This week marked the launch of the HPE Spaceborne Laptop-2 and a brand new configuration. We have now been following this undertaking since 2021, when the HPE Spaceborne Laptop-2 was introduced. Now, the undertaking has been launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The Spaceborne Laptop undertaking is designed to research using commercial-grade server {hardware} in area. The primary aim of this system is to see how the {hardware} performs in area as a result of conventional strategies of constructing particular area chips imply that these chips are a lot slower and dearer. For missions that may depend on extra closely on AI sooner or later, getting extra TOPS in area when latency will be measured in minutes is a crucial problem. On this era, the servers are HPE and the storage is Kioxia. That could be a huge deal after the primary mission.
HPE Servers and Kioxia SAS and NVMe SSDs to the ISS within the HPE Spaceborne Laptop-2
First off, there are two principal node varieties for the Spaceborne Laptop-2. There’s a HPE Edgeline EL4000 server with a GPU. There’s additionally a HPE DL360 Gen10.
For these questioning, HPE beforehand informed STH that the server {hardware} tends to be a number of generations behind simply due to the prolonged mission planning course of. Additional, after the primary mission, HPE discovered that the servers had been typically dependable, however one of many greatest challenges was really the NAND reliability within the SSDs. That is among the causes that the collection of Kioxia SSDs is an even bigger deal than one may assume on the outset.
General, this appears to be a giant improve over the earlier era. Right here is the primary era Spaceborne Laptop-1 at HPE Uncover 2019.
Trying within the again, we see customized cooling and energy connectivity. One thing else you might even see is that the servers within the HPE Spaceborne Laptop-1 weren’t HPE servers.
The undertaking was began by SGI, which was later acquired by HPE. SGI’s servers had been often Supermicro. HPE used these Supermicro servers and an unnamed change (rumored to be from a vendor which will or could not rhyme with “Swellanox”) within the first mission.
Technically, the Supermicro servers had been SGI and, subsequently, HPE. It additionally gave HPE deniability within the occasion the servers failed of their mission.
As a substitute, the servers accomplished their mission with nice success, however the NAND storage was one of many famous challenges.
Closing Phrases
For this mission, Kioxia SSDs are getting used, and maybe extra mundane ones than we might have thought. There are 4 960GB worth SAS RM sequence drives and 4 30.72TB PM6 SAS SSDs. There are additionally eight 1TB XG sequence SSDs for the Edgeline. Whereas ~130TB of storage might not be excessive for terrestrial installations, that may be a enormous quantity of storage for area applications. We’re excited to see how the brand new programs and parts survive their mission to the ISS with the Spaceborne Laptop-2.
