China takes its chip war to space as it uses Tiangong space station to test processors and gain a tech edge
- Large-scale chip testing in orbit is crucial for China’s space ambitions
- China believes its biggest competitive pressure no longer comes from Nasa but from private space companies, represented by SpaceX
More than 20 new high-performance chips spanning the 28 to 16-nanometre process range have already passed testing. They are considerably more advanced than chips used by other countries in space.
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Nasa has said the chips it currently uses in space are based on 30-year-old technology. For example, the RAD750 processor used in the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful space telescope ever that was launched in 2021, was manufactured using antiquated 250-nanometre technology and has a clock frequency of only 118 MHz – less than a fraction of that of a typical smartphone chip.
It is expected that more domestic chip makers will soon be queuing up to put their top-tier offerings through the rigours of space testing, the team led by Liu Hongjin, of the China Academy of Space Technology, wrote in a peer-reviewed paper published in the Chinese academic journal Spacecraft Environment Engineering in December.
Conducting large-scale chip testing in orbit is a massive and challenging task, but it is crucial for China’s rapidly growing space ambitions.