I-Corps: Advancing Space Computing

I-Corps：推进空间计算

• 批准号: 2347117
• 负责人: Brock LaMeres
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: Montana State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-11-15 至 2024-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2347117&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Advancing; Space; Computing; Corps; Advancing; Space; Computing

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a radiation-tolerant computer for space and other applications. Radiation tolerance of electronic components is their ability to shield themselves from the radiation in their working environments. A single charged particle can knock thousands of electrons loose, causing electronic noise and signal spikes. In the case of digital circuits, this can cause results that are inaccurate or unintelligible. The goal for the proposed technology is to achieve the necessary levels of space computing technology reliability in the presence of radiation at a fraction of the cost of existing systems. The proposed technology is suitable for command and data handling tasks for small spacecraft that require lower performance but desire fault-tolerance. Modifications may be made to increase its performance by adding hardware accelerators. This higher performance version may be suitable for military and defense applications. The inclusion of malware mitigation may make the proposed technology applicable to critical infrastructure applications such as in the nation’s electrical grid, water treatment plants, and hospitals. Providing more reliable computers in these systems may lead to a more resilient infrastructure that will not fail when under stress.This I-Corps project is based on the development of a computer that is able to continue foreground operation in the presence of radiation-induced faults and repair faulted circuity in the background. The proposed technology takes advantage of reconfigurable commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) parts instead of “hardening” the underlying computer materials to prevent faults from occurring. The proposed approach expects faults to occur and provides a recovery procedure to mitigate their impact. By avoiding the expensive hardening process and using COTS parts, the cost of the proposed technology is reduced over existing solutions. The architecture used to recover from faults simultaneously provides the ability to embed advanced algorithm accelerators in the computer to increase its computational performance with greater power efficiency than existing solutions. This approach has been tested on numerous space demonstrations including small satellites, the International Space Station, and in 2024 it will travel to the lunar surface for its harshest test yet. The advancement in computation provided by this technology may enable future space missions with greater science return and deeper exploration of the galaxy by increasing spacecraft autonomy and real-time science data processing. In addition, an additional layer of fault intrusion defense obfuscates the computing hardware so that malware cyberattacks may be detected and defeated. This extends the use of this technology beyond space and into terrestrial applications such as the nation’s critical infrastructure that must withstand both environmentally induced faults and human initiated cyberattacks.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发用于空间和其他应用的耐辐射计算机。电子组件的辐射耐受性是它们可以保护自己免受工作环境中的辐射的能力。一个带电的粒子可以将数千个电子设备松散，从而导致电子噪声和信号尖峰。在数字电路的情况下，这可能会导致不准确或难以理解的结果。提议的技术的目标是在存在辐射的情况下以现有系统成本的一小部分在辐射的情况下达到必要的空间计算技术可靠性。所提出的技术适用于小型航天器的命令和数据处理任务，这需要较低的性能，但渴望耐受性。可以通过添加硬件加速器来进行修改以提高其性能。此更高的性能版本可能适用于军事和国防应用。纳入恶意软件可能会使建议的技术适用于关键基础设施应用，例如在美国电网，水处理厂和医院。在这些系统中提供更可靠的计算机可能会导致更可靠的基础架构，而在压力下，该基础架构不会失败。此I-Corps项目基于能够在存在辐射引起的故障和维修故障电路的情况下继续前景操作的计算机的开发。拟议的技术利用可重新配置的商业现成（COTS）零件，而不是“硬化”基础计算机材料以防止出现故障。拟议的方法期望发生故障，并提供恢复程序以减轻其影响。通过避免昂贵的硬化过程并使用COTS零件，就现有解决方案而言，提出的技术的成本降低了。与现有解决方案相比，用于从故障中恢复的架构类似地提供了能够在计算机中嵌入高级算法加速器以提高其计算性能的能力。这种方法已在包括小型卫星，国际空间站在内的众多空间演示中进行了测试，2024年，它将前往月球表面进行迄今为止的Harmhest测试。该技术提供的计算进步可能会通过增加航天器自治和实时科学数据处理，使科学回报更大，对银河系进行更深入的探索，从而使未来的太空任务。此外，另一层故障入侵防御使计算硬件混淆，以便可以检测并击败恶意软件网络攻击。这将这项技术的使用扩展到了空间之外，并将其用于陆地应用，例如国家的关键基础设施，必须承受环境引起的故障和人类启动的网络攻击。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查审查标准来通过评估来诚实地诚实地支持。