High Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC)

Benefits to NASA Funded Missions: The HPSC Formulation Study determined that a rad-hard general-purpose multi-core architecture is the best fit for future NASA application needs. Multi-core provides direct architectural support for power scaling and a range of fault tolerance methods. Furthermore, a multi-core flight computing system can be operated flexibly, with ongoing dynamic trades among computational performance, energy management and fault tolerance. This Game-Changing investment in a next-generation flight computing system will address both performance and system-level advances, and serve to reinvent the role of computing in space. Benefits to NASA Unfunded & Planned Missions: An advance in flight computing capability and flexibility will be relevant to future robotic science missions, especially those requiring autonomy on planetary surfaces and/or deep space, as well as missions carrying high data rate sensors and instruments. In addition, an advance in flight computing directly support human-robotic interaction and crew autonomy for destinations such as Mars. Benefits to Other Government Agencies: The same advance in flight computing capability and flexibility will be relevant to DoD missions that monitor the Earth environment and utilize high data rate instruments. Benefits to the Commercial Space Industry: The commercial space industry will benefit due to the extensibility of the HPSC architectural approach. There will be a chip vendor but also potentially many providers of board-level solutions. Benefits to the Nation: Potential benefit due to contribution to continued engineering and system leadership for space exploration. More »