While I was watching NASA put a rover on Mars last month, it certainly seemed like the agency should use kind of bigtechnological processor in his car. Definitely the rover is built on something much more powerful than the components of the devices we civilians use, right? Dar whello NASA technically uses a specialized processor for It powers the Perseverance rover, not far from the consumer electronics world“23 years ago.”
NewScientist reports that Perseverance rover is powered by a PowerPC 750 processor, which was used in the original 1998 Apple iMac G3 – remember, the iconic, colorful, transparent desktop. If the name PowerPC sounds familiar, it’s probably because these are the RISC processors Apple used in its computers before switching to Intel. (Although now the company is back on the RISC train with its homemade M1 processor.)
PowerPC 750 was a233 MHz core processor and, compared to the multi-core, 5.0 GHz-plus frequencies that modern consumer chips can achieve, 233 MHz is incredibly slow. But the 750 was the first to incorporate dynamic branch prediction, which is still used today in modern processors. Basically, the CPU architecture makes an educated assumption about the instructions that the CPU will process as a way to improve efficiency. The more information is processed, the better the chip becomes in the sermonindicating what to do next.
However, there is a major difference between the iMac CPU and that of the Perseverance rover. BAE Systems produces the radiation-enhanced version of the PowerPC 750, dubbed RAD750, which can withstand 200,000 to 1,000,000 rad and temperatures between -55 and 125 degrees Celsius (-67 and 257 degrees Fahrenheit). Mars does not have the same type of atmosphere as Earth it protects us from the sun’s rays, so a flash of sunlight and it’s all over for the rover on Mars before the adventure can begin. Each one costs more than $ 200,000, so extra protection is needed.
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“A charged particle flowing through the galaxy can pass through a device and wreak havoc,” James LaRosa of BAE Systems told NewScientist. “It can literally lose electrons; may cause electronic noise and increase signals in the circuit. ”
But why use a processor old enough to remember when Eve 6 released its first album? It has nothing to do with the cost …These old processors are best for service because they are reliable. GODMOTHERThe Orion spacecraft, for example, used the same RAD750 processor.
“Compared to [Intel] Core i5 in the laptop, it is much slower … iIt’s probably no faster than your smartphone, “said Matt Lemke, NASA’s deputy director for Orion avionics. said The Space Review back in 2014. “But it’s not about speed as much as endurance and reliability. I have to make sure it always works. ”
Given this, it is reasonable that NASA would choose technology older than new things. After all, when you spend $ 2.7 billion to land a robot on Mars, it’s important that your technology is reliable enough to stand the test of time –to the smallest glued circuits. The RAD750 currently powers about 100 satellites orbiting the Earth, which includes GPS, imaging and weather data, as well as various military satellites. None of them failed, according to LaRosa.