Part 6/13:
Operating high-performance AI hardware in orbit requires overcoming radiation challenges. Google has tested their latest TPUs (Trillium V6) against proton beam radiation, demonstrating resilience for moderate radiation exposures. Still, issues such as bit flips, silent data corruption, and single-event effects remain considerations, especially for training large models.
Cooling and Thermal Management
In space, cooling is non-trivial—there’s no atmosphere for conventional convection. Instead, radiative cooling methods must be employed, which involve sophisticated thermal radiators designed to dissipate heat effectively in a vacuum. This remains one of the key engineering hurdles for deploying dense compute hardware in orbit.