The fastest supercomputer on Earth is El Capitan located in the United States. With technological barriers, America's supremacy in the world of supercomputers is difficult for other countries to overtake. Therefore, China is thinking outside the box and has begun construction of the world's first supercomputer in space.
Yesterday, the first 12 satellites of the Star Compute program were successfully launched by ADA Space. The program, which also involves Zhijiang Laboratory and Neijang High-Tech Zone, wants to place 2800 satellites with artificial intelligence (AI) processing capabilities, which are given the name Three-Body Computing Constellation. When fully operational, it will be a network of space supercomputers with the ability to process 1000 Maps of Operations per Second (POP).
Each satellite also has an AI model with 8 billion parameters with a 100Gbps connection using lasers. Through this connection, 30 TB of storage is shared by the first 12 satellites to perform data processing in space.
With a supercomputer in space, the data collected will be processed on its own without having to be sent to Earth first. Among the existing problems is that the data collected cannot be sent to Earth quickly due to various weather factors.
This also reduces the need for data centers on Earth and reduces energy consumption because the satellite only needs solar power. The heat generated to process the data is also spread into space instead of the Earth's atmosphere.