Intel debuts new chip for space computing

Intel Corp., one of the world’s largest semiconductor companies, has spent the past several years quietly developing a processor for satellites as the company looks to tap growing demand for onboard artificial intelligence and data processing in a market long served by specialized aerospace chip makers. The processor, still undergoing testing, is designed for resilient, high-power performance in space — an environment too harsh and unforgiving for most hardware. In an interview, Sean O’Neill, deputy director of product development at Intel Government Technologies, said the chip is expected to be initially available to customers by the end of the year. Intel Government Technologies, the business unit focused on the federal market, posted a fact sheet in July on the new processor, called Starfire. Intel has not disclosed how much it spent developing Starfire, but O’Neill said the work was funded internally, underscoring the company’s belief that space computing is becoming a market worth pursuing. “We have skin in the game,” he said. The company concluded that the United States government’s growing emphasis on space as a critical domain of national security, coupled with the expansion of commercial satellite constellations, has created a market large enough to justify adapting commercial semiconductor technology for orbit, said O’Neill. “We took a hard look to see how we could support the government’s space technology, given their strategic shift to space,” O’Neill told SpaceNews. “We realized Intel has the majority of the capabilities necessary to develop space-grade technology in-house.” Intel is not new to government and aerospace computing, but Starfire marks a more direct push into the market for processors designed to operate aboard spacecraft. Space presents challenges that commercial processors are not typically designed to withstand. Electronics in orbit must operate through years of exposure to radiation that can corrupt data or damage circuitry, while enduring repeated thermal cycling as spacecraft move between sunlight and darkness. Those demands have historically pushed satellite manufacturers toward older, lower performance processors because qualifying newer chips for space can take years. Intel said Starfire is intended to fill that gap by adapting a modern commercial system-on-chip architecture for the space environment. The company says the processor incorporates hardware and software features intended to mitigate radiation effects and is designed for missions lasting more than a decade. A system-on-chip, or SoC, combines several computing functions in a single package. Unlike traditional satellite computers that may rely on separate chips for different tasks, Starfire integrates a central processing unit with graphics, neural and image processing capabilities, O’Neill said. That would allow spacecraft to perform more sophisticated AI workloads while reducing the size, weight and power required onboard. System-on-chip technology h…