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Google's first Suncatcher orbital data center test launches October 1

52 points · 96 comments · sbulaev

logancbrown · 1790368439 · focus · HN ↗
Genuine question: why are there so many people up-in-arms on orbital data centers? Like they have a personally vested interest in ensuring their opinions on failure are correct? There are many people on HN that despise it and say it will not and will never work, but here we are, they are flying them up to space and presumably, will start working soon.
1. jjulius · 1790368879 · focus · HN ↗
  >... orbital data centers...
  >... but here we are, they are flying them up to space and presumably, will start working soon.
  No, this isn't "here we are". This is not an orbital data center, this is just something that will test TPU cooling functionality in orbit for only 15 minutes at a time.
  1. logancbrown · 1790369986 · focus · HN ↗
    This argument sounds reminiscent of "this is not AGI/ASI". Arguing over definitions is arbitrary. This is an operational data-center that is processing data on TPUs. That alone qualifies as an orbital data center.
    lovich · 1790370536 · focus · HN ↗
    Anyone managing a terrestrial data center that had this level of performance and called it a “data-center” much less “operational” would be fired for cause.
    And ah, I see you’ve been dancing around with definitions and goomba fallacies around this thread. You definitely asked your question in good faith.
    yongjik · 1790372151 · focus · HN ↗
    Whether we like AI or not, LLMs did open up a horde of use cases that were impossible a few years ago. Orbital data centers are not like that: their value proposition is that they will provide the exact same service already offered by land-based data centers. So the only way for it to make economical sense is if it's cheaper. It's not.
    It's more like blockchain than LLM: there's no clear value proposition and you have to squint really hard to see any perceived benefit.
    rsynnott · 1790417664 · focus · HN ↗
    > The prototype is roughly the size of a refrigerator and houses four Google TPUs, operating on roughly 1 kilowatt of solar power
    Yeah, no, sorry, this is not a datacenter.

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