(Credit: AMD)
AMD chips are now powering the newest Starlink satellites to deliver connectivity from space.
As The Verge first reported, AMD touted the development in a Wednesday earnings presentation, saying aerospace players, including SpaceX, are buying AMD's Versal custom chips.
"Our Versal portfolio is also being adopted broadly across multiple aerospace customers," AMD CEO Lisa Su said during the earnings call. "As one example, SpaceX recently launched their latest generation broadband satellites powered by Versal AI Core adaptive SoCs."
The company didn’t provide more details. But the Versal AI Core chips can be customized to fit a client’s needs to deliver both "breakthrough" AI performance and wireless acceleration, according to AMD. “The real-time processing unit is ideal for applications [that] need low latency, determinism, and real-time control,” the company’s product page adds.
In addition to aerospace companies, AMD notes it’s been selling the Versal AI Core chips to telecommunication firms for use in 5G networks. This suggests SpaceX is using the Versal AI Core chips to speed up the data processing over the Starlink satellites, which have recently included beaming cellular data to smartphones on the ground.
In Tuesday’s earnings call, AMD’s CEO said the company has also cemented the final designs for a next-generation Versal chip, which could also attract customers such as SpaceX.
"To build on this momentum, we taped out 'Telluride' last quarter, the first product in our second-gen Versal family that delivers up to 10x more compute and enables AI application acceleration on a single chip," Su said.
SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But there’s an indication the company has also been working on its own processors for Starlink equipment in addition to using AMD chips. The SpaceX job portal has listed several roles for "silicon engineering" for Starlink. “In this role, you will be developing cutting-edge next-generation silicon for deployment in space and ground infrastructures around the globe,” one of the jobs says. “These chips are enabling connectivity in places it has previously not been available, affordable or reliable.”
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