Thread

Google’s Project Suncatcher to put ML infrastructure in space

233 points · 553 comments · xnx

kin · 1790291957 · focus · HN ↗
For those questioning viability, there's a startup called Starcloud <a href="https://www.starcloud.com/">https://www.starcloud.com/ with a public whitepaper explaining a bit their hardware and economics <a href="https://www.starcloud.com/wp">https://www.starcloud.com/wp. They've already had one small proof of concept launched. Not trying to promote, I just heard about them on the ycomb podcast
1. a11r · 1790296231 · focus · HN ↗
  That whitepaper puts the cost of a 40 MW cluster at $167m on land and $8.2m in space, inclusive of launch costs.
  1. alienthrowaway · 1790309592 · focus · HN ↗
    how much area do you need to radiate away 40 MW, assuming you want to keep your GPUs at a toasty 90 celcius. Every space datacenter fan/promoter enthuses about the free solar power, but forget to mention how the heat will be dissipated.
    anon48293 · 1790312633 · focus · HN ↗
    Is there not enough space in space?
    gf000 · 1790323721 · focus · HN ↗
    Space, as in the near absence of material that makes it an almost perfect insulator. Add to it constant compute producing heat and you just cooked your GPUs with no way to dissipate.
    NetMageSCW · 1790371037 · focus · HN ↗
    That must be why everyone on the ISS has died of heat stroke.
    gf000 · 1790371937 · focus · HN ↗
    You surely walk around with fans all around your body similarly to GPUs, even though you are in the same environment as them?
    If not, then you may realize how stupid your comment is.
    Good4boothee · 1790329828 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't know why people are so fixated on heating as some kind of gotcha. If we already assumed magical 16km^2 solar array, then we can also assume matching size radiator, with heatpumps. If ISS can do it, then there is no technical issue with doing it on bigger scale. It "only" doesn't make any sense from financial viewpoint, terrestrial datacenters beat it in every way.
    NVidia's recent support for warm (45 °C) water cooling for their new racks probably had more impact on price of compute than than space servers will ever have.

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