HPE looks to put a supercomputer in space – Network World

Andy Patrizio is a freelance technology writer based in Orange County, California. He's written for a variety of publications, ranging from Tom's Guide to Wired to Dr. Dobbs Journal.

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise is preparing to send a supercomputer to where no supercomputer has gone before into orbit.

HPE and NASA have worked on what HPE calls the Spaceborne Computer for the better part of a year. It uses commercial off-the-shelf computer components, meaning its a fairly generic supercomputer. Its decent Ars Technica quotes HPE as stating its a 1 teraflop computer, but that wouldnt get it on the Top 500 list by a mile.

The Spaceborne Computer is built on HPE's Apollo 40 system, a high-density server racks that houses the compute, storage and networking in one case, much like a hyperconverged system. HPE Apollo is typically used for data analytics and high-performance computing (HPC).

It will be carried to the International Space Station aboard an August 14 flight by one of SpaceXs Dragon rockets, which is sending supplies to the space station. The main goal of the system is to test how well an HPC system will handle the rigors of space travel, as well as perform some research on the space station.

Apparently space is very tough on compute technology. Astronauts take ruggedized laptops with them, but they dont last very long due to abuse from radiation and solar flares because they dont have Earths atmosphere to shield them.

The Spaceborne Computer runs a specialized Linux operating system and uses a specially designed water-cooling system, but it has not been "ruggedized" to withstand solar radiation. Instead, it will be a sacrificial lamb to see how systems are impacted by the rigors of space, so engineers can address it in future systems.

Because of the toll taken on equipment, and due to the lack of space, most heavy computing work is done on Earth. Data is sent down from the International Space Station, crunched on Earth, and sent back. Given the distance to Earths orbit, thats not such a burden. But for a ship in orbit around Mars, that means a 20-minute transmission either way on top of the computing time.

So, by moving a supercomputer to the International Space Station, HPE and NASA hope to reduce some of the latency between the system and astronauts on missions to deeper space if and when that ever occurs.

Andy Patrizio is a freelance journalist based in southern California who has covered the computer industry for 20 years and has built every x86 PC hes ever owned, laptops not included.

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HPE looks to put a supercomputer in space - Network World