I'm yet to be convinced of the utility of orbital computing...
this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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Or the brand of AI the general public reads about
For 5g non-terrestrial orbital computing is used to reduce the amount of data that needs to be sent back to the ground, saving some of the rather precious bandwidth.
For an example that I'm just pulling out my ass and probably doesn't represent actual functionality, you don't want a satellite to relay data that might be on the same bands as valid user data, but is not connected to a service subscriber. If you don't identify and do this filtering locally on the satellite you end up needing to beam data dirtside where it will just be thrown out by the core network.
I imagine AI will be used to filter data to be sent to earth from photos and such.
it could be good for really nearby LLM inference 🤷
Normal server hardware won't survive the radiation very long and radiation hardened CPUs don't have the processing power for AI.
Also how are they going to get rid of excess heat, without water/air to dump it into? Really massive heavy heatsinks? Doubtful.
The satellites will require large thermal radiators. That's the only way to get rid of heat in space.
Four years from now, when the hardware is out-of-date, what will they do with them?
Shades of putting servers in underwater containers to save on cooling costs.