Space Micro Inc. — National Aeronautics and Space Administration SBIR Phase I: Z2

Description

Space Micro Inc. and GSI Technology, Inc. propose the development of a optimal real-time data sorting inference processing unit (IPU) board for Earth observation missions with a need for higher processing power.nbsp; This computer will have the ability to plug into the main communication bus and offers enhanced parallel processing power, much to the effect of a supercomputer cluster.nbsp; The main system would have the ability to reconfigure this IPU device to scale up and down, specifying a specific state depending on the needs of the current task.nbsp; If one desires, performance limitations can be enforced on the parallel processing unit. For added performance and redundancy, multiple processors will be included on the same board, with the capability to stack multiple units together.As sensors are quickly advancing, they are producing large quantities of data which is revealing the critical downsides of space based platforms: 1) they require large amounts of mission data and calibration data to be downlinked, and 2) their data products cannot be conveyed in near real-time.nbsp; Both of these issues can be resolved with the use of high performance processors (Mou et al., 2017).nbsp; Modern satellites are constantly increasing their abilities to acquire large datasets quickly and efficiently, but this is also proving to be a hindrance.The goal of this proposal, and its subsequent technologies, is to begin the transition from sensor design to mission capabilities through the development of highly integrated, intelligent computational systems.