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NASA Mars Perseverance Rover Uses Same PowerPC Chipset Found in 1998 G3 iMac
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In addition to what others have said, it's most likely operating as a system controller which manages various specialised components instead of being a complex multi-purpose CPU that is expected to do everything.
Yep. During my time in the aerospace industry (2003-2013) we were mainly using 386 processors... for our newest models.
Probably minimal chance of faults or bugs after so many years in use. On these types of missions the reliability is much more important than computational speed.
Oh yeah, not surprising. If it ain’t broke, and satisfies all mission requirements with the least budget, that’s all that matters. It’s fun to get the latest chip in a new iPad or PlayStation 5... but the targeting system for a missile... latitude and longitude are relatively inflexible. They still teach C in so many computer science programs just so people can get jobs in the defense and government, Python is still a snake there.
Maybe there is a valid reason for using old chip sets that maybe could have been alluded to by the author? Barring that, it just makes it sound like the NASA engineers are a bunch of old guys whose last innovation was what 20 years ago? Who says you can't teach old engineers new tricks?
So come on, what is the reason? anybody? Is it radiation or something?
So come on, what is the reason? anybody? Is it radiation or something?
You better hope you got the right computer.
Independence Day Apple Mac Trailer HD
Independence Day Apple Mac Trailer HD
Good point.
Similar thing for the computers used in the Space Shuttles: Shuttle Computers Navigate Record of Reliability
"The space shuttle's five general purpose computers computers, or GPCs, are slow and have little memory compared to modern home computers. On the other hand, no one straps the latest-and-greatest desktop computer inside a machine that vibrates like an old truck on a washboard road while requiring it to get a spacecraft into orbit and back safely."
Love that quote. 🚀
Ada or nothing!
What you say is completely true. Reliability and predictability trumps everything else in some industries.
Just because Apple stopped buying it doesn't mean IBM stopped developing the chipset family. While I don't know how old the chipset is on the rover, IBM was still developing the PowerPC 750 for other products.
Most notably, Nintendo had used the 750 from the Gamecube up to the Wii U. The Gamecube and Wii were virtually the same chipset, the former was Gekko (750CXe at 485Mhz) and the latter was Broadway (750CL at 729Mhz). The Wii U was updated to a 1.24GHZ tri-core processor called Espresso.
Whenever IBM decided to hop out of the chip making business, they stopped working on all of it.
Aside from Nintendo's video game system, it became a device chip for printers, routers, storage devices and was used in the Mars Rover Curiosity (2012). Also, Motorola/Freescale based the G4 design on this family of chipset as well.
Wikipedia has decent history of the chipset.
PowerPC 7xx family
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The Space Shuttle ran on Z80 processors, I believe. Basically you want something that's battle-hardened and with a long, long history so behaviour is 100% predictable.
A Rover with an M1 would destroy all those other rovers.
1) aerospace projects take a long time, so once the mission and everything is planned 10+ years are quite common. No one will change specs that will cause a domino effect.
2) safety. You want a reliable chip on board.
3) predictability. You want a chip that does what you expect it to do, and you want to have it rugged and tried for many many years under many scenarios.
4) no need for power. Most of the chips on board will perform very specific functions, all of them optimized.
Global security issue, we don't want aliens to know that we possess 4k pr0n tech.
Chipkill - Wikipedia
IBM POWER Chipkill ECC servers that supported mapping out corrupt memory addresses, hot swap memory ... I thought it was chosen for use in satellite systems at one point.
Ok.. now I just have this image in my head of Perseverance dancing to Burn Baby Burn...
So I read The Innovators, by Walter Isaacson, late last year.
Not only did I find out who the Ada programming language was named after (Lady Ada, Countess of Lovelace), I also found she created / invented what we today call subroutines. Back in the 1840s. Fricking awesome, and hey I get to bring this up during Women's History Month.
I do recommend The Innovators, it covers a lot of the computer history that likely proceeded many of our careers. And it is a good read, well written.
[Edit: Fixed typo (rad -> read)]
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Great, now every Mars photo has pink squares on them and conspiracy theorists are going nuts about NASA photoshopping the UFO's.
1990s (Apple t-shirt): Macintosh - The power to crush the other kids.
2020s: Apple Silicon - The power to crush the other rovers.
Depends on the profit margin and other income related to the sale.
This is not new, I recall reading more than a decade ago that the PowerPC was used in space because of its behaviour under radiation, if I'm not mistaken.
Likely due to it being radiation hardened against solar and cosmic radiation, which were designed/fabricated in older processes that are more resistant from permanent damage and soft errors.
All computers that carry a pro monicker should value uptime, reliability and serviceability above anything else, if the IT cannot fix it on the spot then it's not a pro machine because i will get fired and not be a pro anymore.