Mars rovers use Power PC chips!

[Chisholm]

I'm sitting here watching TechTV and they're interviewing folks at the JPL about the rovers. Seems that the rovers are powered by a 20mhz Power PC chips. Cool!

 

[alphaone]

Actually they're wrong. The rovers have 25Mhz PPC processors (Not that it's that big of a difference). http://www.iews.na.baesystems.com/space/rad6000/rad6000_sbsc.html Most spacecraft use some sort of PPC processor. It's a very common thing.

The TSS guys know a lot about tech but they don't know jack about space stuff. Don't get me wrong, I love the show, but it felt kinda weird watching them act like they knew stuff about space and space travel.

 

[Chisholm]

Thanks for the correction. Yeah its a great show in general, but you can certainly tell when they get out of their realm of knowledge. I think it would be cool if they did a special 26 hour show on the X Prize showing each of the teams.

 

[Frohickey]

Are you sure?

I thought they used RAD6000 chips, which were based on the RS/6000. Not necessarily PowerPC chips, more like POWER chips.

RAD6000 Single Board Space Computer in CompactPCI® Form Factor
BAE SYSTEMS MICROPROCESSOR GUIDES ROVER LANDINGS ON MARS

For a PowerPC based system, it would have to be the RAD750. Here is the website, and a picture too.

 

[Frohickey]

oops... here is the jpeg

 

[alphaone]

Originally posted by Frohickey
Are you sure?

I thought they used RAD6000 chips, which were based on the RS/6000. Not necessarily PowerPC chips, more like POWER chips.

The RAD6000 is a high-performance 32-bit Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) that operates in the heavily radiated space environment and is based on the IBM PowerPC architecture.

the RAD6000, the 25 MIPS radiation hardened version of the RS/6000, the predecessor to the PowerPC™.

Alright. It's not exactly a PPC chip but it's really close to being one. It's based (or are PPC's based off of it?) off of the PPC architecture.

Predecessor to PPC=Basically PPC

 

[Frohickey]

PowerPC is based on POWER

RAD6000 is POWER
RAD750 is PowerPC

Remember the Mars Pathfinder mission? That used the RAD6000 as well, but for the base, not the rover portion. I think the rover portion used an Intel based CPU, instead of the IBM based CPU.

I guess we should just say that "Its close enough for government work."