Starlink User Dish Uses Processor Cores Often Found In Entry Level Smartphones

Image: darkpenguin22/Reddit

Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s (SpaceX) Starlink user final underwent a fresh teardown before this month. This teardown was conducted by researchers working in Belgium'southward KU Leven Academy, and their investigation has revealed that not only is SpaceX continuously making hardware upgrades to the dish just that the terminal uses a processor that is commonly used in smartphones.

Starlink Dish Uses Quad-Cadre Processor Equipped With Arm'southward Cortex A53 Cores Detect Researchers

The teardown, which was conducted earlier this month, is not the first time folks accept taken apart the Starlink terminal to get a sense of how it works. I such teardown, conducted by Kenneth Keiter late concluding twelvemonth, revealed the concluding'south innards. However, similar nearly teardowns at the time, it focused but on the hardware side of things, limiting its power to extract information bout the dish's central performance specifications.

The teardown by KU researchers takes the dish apart and peaks inside the firmware to understand how the dish starts up and loads its software. As part of this investigation, the team besides discovered important details almost the Starlink user dish's awarding processor and onboard memory.

Information technology revealed that the processor apply 4 GB of embedded MultiMediaCard (eMMC) memory for loading up the firmware subsequently bootup. By accessing the contents of this eMMC independently from the processor, the researchers determined the details for the concluding's application processor. Additionally, they too found a flake dubbed equally a 'secure element' in the tech community, which is also nowadays on Apple tree'due south iPhones and is a crucial part of the smartphone's security infrastructure equally it contains code necessary for secure biometric validation.

An extract from KU's investigation outlining the Starlink user terminal'south processor. Paradigm: COSIC Inquiry Group, KU Levin

The terminal uses a quad-core Cortex A53 processor for managing data and connecting with the orbiting Starlink satellites. Cortex A53 is a depression-power computing core designed by British pattern house Arm Ltd. launched in 2012. It is designed to be used both as a standalone core or used together with the higher-power Cortex A57. Smartphone processors generally pair such cores in a big.LITTLE configuration, with the big cores consuming more power and being responsible for performance-intensive operations and the Little cores concerning themselves with low power processes.

Moving towards the secure chemical element, the researchers are unsure about its office, simply they believe that SpaceX can utilise details stored inside this chip to verify and authenticate the user terminal.

The researchers also revealed that not only does the concluding finish its kicking process if the word 'falcon' is entered during the procedure, just that SpaceX has besides fabricated some changes to the internal components.

These, as described by them, are:

It appears that there a few hardware revisions of the UT out there past now, certain parts of the teardown process tin differ depending on the revision, something nosotros learned the hard mode. One of the aforementioned teardown videos shows the Ethernet and motor control cables to be detached from the primary lath earlier the white plastic cover is removed. On our UT, a tug on the motor control cables pulled the entire connector from the PCB; luckily it appears nosotros can repair the impairment. In other words, do non pull on those cables but starting time remove the dorsum plastic cover, for those of you in the aforementioned boat: JST BM05B-ZESS-TBT.

SpaceX is already designing second-generation user terminals. Its primary executive officer Mr. Elon Musk is hopeful that his company will bring downward the terminal price to $250 from the $499 information technology currently charges. In order to boost early on-phase adoption, Starlink is heavily subsidizing the terminals, and it should continue to do then until the cyberspace service archives sufficient market penetration.