Thursday, June 29, 2023

Using software to harden computers for spaceflight

" The software monitored all aspects of the hardware, and when the system detected conditions outside the established parameters, it would alert the HPE team on the ground and go into a safe state until the problematic conditions passed. Although the system could not determine what was causing the problem, the software was designed to reduce performance in a stairstep fashion to keep the hardware safe."

" The HPE team sent two identical computer systems to the ISS for the SBC-1 mission and kept two identical systems on Earth as controls. This allowed the team to confirm SBC-1 was getting the correct results and to compare the time it took to get the results on Earth versus in space."

" SBC-1 did experience more correctable errors than the Earth-based control systems. The HPE team thinks this is likely due to solar flares, galactic radiation, and other phenomena encountered in space.
...
Both the fast- and slow-running systems encountered about the same number of correctable errors, ..."

" The space environment also took a particular toll on SBC-1's solid-state disks—out of 20 solid-state disks, 9 failed during the mission. The system had redundant copies of all data, so no data was lost, but the team plans to try different methods to better protect the solid-state disks during the SBC-2 mission."

" For the SBC-2 mission, HPE's computer system will be open to any investigator that could benefit from in-space processing."


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