Placing AI in area might sound like a sci-fi nightmare, however Google is considering the concept with a analysis endeavor known as Project Suncatcher. The concept is to place power-hungry knowledge facilities into orbit on solar-powered satellites, to allow them to be powered by limitless, clear vitality accessible 24 hours a day. That might mitigate the nastiest facets of AI cloud computing, like using energy crops that spew large quantities of CO2 into the ambiance.

Mission Suncatcher is a literal moonshot of the kind that Google used to do extra usually. The search large needs to place its AI chips, known as Tensor Processing Models (TPUs), into orbit aboard photo voltaic panel-equipped satellites. “Sooner or later, area could also be the most effective place to scale AI compute,” wrote Google senior director Travis Beals. “In the appropriate orbit, a photo voltaic panel will be as much as 8 instances extra productive than on Earth, and produce energy practically repeatedly, decreasing the necessity for batteries.”

Suffice to say, the concept poses quite a few challenges. That proximity to the solar would expose the TPUs to excessive ranges of radiation that may quickly degrade digital elements. Nonetheless, Google has examined its present chips for radiation tolerance and mentioned they’d be capable to survive a 5 yr mission with out struggling everlasting failures.

One other problem is the high-speed knowledge hyperlinks of “tens of terabits per second” and low latency required between satellites. These speeds could be onerous to attain in area, as transmitting knowledge at lengthy distances requires exponentially extra energy than on Earth. To realize that, Google mentioned it might have to maneuver TPU-equipped satellites into tight formations, presumably inside “kilometers or much less” of one another. That might have the additional benefit of decreasing “station retaining” thrust maneuvers wanted to maintain the satellites in the appropriate place.

The figuring out issue, although, is cash. Launching TPUs into area might not appear cost-efficient, however Google’s evaluation exhibits that doing so could possibly be “roughly comparable” to knowledge facilities on Earth (when it comes to energy effectivity) by across the mid-2030s.

Whereas it is at the moment solely a preliminary research paper, Google is planning to place Mission Suncatcher by way of some preliminary trials. It has teamed with an organization known as Planet on a “studying mission” to launch a pair of prototype satellites into orbit by 2027. “This experiment will take a look at how our fashions and TPU {hardware} function in area and validate using optical inter-satellite hyperlinks for distributed ML [machine learning] duties,” Google wrote.