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Re:xAI joins SpaceX by moomoo11 on Monday February 02, 2026 @05:17PM (#46862625)
They'll just be decommissioned and burn up in space. nVidia will make space-grade GPUs on a 2-3 year cycle.
Re:xAI joins SpaceX by pantalaimon on Monday February 02, 2026 @05:18PM (#46862646)
They don't need to be space grade, consumer hardware will do just fine.

For AI a random bit flip doesn't matter much.

Re:xAI joins SpaceX by q3k on Monday February 02, 2026 @05:28PM (#46862803)
Only if that bitflip happens somewhere in your actual data, vs. some GPU pipeline register that then locks up the entire system until a power cycle. Or causes a wrong address to be fetched. Or causes other nasty silent errors. Or...

Try doing fault injection on a chip some time. You'll see it's significantly easier to cause a crash / reset / hang than to just flip data bits.

'rad-triggered bit flips don't matter with AI' is a lie spoken by people who have obviously never done any digital design in their life.

Re:xAI joins SpaceX by gbriel on Monday February 02, 2026 @05:34PM (#46862924)
As long as they stay below Van Allen belts and deal with weaker magnetic shielding in sun synchronous orbit (high latitudes).

I would say they probably something a little beefier than consumer hardware and just deal with lots of failures and bit flips.

But cooling is a bigger issue probably?

Re:xAI joins SpaceX by ohyoutravel on Monday February 02, 2026 @05:26PM (#46862780)
Random bit flips might even improve output.
Re:xAI joins SpaceX by adastra22 on Monday February 02, 2026 @05:39PM (#46863027)
Single upset events in a modern GPU are not bitflips. They destroy the surrounding circuitry and usually disable the whole unit.
Re:xAI joins SpaceX by pantalaimon on Monday February 02, 2026 @05:49PM (#46863189)
If that happens you disable that CUDA core. If you GPU is too damaged, you deorbit the satellite.
Re:xAI joins SpaceX by adastra22 on Monday February 02, 2026 @05:55PM (#46863292)
Yeas, and this will happen within weeks of launch with the orbits under consideration.
Re:xAI joins SpaceX by adastra22 on Monday February 02, 2026 @05:38PM (#46863017)
You do realize that “space-grade” involves process changes that intrinsically incur orders of magnitude efficiency losses? Larger process sizes, worse performing materials. It’s not just a design thing you can throw money at.
Re:xAI joins SpaceX by moomoo11 on Monday February 02, 2026 @11:00PM (#46866320)
Pre-requisites:

Ketamine