Building an onboard high-performance computing platform based on SpaceWire and SpaceFibre

Abstract

This paper proposes the use of SpaceWire and SpaceFibre to jointly build a high-speed and low-speed hybrid satellite-based integrated information transmission network, and an open and distributed high-performance computing platform is designed and implemented. The built high performance computing platform is designed based on SpaceVPX architecture, so that SpaceWire and SpaceFbire serve as both the network for information transmission between the entire satellite equipment and equipment, and as a ”virtual backplane” to realize the information transmission between the hardware modules within the high-performance computing platform. Through the mutual cooperation and seamless connection between SpaceWire and SpaceFbire, the granularity of parallel computing of the on-board information system is refined from equipment to hardware modules, while with the design ideas of software-defined network and software-defined hardware, the hardware modules in physically different locations of the equipment are further formed into a logically integrated global information processing cluster to achieve the goal of multi-use and parallel reuse of the high performance computing platform with computing tasks assigned on demand and hardware modules enabled on demand. The goal is to lay the foundation for deep integration and linkage between satellite platforms and payload devices to meet the autonomous information processing and intelligence generation of satellites in orbit.