[deleted]
Starcloud
111–120 of 234 posts
Re: Starcloud
#112Last time these folks were mentioned on HN, there was a lot of skepticism that this is really possible to do. The issue is cooling: in space, you can't rely on convection or conduction to do passive cooling, so you can only radiate away heat. However, the radiator would need to be several kilometers big to provide enough cooling, and obviously launching such a large object into space would therefore eat up any cost s…
If the Mass Effect games have taught me anything, it's that heat dissipation in outer space is hard.
Re: Starcloud
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if "normal" RDIMM ECC would be enough to mitigate most of those radiation bit-flipping issues. If so it wouldn't really make a difference to earth-based servers since most enterprise servers use RDIMM ECC too
You'll get bitflips elsewhere besides just in RAM. A bitflip in L1 or L3 cache will be propagated to your DIMM and noone will be the wiser.
I thought server CPUs already handled this? E.g. for Epyc https://moorinsightsstrategy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/...
> Because caches hold the most recent and most relevant data to the current processing, it is critical that this data be accurate. To enable this, AMD has designed EPYC with multiple tiers of cache protection. The level 1 data cache includes SEC-DED ECC, which can detect two-bit errors and correct single-bit errors. Through parity and retry, L1 data cache tag errors and L1 instruction cache errors are automatically corrected. The L2 and L3 caches are extended even further with the ability to correct double errors and detect triple errors.
Re: Starcloud
#114Cooling will be a real bitch. Shielding also. And latency.
And power, maintenance, cost...
Re: Starcloud
#115We have officially "jumped the shark." If this had been posted on April 1st I would have laughed at this and said "great joke guys."
Re: Starcloud
#116How is a multiple square-kilometer radiator not just an inevitable Kessler syndrome disaster? Edit: Some back of the envelope calculation suggests that the total cross-sectional area of all man-made orbiting satellites is around 55000 m^2. Just one 4km x 4km = 1600000m^2 starcloud would represent an increase by a factor of about 300. That's insane.
Sounds like a "slippery slope" fallacy without further explanation.
Not sure what the slippery slope is here. The linked page imagines a 4km x 4km radiator/solar array. The cross-sectional area of the array is going to be directly proportional to the probability of impacting high velocity space debris. In such an event the amount of debris that would be generated could also scale with the area of the array. This seems bad
Re: Starcloud
#117I've barely started reading the post, but
> “In space, you get almost unlimited, low-cost renewable energy”
Low cost???????? Sending a solar array into space would probably rank among the most expensive forms of energy production.
> Starcloud’s space-based data centers can use the vacuum of deep space as an infinite heat sink.
Well, good luck getting the heat out first. I hope you planned for some big radiators to go along your 5GW solar array.
Re: Starcloud
#118I've barely started reading the post, but > “In space, you get almost unlimited, low-cost renewable energy” Low cost???????? Sending a solar array into space would probably rank among the most expensive forms of energy production. > Starcloud’s space-based data centers can use the vacuum of deep space as an infinite heat sink. Well, good luck getting the heat out first. I hope you planned for some big radiators to go…
Yeah especially considering the next line is:
> Constant exposure to the sun in orbit also means nearly infinite solar power
Is it an infinite heat sink or an infinite power source?!
Re: Starcloud
#119Basic datacenter technicians will be the new astronauts, swapping burnt CPUs and failed hard drives in space.
Re: Starcloud
#120They state that in 10 years all data centers will be in outer space. I state that in 10 years we will look back and think this was a ridiculous idea. The meta and maintenance costs, the pollution of sending them to space, the space pollution itself, the outer space radiation, the extra redundant error correction needed*,* and much more all speak against this. Why not throw that trillion dollars into optical computing…
I think the bigger thing about a space-based data center that it's not on anyone's land, and not easy to inspect or capture. Solar energy available around the clock allows it to be self-sufficient for a long time. I suppose there will be some demand for high-security, high-price setups like that.
> that it's not on anyone's land
Oh you can bet that, if we assume this happens in 10 years, various countries will absolutely do a "land grab" up high. There is no escaping it.