Google has dreamed up a possible new approach to get round useful resource constraints for energy-hungry AI knowledge facilities on Earth — launching its AI chips into area on solar-powered satellites. It’s a ‘moonshot’ analysis venture Google introduced as we speak referred to as Undertaking Suncatcher.
If it might ever get off the bottom, the venture would primarily create space-based knowledge facilities. Google hopes that by doing so, it might harness solar energy around-the-clock. The dream is harnessing a near-unlimited supply of fresh power that may permit the corporate to chase its AI ambitions with out the issues its knowledge facilities on Earth have raised in the case of driving up power plant emissions and utility bills by soaring electricity demand.
“Sooner or later, area could also be the most effective place to scale AI compute,” Travis Beals, a Google senior director for Paradigms of Intelligence, writes in a blog post as we speak. The corporate additionally revealed a preprint paper, which has not undergone tutorial peer evaluation, detailing its progress to date on this endeavor.
“Sooner or later, area could also be the most effective place to scale AI compute.”
There are main hurdles Google would wish to beat to show this plan into actuality, which it explains within the weblog and paper. Google envisions its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) orbiting Earth on satellites outfitted with photo voltaic panels that would generate electrical energy nearly constantly, making them eight instances extra productive than related panels on Earth, in keeping with Google.
A significant problem might be to make sure that the satellites can talk properly with one another. Competing with knowledge facilities on land “requires hyperlinks between satellites that help tens of terabits per second,” Google writes. Maneuvering constellations of satellites into tight formations can assist them obtain that, maybe flying satellites inside “kilometers or much less” of one another. That’s a lot nearer than satellites function as we speak, and already space junk from collisions is a growing risk.
On high of that, Google has to make sure that its TPUs can face up to greater ranges of radiation in area. It has examined its Trillium TPUs for radiation tolerance and says they “survive a complete ionizing dose equal to a 5 12 months mission life with out everlasting failures.”
It might be fairly dear to ship these TPUs into area in the meanwhile. However a price evaluation the corporate carried out means that launching and working a knowledge heart in area may change into “roughly comparable” to the power prices of an equal knowledge heart on Earth on a per-kilowatt/12 months foundation by the mid-2030s. Google says it’s planning a joint mission with the corporate Planet to launch a pair prototype satellites by 2027 in an effort to take a look at its {hardware} in orbit.
