Benchmarking Remote Sensing Image Processing and Analysis on the Snapdragon Processor Onboard the International Space Station

Future space missions will process and analyze imagery onboard placing greater demands on flight computing. Traditional flight hardware provides modest compute especially compared to laptop and desktop computers. A new generation of commercial off the shelf (COTS) processors, such as the Qualcomm Snapdragon, deliver significant compute in small Size Weight and Power (SWaP) and offer direct hardware acceleration in the form of Graphics Processing Units (GPU) and Digital Signal Processors (DSP). We benchmark a variety of instrument processing and analysis software (including machine learned classifiers) on the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor currently deployed onboard the International Space Station.

未来航天任务将在轨完成图像的处理与分析，这对星载计算系统提出了更高性能需求。传统星载硬件的计算能力相对有限，与笔记本电脑、台式计算机相比尤为明显。新一代商用现货（commercial off the shelf, COTS）处理器——以高通骁龙（Qualcomm Snapdragon）为代表——以极小的尺寸、重量与功耗（Size Weight and Power, SWaP）实现了强劲的计算性能，并集成了图形处理器（Graphics Processing Units, GPU）与数字信号处理器（Digital Signal Processor, DSP）形式的直接硬件加速功能。本研究针对当前部署于国际空间站（International Space Station）的高通骁龙处理器，对多款仪器处理与分析软件（含机器学习分类器）开展了基准测试。