According to a joint project team from Beijing Power Machinery Research Institute and Dalian University of Technology, the module's response speed is ideal for “real-time optimization of fuel supply systems, fault diagnosis, and fault-tolerant control of scramjet engines.” Their peer-reviewed paper was published on March 13 in the Chinese academic journal Propulsion Technology.
US 'could send a strong message to China' with hypersonic missile test
US 'could send a strong message to China' with hypersonic missile test
Headquartered in the United States, Nvidia is the world's largest supplier of AI chips. Nvidia started selling his TX2i for industrial applications about 6 years ago. The module has a peak single-precision performance of 1.26 TFlops, about 1/50th the power of the company's most powerful AI chip, the H100.
But the H100 costs tens of thousands of dollars and is in short supply. The TX2i, on the other hand, can be had for a few hundred dollars, is not subject to U.S. export controls, and is widely available online.
When contacted by the South China Morning Post on April 12, NVIDIA said it had no comment on the matter.
The project team, led by Professor Sun Ximing, said in a paper that the TX2i module of the scramjet engine control system not only improved the range and stability of hypersonic aircraft, but also significantly reduced research and development costs. Ta.
“High-performance graphics cards provide great computing power, but require supporting equipment such as a hosting platform, power supply, and radiators.
“These controllers have drawbacks such as high power consumption, weight, and large size, which do not meet the aerospace industry's requirements for lightweight, compact embedded controllers,” Sun's team said in the paper. ing.
Because hypersonic flow field simulations are sequential in nature, requiring one event to occur before another can be calculated, industry experts generally recommend low-end models that are better at performing simple parallel calculations. We believe that such computational tasks cannot be accomplished using AI chips.
To solve this problem, Sun's team introduced new CPU and GPU architectures. It details how to tackle sequential parallel computing problems by ensuring that two different chip types work together.
The “step-by-step” guide provided in this paper provides detailed formulas and addresses potential engineering challenges such as simulation grid size limitations, memory management, code optimization, and specific compilation instruction schemes. is dealing with.
For increased versatility, the engine controller interface and communication protocols comply with international standards.
However, the engine is just one component of the overall weapon platform.
“Apply [the AI chip] “For hypersonic vehicles, further work is needed in inlet modeling, shock wave correction, and data modeling,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
Several important parameters involved in these tasks typically need to be obtained through extensive wind tunnel testing and actual flight.
It remains unclear why the researchers chose Nvidia chips for their experiments, and the authors could not be reached for comment.
Perhaps the idea was to prove the feasibility of using cheap AI chips in hypersonic weapons, regardless of where they were made.However, such weapons can work with different types of chips.
Although few countries can design and manufacture such chips, a growing number of countries have begun research and development programs for hypersonic weapons, including Germany, France, Japan, North Korea, and Iran.
The proliferation of hypersonic weapons technology is a major concern for the United States. In 2017, the RAND Corporation proposed that Washington work with Moscow and China to prevent other countries from acquiring such technology.
But while Chinese and Russian military experts acknowledge that hypersonic weapons technology poses some risks, they say it is more likely to accelerate the collapse of the U.S.-centered world order.
They reason that hypersonic missiles could penetrate the defenses of the United States' large aircraft carrier fleet, on which the United States has long relied for global military superiority.
In a wargaming exercise conducted by Chinese scientists last year, a Ford-class carrier battle group was destroyed by about 20 hypersonic anti-ship missiles. Some experts say the acquisition of hypersonic weapons by more countries could erode the advantage enjoyed by a small number of countries with large naval forces over the past five centuries.
North Korea announces test launch of new solid-fuel hypersonic missile
North Korea announces test launch of new solid-fuel hypersonic missile
On April 3, North Korea successfully test-fired a hypersonic glide missile, and on Monday, Iran said it had used a hypersonic missile to attack an Israeli military base in retaliation for Israel's bombing of the Iranian embassy. insisted. At this time, there is no evidence to suggest that China or Russia has provided arms or technical assistance to either country.