Why would your stasis pods participate in your grid computing network?

Say you have an interstellar spacecraft packed full of advanced technology, such as:

• Fusion generators
• Androids
• A sublight drive capable of ~0.5C
• Various robots, holograms, and other automated systems
• Automatic medical facilities
• Stasis pods capable of keeping a person in suspended animation for over 100 years with no side-effects worse than a couple days of feeling jet-lagged

You've also got a complex grid computing network interwoven throughout the entire spacecraft, where work from a damaged component can be parceled up and offloaded to literally anything and everything else with a CPU.

That system isn't perfect, however, and it's possible for CPU's to start failing under excessive load. For instance, asking a robot that was designed to collect trash to pick up the slack of a failed fusion confinement computer may burn out the robot's processor or cause other undesirable glitches in its normal operations (and the eventual failure of your fusion containment systems, to catastrophic effect).

Considering that:

• Your stasis pods are critical to keeping your passengers alive (and failures can kill both quickly or slowly, depending upon exactly how the failure plays out)
• Your company takes it as a point of pride that none of their stasis pods have ever malfunctioned in centuries (if not millennia) of space travel
• Your company has made literally quadrillions of dollars* running interstellar charters, so cost is no barrier in terms of outfitting your spacecraft

What possible explanations are there for allowing the stasis pods to participate in the grid computing network? For instance, as opposed to building additional/redundant high-capacity dedicated CPU nodes into various parts of the ship.

(*) Value in terms of 2017 dollars is unknown, however rampant hyperinflation is considered unlikely

posted almost 8 years ago

aroth‭

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