Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Singh, Durgendra Narayan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20317
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917355345412096
author Singh, Durgendra Narayan
author_facet Singh, Durgendra Narayan
contents Space-based compute is becoming plausible as launch costs fall and data-intensive AI workloads grow. This paper proposes a workload-centric framework for deciding which tasks belong in orbit versus terrestrial cloud, along with a phased adoption model tied to orbital data center maturity. We ground the framework with in-orbit semantic-reduction prototypes. An Earth-observation pipeline on Sentinel-2 imagery from Seattle and Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore) achieves 99.7-99.99% payload reduction by converting raw imagery to compact semantic artifacts. A multi-pass stereo reconstruction prototype reduces ~306 MB to ~1.57 MB of derived 3D representations (99.49% reduction). These results support a workload-first view in which semantic abstraction, not raw compute scale, drives early workload suitability.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_20317
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Which Workloads Belong in Orbit? A Workload-First Framework for Orbital Data Centers Using Semantic Abstraction
Singh, Durgendra Narayan
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Networking and Internet Architecture
Space-based compute is becoming plausible as launch costs fall and data-intensive AI workloads grow. This paper proposes a workload-centric framework for deciding which tasks belong in orbit versus terrestrial cloud, along with a phased adoption model tied to orbital data center maturity. We ground the framework with in-orbit semantic-reduction prototypes. An Earth-observation pipeline on Sentinel-2 imagery from Seattle and Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore) achieves 99.7-99.99% payload reduction by converting raw imagery to compact semantic artifacts. A multi-pass stereo reconstruction prototype reduces ~306 MB to ~1.57 MB of derived 3D representations (99.49% reduction). These results support a workload-first view in which semantic abstraction, not raw compute scale, drives early workload suitability.
title Which Workloads Belong in Orbit? A Workload-First Framework for Orbital Data Centers Using Semantic Abstraction
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20317