<i>can run operations 30 to 100 times faster than a standard iPhone or tablet</i><p>“Supercomputers” are now only 30-100 times faster than a mobile phone?<p>Not sure if that says more about the “supercomputer” or the phone.<p>This was also amusing:<p><i>The computer also remained operational even thought it lost its primary upload and download connection to NASA up to eight times a day for periods ranging from 3 seconds to 20 minutes. That kind of independence might prove useful on an eventual moon base or mission to Mars, to work around communications delays back to Earth.</i><p>As if a computer that continues running when its communication link goes down is an accomplishment?
It doesn't sound like they're doing anything novel compared to computing in harsh environments here on Earth. It's pretty routine to monitor the output of computation and cross-verify when an error is hazardous and there is risk of corruption. Frequently when the system is used for some critical task and there's an error with a less critical subsystem it will operate in a "degraded state." And ECC RAM has been standard on these kinds of computers for ages.<p>The only thing novel about this is that they sent a computer designed in this millennium and it survived the radiation unshielded.<p>Regarding the SSD/NAND flash, it makes sense that it would die relatively quickly. It's constantly being bombarded by energetic particles and the cell sizes, geometries, and write voltages are low and small enough that I could see bit flips accumulating relatively quickly from cosmic rays. The drive's firmware would then determine that the write block had failed and mark it permanently as bad. What's probably needed here is a different firmware that attempts to erase the block and then tests it and puts it back into service if it passes. Or different cell geometries and higher write/erase voltages are needed. It's an interesting note.
It sounds like the author missed the purpose of the experiment, when they mentioned the moon. This would not work on the moon. The ISS is within the radiation belts and has a lot of protection.<p>What this experiment is about is satellites. Which is a big deal. If you can put stuff in LEO and use COTS parts, that saves a ton of money. And a super computer is much bigger than the testing they've done with small systems and cube SATs. Moon hardware will always have to be rad hard, but this shows that the commercialization space can be cheaper than was previously thought.
> The experiment was designed to test the performance of the HPE Spaceborne Computer, which is comprised of 32 separate cores that work together and can run operations 30 to 100 times faster than a standard iPhone or tablet<p>That doesn't sound that super to me! "100 times faster than a phone" just doesn't have an impressive ring to it.
This feels like "old HP" aka "good HP" back when they were at the forefront of innovation.<p>Basically before they bought Compaq and sold off Agilent and when they produced calculators that weren't made of poop.
> Hewlett Packard<p>The times change. Back when I worked in the MCC building, newcomers with an HP calculator were told "you better not bring that into the building again."<p>The chief flight director (Gene Kranz) apparently had a thing about HP.
Now I'm just thinking of the logistics of running a datacenter in space. Energy and cooling seem like easily solved problems (solar and, well, space as solutions respectively) but I'm sure upload/download isn't great. That said SpaceX's satellite internet stuff was promising gigabit speeds IIRC. And obviously the shielding would be an issue.