Peregrine Falcon - Modular Multi-Mission Processing for Spacecraft

To meet the demands of modern space missions, there is a need for a general purpose computing system that can be used on a variety of platforms for a variety of use cases. This enables rapid development and deployment of new missions, which is not possible if each mission requires a custom-design computing solution. The commercial industry is already following this trend.  We propose to develop an SDA-specific variant of our Falcon GPU, build prototypes, and complete a comprehensive test campaign, resulting in a flight-ready design at TRL 6. This standardized design will reduce lead times for new hardware from 1-2 years to 3-4 weeks. With the modifications proposed here, the new design will be ready to integrate with many satellite buses used for current and future SDA missions. Additionally, this design will enable easily scaling the level of computing power or redundancy on a per mission basis, by adding more modules. This technique of building clusters of high-performance computers is in widespread use for ground-based computing. We will extend this practice to SDA-specific spacecraft. Thus SDA missions can add additional computing capabilities as required.  Falcon is Colossus’ latest high performance GPU-based data processor. It includes a 12-core ARM Cortex A78AE CPU, a 2048-core Ampere GPU, 64 Tensor Cores, a vision processor, integrated data storage, and basic connectivity. For more advanced connectivity or extra features, the Falcon design integrates an add-on board. Just like swapping out a graphics card on a desktop computer on Earth, this allows customization without changing the design of the core system. The work plan to build a SDA-specific variant of Falcon will focus on a new add-on board for these missions. We will interview several manufacturers of SDA satellites, as well as members of SDA, and compile a list of features and connectivity requirements. That will inform the design of a new add-on board for these missions. This add-on board will support a super-set of these requirements, even if not all features or connections are used on all missions.