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

Jason Swope, Faiz Mirza, Emily Dunkel, Zaid J. Towfic, Steve A. Chien, Damon Russell, Joe Sauvageau, Doug Sheldon, Mark R. Fernandez, Carrie Knox

Abstract: Future space missions will process and analyze imagery onboard placing greater demands on flight computing. Traditional flight hardware provides modest compute, even when compared to laptop and desktop computers. A new generation of commercial off the shelf (COTS) processors, such as 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 a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC currently hosted by HPE’ s Spaceborne Computer-2 (SBC-2) onboard the International Space Station.