Cisco is preparing for the eventuality of space-based datacentres, its CEO has revealed.
Asked by Nilay Patel, host of the Decoder podcast, whether we should put datacentres in space, Chuck Robbins replied, “absolutely, yes”, adding that he “wouldn’t doubt” the people currently talking about the possibility of doing so.
The comments came just days after Elon Musk’s SpaceX reportedly filed for an IPO to fund efforts to launch up to a million datacentre satellites into orbit to bypass power and water limits on Earth.
In contrast, OpenAI boss Sam Altman has branded the idea of datacentres in space “ridiculous”, saying “we’re not there yet” when it comes to the maths of launch costs relative to the cost of power on Earth, as well as issues like fixing broken GPUs.
Datacentre experts have also cast doubt over the concept, saying it could face some of the same constraints that led Microsoft to abandon its underwater datacentre experiment.
Robbins’ comments also come as growing demand from Earth-based AI datacentres have seen vendors like Cisco and HPE struggle to provide the channel with enough kit.
But Robbins told Patel that Cisco is working on what it needs to do to make its portfolio work properly in the conditions that exist in space.
“There’s a lot of challenges figuring out how to make it all happen. Yeah, but given [Elon Musk’s] history, I wouldn’t doubt him, and we’re going to prepare to have our technology ready,” he said.
Cisco’s efforts on this front are in the “very early stages”, he added, however.
“My head of product came and said, ‘we really have to be prepared for datacentres in space’. And I looked at him like he was crazy.
“We don’t even know everything we need to do yet, but we’re in the early stages of just making sure the atmospheric issues, the temperatures, I mean, all those things will have to be taken into consideration.”
