While we watched NASA put a rover on Mars last month it seemed that the agency should make use of it a kind of high-tech processor in his machine. The robber sure is built on something much more powerful than the components in devices that we citizens use, right? But while NASA technically uses a specialized processor to Powering the rover Perseverance, it’s not far from the world of consumer electronicsAbout 23 years ago.
NewScientist reports that the The Perseverance Rover is powered by a PowerPC 750 processor, which was used in Apple’s original 1998 iMac G3 – you remember, the iconic, colorful, see-through desktop If the name PowerPC sounds familiar, it’s probably because these are the RISC CPUs Apple used in its computers before switching to Intel. (Although the company is now back on the RISC train with its own M1 processor
The PowerPC 750 was a single-core, 233 MHz processor, and compared to the multi-core, 5.0 GHz plus frequencies that modern consumer chips can reach, 233 MHz is incredibly slow. But the 750 was the first to integrate dynamic branch prediction, which is still used in modern processors today. In short, the CPU architecture makes an informed estimate of which instructions the CPU will process to improve efficiency. The more information that is processed, the better the chip achieves the predictionwhat to do next.
However, there is a big difference between the iMac’s CPU and the one in the Perseverance rover. BAE Systems manufactures the radiation-resistant version of the PowerPC 750, dubbed RAD750, which can withstand 200,000 to 1,000,000 Rads and temperatures between -55 and 125 degrees Celsius (-67 and 257 degrees Fahrenheit). Mars doesn’t have the same type of atmosphere as Earth, which protects us from the sun’s rays, so one flash of sunlight and it’s over for the Mars Rover before its adventure can begin. E.each one costs more than $ 200,000, so some extra protection is needed.
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“A charged particle racing through the galaxy can pass through a device and wreak havoc,” James LaRosa of BAE Systems told NewScientist. “It can literally release electrons; it can cause electronic noise and signal spikes 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 cost-those old processors are the best for the job because they are reliable. NASAFor example, the Orion spacecraft used the same RAD750 processor.
“Compared to the [Intel] Core i5 in your laptop, it’s much slower … iIt’s probably no faster than your smartphone, ”Matt Lemke, NASA’s deputy manager for Orion’s avionics, told The Space Review back in 2014. “But it’s not so much about speed as about robustness and reliability. I have to make sure it always works. “
When you take that into consideration, it’s fair that NASA would prefer older technology to the new stuff. After all, when you spend $ 2.7 billion to land a robot on Mars, it is important that your technology is reliable enough to stand the test of time-down to the smallest soldered circuits. Currently, the RAD750 powers about 100 orbiting satellites, including GPS, image and weather data, and several military satellites. According to LaRosa, none of them have failed.