Google Has A ‘moonshot’ Plan For Ai Data Centers In Space

Google has dreamed up a imaginable caller measurement to get astir assets constraints for energy-hungry AI information centers connected Earth — launching its AI chips into abstraction connected solar-powered satellites. It’s a ‘moonshot’ investigation task Google announced coming called Project Suncatcher.

If it tin ever get disconnected nan ground, nan task would fundamentally create space-based information centers. Google hopes that by doing so, it tin harness star powerfulness around-the-clock. The dream is harnessing a near-unlimited root of cleanable power that mightiness let nan institution to pursuit its AI ambitions without nan concerns its information centers connected Earth person raised erstwhile it comes to driving up powerfulness works emissions and utility bills done soaring energy demand. 

“In nan future, abstraction whitethorn beryllium nan champion spot to standard AI compute,” Travis Beals, a Google elder head for Paradigms of Intelligence, writes successful a blog post today. The institution besides published a preprint paper, which has not undergone world adjacent review, detailing its advancement truthful acold connected this endeavor. 

“In nan future, abstraction whitethorn beryllium nan champion spot to standard AI compute.”

There are awesome hurdles Google would request to flooded to move this scheme into reality, which it explains successful nan blog and paper. Google envisions its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) orbiting Earth connected satellites outfitted pinch star panels that could make energy almost continuously, making them 8 times much productive than akin panels connected Earth, according to Google. 

A awesome situation will beryllium to guarantee that nan satellites tin pass good pinch each other. Competing pinch information centers connected onshore “requires links betwixt satellites that support tens of terabits per second,” Google writes. Maneuvering constellations of satellites into tight formations tin thief them execute that, possibly flying satellites wrong “kilometers aliases less” of each other. That’s overmuch person than satellites run today, and already space junk from collisions is simply a growing risk. 

On apical of that, Google has to guarantee that its TPUs tin withstand higher levels of radiation successful space. It has tested its Trillium TPUs for radiation tolerance and says they “survive a full ionizing dose balanced to a 5 twelvemonth ngo life without imperishable failures.”

It would beryllium beautiful pricey to nonstop those TPUs into abstraction astatine nan moment. But a costs study nan institution performed suggests that launching and moving a information halfway successful abstraction could go “roughly comparable” to nan power costs of an balanced information halfway connected Earth connected a per-kilowatt/year ground by nan mid-2030s. Google says it’s readying a associated ngo pinch nan institution Planet to motorboat a mates prototype satellites by 2027 successful bid to trial its hardware successful orbit.