SpaceX will deliver the HPE supercomputer to the ISS. How does this speed up a mission to mars?
Many of you yesterday watched the launch of the SpaceX CRS-12 rocket of the Ilona Musk company, which sent the spacecraft Dragon to the ISS. We watched it with a special thrill, because on board the Spaceborne supercomputer created by HPE.
This supercomputer is part of the joint NASA and HPE experiment, in which it will pass the first ever test of a commercially available high-performance system in space. The purpose of the system is to function without interruption in difficult conditions during the year, that is, a little longer than the flight to Mars will take. Under the cut more details about what we launched into space.
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To create a high-performance system capable of long periods of continuous operation, it is necessary to increase the resilience of technologies against external factors. The Spaceborne computer, created for the current mission, is based on HPE Apollo 40 class systems with a high-speed switching network, and runs on Linux. Although the hardware components of the system have not been modified, the company has designed a unique container with water cooling, and also developed a special system software, taking into account the limitations of the external environment and increased requirements for the reliability of calculations.
According to standard practice, for NASA to approve equipment for use in space, it is made physically more stable. There are enough threats in space: radiation, solar flares, subatomic particles, micrometeorites, instability of power supply and cooling. Physical strengthening takes time and money, and also adds weight. By the time of launch, computers have become obsolete for several generations, moreover they are sent into space after several years of use.
Instead, HPE engineers went through protection using system software, which will manage the debugging of computer systems in real time, as well as smooth the effects of errors caused by external conditions. Even without additional reinforcement, the system successfully passed 146 certifications and safety tests so that NASA allowed it to be used in space.
"At the same time, the astronauts will not be sysadmins," says Dr. Eng Lim Guo, HPE SGI Chief Technology Officer and one of the leaders of the experiment. Spaceborne Computer is placed in a container that will provide it with almost autonomous operation. It is fastened with standard NASA mounts, connected using standard Ethernet cables and 110-volt power supplies. The system will use solar energy for power supply. Since the container is essentially one closed module, researchers will not have to ask astronauts to set up servers.
Many of the calculations required for research projects in space still occur on Earth due to limited computing resources in orbit. Data transfer occurs with a delay, and if it is not so critical for projects in low Earth orbit, then with distance from the Earth and closer to Mars, it will become more and more. The data will take about 20 minutes to reach the Earth, and it will take another same time for the astronauts to get an answer. This will make research on the surface of the planet complex and potentially unsafe.
The landing on the moon 50 years ago was threatened by a computer error that occurred 8 minutes before landing. The on-board computer simply did not have enough computing power to process all the incoming data. Of course, modern smartphones, and indeed, calculators or washing machines, already have much more powerful computing resources than those that NASA had in the 1960s. However, the needs have grown significantly.
NASA's Mars Flight strategy provides that astronauts must rely primarily on themselves. It is extremely important that computers can cope with unexpected input data and continue miscalculations without transferring them to Earth. This will require a comprehensive analysis of the data, which will cover all available sources and draw conclusions in real time, wherever they come from: cameras, sensors, navigation systems or a database with all the weather data ever collected on Mars.
Data will come from a variety of sources. Sensors in wearable devices will constantly collect and process biometric information to track the slightest fluctuations in heart rate and other indicators. Cameras can analyze astronaut facial expressions to track aggression or stress levels. Navigation data will come in the onboard computer, which will need to constantly adapt the course, and in addition to track the status of the equipment and the need for repairs. Powerful computing resources will be critically important not only for automating routine tasks, creating simulations and working with artificial intelligence, but also for preventing catastrophes.
After we see how Spaceborne will show itself in space, in the next phases of the experiment, other computer systems will go to the ISS, for example, Memory-Driven Computing (memory-oriented calculations, see our article for more details ). The benefits of Memory-Driven Computing for projects in space and missions to Mars are in the ability to process data faster than the most powerful modern supercomputers. “We are creating an architecture that is very flexible,” says Kirk Brezniker, chief architect of Hewlett Packard Labs. “Whatever new tasks come in, they will have computing power and enough memory not only to store data from each sensor, but also to load data from previous missions.”
Additional High Performance Computing Resources and News:
This supercomputer is part of the joint NASA and HPE experiment, in which it will pass the first ever test of a commercially available high-performance system in space. The purpose of the system is to function without interruption in difficult conditions during the year, that is, a little longer than the flight to Mars will take. Under the cut more details about what we launched into space.
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What is unique about Spaceborne?
To create a high-performance system capable of long periods of continuous operation, it is necessary to increase the resilience of technologies against external factors. The Spaceborne computer, created for the current mission, is based on HPE Apollo 40 class systems with a high-speed switching network, and runs on Linux. Although the hardware components of the system have not been modified, the company has designed a unique container with water cooling, and also developed a special system software, taking into account the limitations of the external environment and increased requirements for the reliability of calculations.
According to standard practice, for NASA to approve equipment for use in space, it is made physically more stable. There are enough threats in space: radiation, solar flares, subatomic particles, micrometeorites, instability of power supply and cooling. Physical strengthening takes time and money, and also adds weight. By the time of launch, computers have become obsolete for several generations, moreover they are sent into space after several years of use.
Instead, HPE engineers went through protection using system software, which will manage the debugging of computer systems in real time, as well as smooth the effects of errors caused by external conditions. Even without additional reinforcement, the system successfully passed 146 certifications and safety tests so that NASA allowed it to be used in space.
"At the same time, the astronauts will not be sysadmins," says Dr. Eng Lim Guo, HPE SGI Chief Technology Officer and one of the leaders of the experiment. Spaceborne Computer is placed in a container that will provide it with almost autonomous operation. It is fastened with standard NASA mounts, connected using standard Ethernet cables and 110-volt power supplies. The system will use solar energy for power supply. Since the container is essentially one closed module, researchers will not have to ask astronauts to set up servers.
Why in space supercomputer?
Many of the calculations required for research projects in space still occur on Earth due to limited computing resources in orbit. Data transfer occurs with a delay, and if it is not so critical for projects in low Earth orbit, then with distance from the Earth and closer to Mars, it will become more and more. The data will take about 20 minutes to reach the Earth, and it will take another same time for the astronauts to get an answer. This will make research on the surface of the planet complex and potentially unsafe.
The landing on the moon 50 years ago was threatened by a computer error that occurred 8 minutes before landing. The on-board computer simply did not have enough computing power to process all the incoming data. Of course, modern smartphones, and indeed, calculators or washing machines, already have much more powerful computing resources than those that NASA had in the 1960s. However, the needs have grown significantly.
NASA's Mars Flight strategy provides that astronauts must rely primarily on themselves. It is extremely important that computers can cope with unexpected input data and continue miscalculations without transferring them to Earth. This will require a comprehensive analysis of the data, which will cover all available sources and draw conclusions in real time, wherever they come from: cameras, sensors, navigation systems or a database with all the weather data ever collected on Mars.
Data will come from a variety of sources. Sensors in wearable devices will constantly collect and process biometric information to track the slightest fluctuations in heart rate and other indicators. Cameras can analyze astronaut facial expressions to track aggression or stress levels. Navigation data will come in the onboard computer, which will need to constantly adapt the course, and in addition to track the status of the equipment and the need for repairs. Powerful computing resources will be critically important not only for automating routine tasks, creating simulations and working with artificial intelligence, but also for preventing catastrophes.
What's next?
After we see how Spaceborne will show itself in space, in the next phases of the experiment, other computer systems will go to the ISS, for example, Memory-Driven Computing (memory-oriented calculations, see our article for more details ). The benefits of Memory-Driven Computing for projects in space and missions to Mars are in the ability to process data faster than the most powerful modern supercomputers. “We are creating an architecture that is very flexible,” says Kirk Brezniker, chief architect of Hewlett Packard Labs. “Whatever new tasks come in, they will have computing power and enough memory not only to store data from each sensor, but also to load data from previous missions.”
Additional High Performance Computing Resources and News:
- HPE Supercomputer Portfolio Review: Record from HPE Digitize Conference in Moscow
- High Performance Computing News: New Systems and Our Supercomputers in Top500 and Green500
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/335656/
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