For real, users never give enough information and so many metrics are not measurable by a user. We take user’s bug reports and match them to the backend telemetry to see exactly what happened.

Worst is that to be GDPR compliant you have to be opt-in and can’t hold the data forever. So data is hard to come by.

You have two options for shielding, one is shield the entire thing like we do with the ISS because people live there and radiation is bad for living cells. Two is to shield the smallest unitary entities to use the least amout of materials, like a shield per chip. This is physics not magic, radiation does not just go away. When everything add to launch weight it does not make sense. Redundancy systems also add to launch weight.

LEO is still protected by the atomsphere and magnetosphere fully. Geostationary orbits start to have issues.

I don’t think you don’t understand the difference between the amout of cosmic rays, which are basically any flying particle, on Earth compared to space. Small nodes would be dealing with multiple per cpu cycle. Multiple could be 1 million a second, I am trying to figure out a way to measure. It would be something like distance from atomsphere(rate of total particles) x probably of an object the size of a transitior getting hit(rate of collions). I could probably find the bit-flip rate for an off-the-shelf space resistant chip and infere the rate for the size I need, but there are other factors. A bit will not flip on every collision, shrinking transistors exponentially increases this.

They are not using 6nm process chips in the ISS. The computers themselves were made before that process existed. An off-the-shelf space hardened computer system uses 65nm process. Cosmic rays is a very general term, it covers basically everything that flies around in space, that includes sources like the sun, which is hammering everything in the solar system with rays. Outside of the atomsphere there are so many more cosmic rays that non-space hardened computers can not even make calculations. Combined with the difference between the bit flip rate when you make transistors 10 x smaller is also fucked up high. One CPU cycle will have enough erros to make the computer useless. It’s a multi-faceted problem and when the largest limiting factor is weight & size, it can’t be solved with scaling.

There is an unsolvable compute problem. The average PC on earth has multiple bit-flips a year from cosmic rays. The space hardened chips we use are 50nm and the chips used from inference are 4 to 6nm. 50nm is far more cosmic ray resistant than 6nm because of the transistor size. Are we supposed to think making H100s with a 65nm process is possible? The speed of light creates a die size limitation as well.

An average PC with 8GB of RAM will have around 4 bit-flips per year because of cosmic rays. When you remove the wonderful protective atmosphere that number is so greatly increased that they have to use older chips, encased in a shield for any computer system that is launched into space. Explain to me how you are supposed to have stability with 100 000 5nm process chips constantly be hit by cosmic rays? The answer is a shitload of lead or steel or concrete. It is fucking unrealistic to send that much shielding material into orbit. Option B is getting the equivalent compute with 50nm process space hardened chips into orbit, which is also unrealistic because of the shear amount of chips required to have a useful data center.

Anyone who immediately does not shut down the idea of orbital data centers should not be in the field of tech, and especially should not be the Csuite of a tech company. I can’t belive anyone even humors the idea, it’s a fucking joke.