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HPE says it will run the first supercomputer benchmarks on the Moon
NASA will test coordination of three AI models trained on Earth, ISS, and lunar data.
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A fanless compute module will head to the Moon for supercomputer benchmarking, AI testing, and additional experimentation by NASA and Deloitte, as detailed in a Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) release. The company’s Spaceborne Computer-4 will run what HPE calls “the first high performance computing (HPC) benchmarks on the surface of the Moon,” riding on an Astrolab FLIP rover to the lunar south pole. The launch is slated for late 2026 under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative for a Moon Base program mission, in conjunction with a Voyager Technologies Griffin-1 lander.
Named benchmarks include High Performance Conjugate Gradients (HPCG), a supercomputing metric that complements High Performance LINPACK (HPL). AI testing will involve large language model (LLM) retrieval-augmented generation, vision inference, LiDAR processing, and an AI services container for AI app deployment. The LLMs “will deliver insights, analyze visual data, and support autonomous monitoring,” while the LiDAR processing involves mapping, navigation, terrain analysis, and infrastructure development.
Scott Wiest, HPE’s vice president, fellow and global sales chief technologist, said, “The next chapter of lunar exploration will depend on the ability to turn data into insights at the point of discovery.” HPE says “no other company or organization” has conducted such benchmarks on the Moon, with a presumption that no other parties’ planned HPC missions will get there first. HPE also assembled a software suite that handles the link to Earth-side systems and the secure delivery of results.
HPE’s “lightweight, self-contained, and fanless” advanced compute module is “built for space environments,” bringing AI and HPC “to the lunar edge,” as Wiest put it, or the “far-edge,” as HPE calls it. The computer blade is about 10 inches long and about 4 inches wide, about the size of a typical graphics card, and is made from two component cards, as HPE senior director Norm Follett explained on the company’s Technology Now podcast last year.
It includes 1TB of Kioxia storage, a low-power CPU, and a small GPU. The chassis is designed to shed heat into a rover plate, and the overall design is made for the Moon rather than being an off-the-shelf solution like International Space Station (ISS) units. Currently, HPE’s description of the unit lacks hard details on performance targets, power budgets, or chip vendors, but the eventual benchmark results will yield some information.
The original Spaceborne Computer launched in August 2017 on SpaceX’s CRS-12 to the ISS. It also ran HPL with HPCG, surpassing one teraflop, according to HPE. It was rack-installed and water-cooled; the fanless Computer-4 is quite miniaturized in comparison to the 124-pound original Spaceborne Computer. Spaceborne Computer-2, also on the ISS, is made of HPE Edgeline and ProLiant systems with Kioxia SSDs.
NASA will use the opportunity to run its Federated Learning for Unbounded and Intelligent Decentralization (FLUID) AI neural network, trained on data from the Earth, the Moon, and the ISS, coordinating three distinct models. The agency will also test a tuned LLM for semantic processing for handling onboard documents. Deloitte, for its part, will test its Silent Shield, “a new system to detect cyber intrusions” with near-real-time predictive analytics. Testing ideally occurs onboard, as the link to Earth is slow with low levels of bandwidth, Follett explained.
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