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Chinahas launched its first clump of satellites for a planned artificial intelligence ( AI ) supercomputer configuration in space .
The 12 satellites are the beginnings of a proposed 2,800 - satellite fleet led by the company ADA Space and Zhejiang Lab that will one day form the Three - Body Computing Constellation , a satellite web that will directly process datum in space .
China launches a Long March rocket carrying communication equipment from Wenchang Space Launch Site on 3 March 2025.
The satellites , which launched on board a Long March 2D rocket from China ’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center May 14 , are part of a plan to lower China ’s dependence on ground - based computers .
Instead , the satellites will use the cold vacuum of space as a natural cooling system system while they crunch data with a combined computing capacity of 1,000 peta ( 1 quintillion ) operations per second , according to the Chinese government .
" It ’s a good metre to retrieve about how we can put AI into space , not just in your laptop or cellphone , " Wang Jian , director of Zhejiang Lab , said at the Beyond Expo technical school conference in Macau Wednesday ( May 21 ) , theSouth China Morning Post ( SCMP ) report . " place has , again , become the frontier for us to imagine about what we can do in the next 10 , 20 or 50 years . "
Whether satellites are used for GPS systems , mood sensing element , telescopes , weather forecasting or communication , many organization more and more bank on the observations made by orb spacecraft . But this raw data take to be bray back on Earth , meaningit ’s limitedby transmission bandwidths and the minute windows it can be sent as satellites excrete over ground stations , meaning a lot of it is lose .
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To overcome this restriction , companies have start designing satellites capable of " edge computing , " where raw information is processed on board the satellite before being transmitted down to the ground . Doing these energy - intensive computations in orbit also allows the satellites ' powerfulness to be drawn from solar panels and their waste heat ray into space , thereby lowering their carbon footprint .
Each planet in China ’s launch contains an 8 billion - parametric quantity AI model that can do 744 tera performance per second ( TOPS ) , according to a translatedADA Space statement , with the number shooting up to five peta operations per instant when their processing business leader is combined . For reference , Microsoft ’s AI Copilot+ laptops can currently work on at a rateof around 40 spinning top .
orbit in an raiment , the satellites will communicate with each other using optical maser , one of which is equipped with an X - beam polarisation detector for learn cosmic phenomenon such as gamma - shaft of light burst .
The calculation constellation gets its name from thethree - body problem , a question first formulated byIsaac Newtonthat involves predicting the chaotic motion of three objective orbit each other under the effects of solemnity . The plight served as inspiration for the notable science - fiction trilogy of the same name written by Chinese author Liu Cixin , alongside a Netflix adaption .
This initial breathing in carries over to the propose aim of the constellation , accord to Wang , who highlighted the complexity of work with multiple entity in a call for increase external cooperation in the labor . He claimed that the raiment will permit other international organizations to build and utilize its computers , the SCMP reported .
Although the U.S. and Europe haveperformedtestson space computers , China ’s array is the first to be deployed at an operable scale . Meanwhile , former Google CEO Eric Schmidt , following his purchase of a manipulate interestingness in the California launch troupe Relativity Space , has proposedlaunching data point centers into orbit .
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" People are planning 10 gigawatt information centers , " Schmidt saidduring an April 9 hearingwith the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce . " It sacrifice you a sense of how fully grown this crisis is . "
" One of the approximation that I recollect is most likely is that data core will require an additional 29 gigawatts of power by 2027 , and 67 more gigawatts by 2030 , " he tot . " These things are industrial at a scale that I have never insure in my liveliness . "
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