Nobody wants a pig ugly, noisy AI data centre in their neighbourhood, taking up literal acres of space, putting strain on the power grid, stealing the municipal water supply and polluting what’s left with chemical run-off.
Indeed, it’s perhaps one of the only uniting elements on the American political spectrum right now. So much so that both republicans and democrats are campaigning on this issue ahead of the midterm elections in November. So, if voting districts wholesale reject new builds around the United States, where are the likes of Google going to build their data centres? In orbit of course!
Google has today posted an update on its Project Suncatcher moonshot, which aims to test the feasibility of building data centres in space. The company has announced it is sending a satellite into orbit loaded with Google Tensor chips. The goal is to see whether these chips could survive the radiation in space and be kept cool enough to operate at the same time.
“We’re working on a number of different approaches… including a combination of heat pipes and radiators to cool the chips,” Google says. “So far, our team has tested the technology in a thermal vacuum chamber that simulates both the thermal and vacuum environment in space. We’ll see how our new TPU cooling system works in space and refine our designs as we learn more.”
Google also says it faces challenges in ensuring satellite interconnectivity to ensure launches carrying dozens of chips can identify the positioning of their neighbours and, ultimately, work together. Google is gonna use lasers for this purpose, but the challenge lies in operating them at high bandwidth other short distances.
The company maintains it’s a long journey (literally, I guess) to getting those AI data centres up into orbit (and out of our lovely terrestrial surroundings), but the moonshot continues. Tests will continue in 2027.
“Exploring space as a viable location for scalable AI compute won’t happen all at once. It takes methodical engineering, starting with proving our hardware can handle the physical and unpredictable realities of operating in orbit. This first launch is about seeing what works, identifying points of failure, and applying those findings to future missions,” the company writes.
“Every transformative technology we’ve built at Google began with an audacious goal — and the discipline of working backward to solve hard problems all along the way. As our latest moonshot heads to the launchpad, our team is excited to share what we learn and the science driving this work forward.”
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