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An in-space construction firm says it can help build massive data centers in orbit (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] -2 points 1 year ago (14 children)

If only they'd hired you, they would have known.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    well any actual engineer who isn't trying to sell them will readily tell you that a datacenter in space is a very bad idea.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    They'd better not try to sell them to anyone who has access to an engineer, then. Just a single engineer will bring the whole scheme crashing down.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    and forget about running 4nm chips in space. shit has to be radiation hardened, which means bigger process nodes and higher energy cost, and lower speed

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Another thing they probably didn't think of. Nobody's run chips in space before.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    they did think of it. lots of people have. I just mentioned what was required. Rad hardened processors are usually 10 to 20 times slower than what we have on the surface

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    So don't use rad-hardened processors, put them in a radiation vault instead. Those become more mass-efficient the more hardware you're putting inside them.

    Really, I assure you the people proposing these things have put more thought and expertise into it than a bunch of random Fediverse commentators.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    for starters, at the loads they're running at, they have literally hundreds of gpu failures a day. How do you propose doing that in space?

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Include spares.

    I hope they're reading this thread and taking notes, they probably didn't think of that.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    and the infrastructure and robotics to replace them, of course.

    Assuming 200 nvidia H100 failures a day (conservativo, reality is worse) that's an extra ~340kg of weight you'd need to launch per day. Which is an extra 120 tons yearly.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    So, one Starship launch per year. Doesn't sound like a problem.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    at least two, you can't stuff a rocket full of just gpus, you need something to actually dock and deliver the payload in space. So you need to launch at least 2 rockets (in a non-reusable configuration, so you need to pay for the whole rocket and the launch) to ship a bunch of gpus that are, at best, only 10% as fast as usual.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Okay, two then. It's still cheap.

    in a non-reusable configuration

    Why do you say that? 120 tons is well within Block 4's projected capacity in reusable configuration. 240 tons is almost within it, even.

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