Google has a ‘moonshot’ plan for AI data centers in space

Google has dreamed up a imaginable caller mode 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’ probe task Google announced contiguous called Project Suncatcher.

If it tin ever get disconnected the ground, the task would fundamentally make space-based information centers. Google hopes that by doing so, it tin harness star powerfulness around-the-clock. The imagination is harnessing a near-unlimited root of cleanable vigor that mightiness let the institution to pursuit its AI ambitions without the 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 the future, abstraction whitethorn beryllium the champion spot to standard AI compute,” Travis Beals, a Google elder manager 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. 

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

A large situation volition beryllium to guarantee that the satellites tin pass good with each other. Competing with information centers connected onshore “requires links betwixt satellites that enactment tens of terabits per second,” Google writes. Maneuvering constellations of satellites into choky formations tin assistance them execute that, possibly flying satellites wrong “kilometers oregon 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 equivalent to a 5 twelvemonth ngo beingness without imperishable failures.”

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