as Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell told SCMP, “the first substantial flight test” of the gambit.
As McDowell pointed out, theoretical space cloud computing projects are “very fashionable” right now, with private companies like Axiom Space and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin planning their own orbital computing satellites.
With the launch of the first of its 2,800 satellites, China’s orbital supercomputer puts the country ahead of the United States in the rival countries’ space race, though there’s no telling which will actually cross the finish line first.
More on the space race: White House Announces It Can Now “Manipulate Time and Space”
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