#BAE RAD750

[brianmcnett-blog]

The exact chip in the JWST is a BAE Systems RAD750. It shared the micro-architechture of the PowerPC 750. It's packaging and logic functions were completely compatible with the PowerPC 7XX family. It was rolled out at the same time as the rest of the PowerPC 7XX chips (2001) and the first examples flew in space in 2005 (not bad, only five years behind the curve). There are currently 150 examples flying in space as of 2010 according to Wikipedia (which would not include JWST which wasn't launched until 2021). It's since been succeeded by the BAE Systems RAD5500 series, a PowerISA design. BAE sells this as part of the RAD5545 SpaceVPX single-board computer, which is a fully ANSI/VITA 78.00 SpaceVPX compliant system.

[mtul-c]

CURIOSITY - MSL

CURIOSITY – MSL

MARS! Our lovely neighbour.  Do you want to go there? One day we might be there, don’t worry, Elon’s here with us.

Scientists sent many rovers, landers and orbiters to mars. One among them is Curiosity. Curiosity is the largest and most capable rover ever sent to Mars. It launched November 26, 2011 and landed on Mars at 10:32 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5, 2012 (1:32 a.m. EDT on Aug. 6, 2012). It is one…

[mobilemall]

NASA’s new space computer to be powered by custom RISC-V processor

NASA’s new High-Performance Spaceflight Computer (HPSC) will be powered by a custom RISC-V-based processor, it has been revealed. The product of a collaboration between SiFive and Microchip, the chip will feature twelve RISC-V cores and is expected to offer 100x the performance of the BAE RAD750, the CPU used by NASA in previous missions. According to Jack Kang, SVP Business Development at…

[gtokio]

The rover's computer uses the BAE Systems RAD750 radiation-hardened single board computer based on a ruggedized PowerPC G3 microprocessor (PowerPC 750). The computer contains 128 megabytes of volatile DRAM, and runs at 133 MHz.

Perseverance (rover) - Wikipedia

[michellemagly]

The Computers Behind NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover

New Post has been published on https://computercoolingstore.com/the-computers-behind-nasas-mars-curiosity-rover/

The Computers Behind NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover

The Computers Behind NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover

Of all the systems onboard that have furthered our understanding of the Martian landscape, none have been as critical and as overworked as curiosity’s onboard computer system.

Curiosity’s entire mission relies primarily on two identical on-board rover computers, called Rover Computer Element or RCE’s. These single board computers were designed to be hardened from the extreme radiation of space, safeguarding it against power-off cycles. Each computer has 256 kilobytes of EEPROM, 256 MB of DRAM, and 2 GB of flash memory. They both run a safety-critical, real-time operating systems know as VxWorks. VxWorks is used heavily in the aerospace and defense industries and can be found in the avionics systems of a variety of aircraft.

At the heart of the Rover Computer Elements is one of the most expensive CPU systems available, the BAE systems RAD750. Costing over a quarter million dollars per system board, the RAD750 CPU is a 10.4 million transistor radiation hardened processor that had been proven in dozens of space-based deployments since 2005.

The single core CPU is based on a Power PC 750 architecture and can be clocked anywhere from 110 to 200 Mhz offerings over 266 million instructions per seconds of processing power, and operating on only 5 watts. It’s manufactured on a die almost twice the size of its commercial counterparts, employing a 250 or 150nm photolithography process comparable to commercial semiconductor manufacturing of the late 1990s. This process contributes to the CPU’s immunity to radiation and tolerance for the extremely high-temperature swings of space. The RAD750 can handle between -55 degree C all the way up to 125 degrees C.

The threat posed by radiation on silicone-based microelectronics can be both disruptive and destructive. High-energy particles can cause a Single Event Upset in which radiation causes unwanted state changes in memory or a register, disrupting logic circuity.

Destructive strikes known as Single Event Latchup, Single Event Gate Rupture, or Single Event Burnout are permanent effects of radiation that can pin logic circuity into a stuck state, rendering them useless.

The RAD750 is capable of withstanding up to 1 million rads of radiation of exposure. This level of hardness is 6 orders of magnitude more resistant than standard consumer CPUs.

When Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012, it operated on one of its RCE’s, known as the “Side-A” computer. Immediately after landing a major software update was sent to the rover, flushing out the no-longer-needed entry, descent and landing application and replacing them with software optimized for surface operations. This was due to both the memory restrictions of the computers and the need for post-launch software development.

However, by the 200th day of the mission, the side A computer started to show signs of failure due to corrupted memory. The rover got stuck in a boot loop, which prevented it from processing commands and drained the batteries. NASA executed a swap to the Side-B computer so that engineers could perform remote diagnostics on Side-A. In the following months, it was confirmed that part of Side-A’s memory was damaged. The unusable regions of memory were quarantined, though NASA decided to keep Side-B as the primary computer due to the larger amount of usable memory.

The Side B computer would operate for most of Curiosity’s mission but in October of 2018 computer issues would surface again when it began experiencing problems that prevented the rover from storing key science and engineering data. Left with no other options, the curiosity team spent a week evaluating the Side-A computer and prepared it for swapping back in as the primary computer. With Side-A was once again active, the Curiosity team was able to investigate the issues of the side-B computer in greater detail, determining that it also suffered from faulty regions of memory. Similar to how Side-A faults were handled, the bad regions of side-b memory would also be flagged and quarantined from use.

As of June 2019, Curiosity is still operating on its Side-A computer, on the lower memory capacity caused by its initial failure. However, on March 12th, 2019, the side-A computer experienced a computer reset that triggered the rover’s safe mode. This was a cause for concern as it was the second computer reset in three weeks. Both resets were caused by a corruption in the computer’s memory, suggesting further damage within the memory of the side A computer.

Despite the glitches, the Curiosity rover still remains functional on its Side-A computer with the team contemplating an eventual switch to the side-B system. But with the slow decline of both computer’s memory systems, it’s possible that the death blow to Curiosity’s extraordinary mission performance may come from within the hand full of chips that form the memory of its computers.

[the-etranger]

The Computers Behind NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover

New Post has been published on https://computercoolingstore.com/the-computers-behind-nasas-mars-curiosity-rover/

The Computers Behind NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover

The Computers Behind NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover

Of all the systems onboard that have furthered our understanding of the Martian landscape, none have been as critical and as overworked as curiosity’s onboard computer system.

Curiosity’s entire mission relies primarily on two identical on-board rover computers, called Rover Computer Element or RCE’s. These single board computers were designed to be hardened from the extreme radiation of space, safeguarding it against power-off cycles. Each computer has 256 kilobytes of EEPROM, 256 MB of DRAM, and 2 GB of flash memory. They both run a safety-critical, real-time operating systems know as VxWorks. VxWorks is used heavily in the aerospace and defense industries and can be found in the avionics systems of a variety of aircraft.

At the heart of the Rover Computer Elements is one of the most expensive CPU systems available, the BAE systems RAD750. Costing over a quarter million dollars per system board, the RAD750 CPU is a 10.4 million transistor radiation hardened processor that had been proven in dozens of space-based deployments since 2005.

The single core CPU is based on a Power PC 750 architecture and can be clocked anywhere from 110 to 200 Mhz offerings over 266 million instructions per seconds of processing power, and operating on only 5 watts. It’s manufactured on a die almost twice the size of its commercial counterparts, employing a 250 or 150nm photolithography process comparable to commercial semiconductor manufacturing of the late 1990s. This process contributes to the CPU’s immunity to radiation and tolerance for the extremely high-temperature swings of space. The RAD750 can handle between -55 degree C all the way up to 125 degrees C.

The threat posed by radiation on silicone-based microelectronics can be both disruptive and destructive. High-energy particles can cause a Single Event Upset in which radiation causes unwanted state changes in memory or a register, disrupting logic circuity.

Destructive strikes known as Single Event Latchup, Single Event Gate Rupture, or Single Event Burnout are permanent effects of radiation that can pin logic circuity into a stuck state, rendering them useless.

The RAD750 is capable of withstanding up to 1 million rads of radiation of exposure. This level of hardness is 6 orders of magnitude more resistant than standard consumer CPUs.

When Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012, it operated on one of its RCE’s, known as the “Side-A” computer. Immediately after landing a major software update was sent to the rover, flushing out the no-longer-needed entry, descent and landing application and replacing them with software optimized for surface operations. This was due to both the memory restrictions of the computers and the need for post-launch software development.

However, by the 200th day of the mission, the side A computer started to show signs of failure due to corrupted memory. The rover got stuck in a boot loop, which prevented it from processing commands and drained the batteries. NASA executed a swap to the Side-B computer so that engineers could perform remote diagnostics on Side-A. In the following months, it was confirmed that part of Side-A’s memory was damaged. The unusable regions of memory were quarantined, though NASA decided to keep Side-B as the primary computer due to the larger amount of usable memory.

The Side B computer would operate for most of Curiosity’s mission but in October of 2018 computer issues would surface again when it began experiencing problems that prevented the rover from storing key science and engineering data. Left with no other options, the curiosity team spent a week evaluating the Side-A computer and prepared it for swapping back in as the primary computer. With Side-A was once again active, the Curiosity team was able to investigate the issues of the side-B computer in greater detail, determining that it also suffered from faulty regions of memory. Similar to how Side-A faults were handled, the bad regions of side-b memory would also be flagged and quarantined from use.

As of June 2019, Curiosity is still operating on its Side-A computer, on the lower memory capacity caused by its initial failure. However, on March 12th, 2019, the side-A computer experienced a computer reset that triggered the rover’s safe mode. This was a cause for concern as it was the second computer reset in three weeks. Both resets were caused by a corruption in the computer’s memory, suggesting further damage within the memory of the side A computer.

Despite the glitches, the Curiosity rover still remains functional on its Side-A computer with the team contemplating an eventual switch to the side-B system. But with the slow decline of both computer’s memory systems, it’s possible that the death blow to Curiosity’s extraordinary mission performance may come from within the hand full of chips that form the memory of its computers.

[pumpkinqueen-bonecollector]

The Computers Behind NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover

New Post has been published on https://computercoolingstore.com/the-computers-behind-nasas-mars-curiosity-rover/

The Computers Behind NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover

The Computers Behind NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover

Of all the systems onboard that have furthered our understanding of the Martian landscape, none have been as critical and as overworked as curiosity’s onboard computer system.

Curiosity’s entire mission relies primarily on two identical on-board rover computers, called Rover Computer Element or RCE’s. These single board computers were designed to be hardened from the extreme radiation of space, safeguarding it against power-off cycles. Each computer has 256 kilobytes of EEPROM, 256 MB of DRAM, and 2 GB of flash memory. They both run a safety-critical, real-time operating systems know as VxWorks. VxWorks is used heavily in the aerospace and defense industries and can be found in the avionics systems of a variety of aircraft.

At the heart of the Rover Computer Elements is one of the most expensive CPU systems available, the BAE systems RAD750. Costing over a quarter million dollars per system board, the RAD750 CPU is a 10.4 million transistor radiation hardened processor that had been proven in dozens of space-based deployments since 2005.

The single core CPU is based on a Power PC 750 architecture and can be clocked anywhere from 110 to 200 Mhz offerings over 266 million instructions per seconds of processing power, and operating on only 5 watts. It’s manufactured on a die almost twice the size of its commercial counterparts, employing a 250 or 150nm photolithography process comparable to commercial semiconductor manufacturing of the late 1990s. This process contributes to the CPU’s immunity to radiation and tolerance for the extremely high-temperature swings of space. The RAD750 can handle between -55 degree C all the way up to 125 degrees C.

The threat posed by radiation on silicone-based microelectronics can be both disruptive and destructive. High-energy particles can cause a Single Event Upset in which radiation causes unwanted state changes in memory or a register, disrupting logic circuity.

Destructive strikes known as Single Event Latchup, Single Event Gate Rupture, or Single Event Burnout are permanent effects of radiation that can pin logic circuity into a stuck state, rendering them useless.

The RAD750 is capable of withstanding up to 1 million rads of radiation of exposure. This level of hardness is 6 orders of magnitude more resistant than standard consumer CPUs.

When Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012, it operated on one of its RCE’s, known as the “Side-A” computer. Immediately after landing a major software update was sent to the rover, flushing out the no-longer-needed entry, descent and landing application and replacing them with software optimized for surface operations. This was due to both the memory restrictions of the computers and the need for post-launch software development.

However, by the 200th day of the mission, the side A computer started to show signs of failure due to corrupted memory. The rover got stuck in a boot loop, which prevented it from processing commands and drained the batteries. NASA executed a swap to the Side-B computer so that engineers could perform remote diagnostics on Side-A. In the following months, it was confirmed that part of Side-A’s memory was damaged. The unusable regions of memory were quarantined, though NASA decided to keep Side-B as the primary computer due to the larger amount of usable memory.

The Side B computer would operate for most of Curiosity’s mission but in October of 2018 computer issues would surface again when it began experiencing problems that prevented the rover from storing key science and engineering data. Left with no other options, the curiosity team spent a week evaluating the Side-A computer and prepared it for swapping back in as the primary computer. With Side-A was once again active, the Curiosity team was able to investigate the issues of the side-B computer in greater detail, determining that it also suffered from faulty regions of memory. Similar to how Side-A faults were handled, the bad regions of side-b memory would also be flagged and quarantined from use.

As of June 2019, Curiosity is still operating on its Side-A computer, on the lower memory capacity caused by its initial failure. However, on March 12th, 2019, the side-A computer experienced a computer reset that triggered the rover’s safe mode. This was a cause for concern as it was the second computer reset in three weeks. Both resets were caused by a corruption in the computer’s memory, suggesting further damage within the memory of the side A computer.

Despite the glitches, the Curiosity rover still remains functional on its Side-A computer with the team contemplating an eventual switch to the side-B system. But with the slow decline of both computer’s memory systems, it’s possible that the death blow to Curiosity’s extraordinary mission performance may come from within the hand full of chips that form the memory of its computers.

[fandomstuckdiversity]

The Computers Behind NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover

New Post has been published on https://computercoolingstore.com/the-computers-behind-nasas-mars-curiosity-rover/

The Computers Behind NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover

The Computers Behind NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover

Of all the systems onboard that have furthered our understanding of the Martian landscape, none have been as critical and as overworked as curiosity’s onboard computer system.

Curiosity’s entire mission relies primarily on two identical on-board rover computers, called Rover Computer Element or RCE’s. These single board computers were designed to be hardened from the extreme radiation of space, safeguarding it against power-off cycles. Each computer has 256 kilobytes of EEPROM, 256 MB of DRAM, and 2 GB of flash memory. They both run a safety-critical, real-time operating systems know as VxWorks. VxWorks is used heavily in the aerospace and defense industries and can be found in the avionics systems of a variety of aircraft.

At the heart of the Rover Computer Elements is one of the most expensive CPU systems available, the BAE systems RAD750. Costing over a quarter million dollars per system board, the RAD750 CPU is a 10.4 million transistor radiation hardened processor that had been proven in dozens of space-based deployments since 2005.

The single core CPU is based on a Power PC 750 architecture and can be clocked anywhere from 110 to 200 Mhz offerings over 266 million instructions per seconds of processing power, and operating on only 5 watts. It’s manufactured on a die almost twice the size of its commercial counterparts, employing a 250 or 150nm photolithography process comparable to commercial semiconductor manufacturing of the late 1990s. This process contributes to the CPU’s immunity to radiation and tolerance for the extremely high-temperature swings of space. The RAD750 can handle between -55 degree C all the way up to 125 degrees C.

The threat posed by radiation on silicone-based microelectronics can be both disruptive and destructive. High-energy particles can cause a Single Event Upset in which radiation causes unwanted state changes in memory or a register, disrupting logic circuity.

Destructive strikes known as Single Event Latchup, Single Event Gate Rupture, or Single Event Burnout are permanent effects of radiation that can pin logic circuity into a stuck state, rendering them useless.

The RAD750 is capable of withstanding up to 1 million rads of radiation of exposure. This level of hardness is 6 orders of magnitude more resistant than standard consumer CPUs.

When Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012, it operated on one of its RCE’s, known as the “Side-A” computer. Immediately after landing a major software update was sent to the rover, flushing out the no-longer-needed entry, descent and landing application and replacing them with software optimized for surface operations. This was due to both the memory restrictions of the computers and the need for post-launch software development.

However, by the 200th day of the mission, the side A computer started to show signs of failure due to corrupted memory. The rover got stuck in a boot loop, which prevented it from processing commands and drained the batteries. NASA executed a swap to the Side-B computer so that engineers could perform remote diagnostics on Side-A. In the following months, it was confirmed that part of Side-A’s memory was damaged. The unusable regions of memory were quarantined, though NASA decided to keep Side-B as the primary computer due to the larger amount of usable memory.

The Side B computer would operate for most of Curiosity’s mission but in October of 2018 computer issues would surface again when it began experiencing problems that prevented the rover from storing key science and engineering data. Left with no other options, the curiosity team spent a week evaluating the Side-A computer and prepared it for swapping back in as the primary computer. With Side-A was once again active, the Curiosity team was able to investigate the issues of the side-B computer in greater detail, determining that it also suffered from faulty regions of memory. Similar to how Side-A faults were handled, the bad regions of side-b memory would also be flagged and quarantined from use.

As of June 2019, Curiosity is still operating on its Side-A computer, on the lower memory capacity caused by its initial failure. However, on March 12th, 2019, the side-A computer experienced a computer reset that triggered the rover’s safe mode. This was a cause for concern as it was the second computer reset in three weeks. Both resets were caused by a corruption in the computer’s memory, suggesting further damage within the memory of the side A computer.

Despite the glitches, the Curiosity rover still remains functional on its Side-A computer with the team contemplating an eventual switch to the side-B system. But with the slow decline of both computer’s memory systems, it’s possible that the death blow to Curiosity’s extraordinary mission performance may come from within the hand full of chips that form the memory of its computers.

[acid-bvrn]

The Computers Behind NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover

New Post has been published on https://computercoolingstore.com/the-computers-behind-nasas-mars-curiosity-rover/

The Computers Behind NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover

The Computers Behind NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover

Of all the systems onboard that have furthered our understanding of the Martian landscape, none have been as critical and as overworked as curiosity’s onboard computer system.

Curiosity’s entire mission relies primarily on two identical on-board rover computers, called Rover Computer Element or RCE’s. These single board computers were designed to be hardened from the extreme radiation of space, safeguarding it against power-off cycles. Each computer has 256 kilobytes of EEPROM, 256 MB of DRAM, and 2 GB of flash memory. They both run a safety-critical, real-time operating systems know as VxWorks. VxWorks is used heavily in the aerospace and defense industries and can be found in the avionics systems of a variety of aircraft.

At the heart of the Rover Computer Elements is one of the most expensive CPU systems available, the BAE systems RAD750. Costing over a quarter million dollars per system board, the RAD750 CPU is a 10.4 million transistor radiation hardened processor that had been proven in dozens of space-based deployments since 2005.

The single core CPU is based on a Power PC 750 architecture and can be clocked anywhere from 110 to 200 Mhz offerings over 266 million instructions per seconds of processing power, and operating on only 5 watts. It’s manufactured on a die almost twice the size of its commercial counterparts, employing a 250 or 150nm photolithography process comparable to commercial semiconductor manufacturing of the late 1990s. This process contributes to the CPU’s immunity to radiation and tolerance for the extremely high-temperature swings of space. The RAD750 can handle between -55 degree C all the way up to 125 degrees C.

The threat posed by radiation on silicone-based microelectronics can be both disruptive and destructive. High-energy particles can cause a Single Event Upset in which radiation causes unwanted state changes in memory or a register, disrupting logic circuity.

Destructive strikes known as Single Event Latchup, Single Event Gate Rupture, or Single Event Burnout are permanent effects of radiation that can pin logic circuity into a stuck state, rendering them useless.

The RAD750 is capable of withstanding up to 1 million rads of radiation of exposure. This level of hardness is 6 orders of magnitude more resistant than standard consumer CPUs.

When Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012, it operated on one of its RCE’s, known as the “Side-A” computer. Immediately after landing a major software update was sent to the rover, flushing out the no-longer-needed entry, descent and landing application and replacing them with software optimized for surface operations. This was due to both the memory restrictions of the computers and the need for post-launch software development.

However, by the 200th day of the mission, the side A computer started to show signs of failure due to corrupted memory. The rover got stuck in a boot loop, which prevented it from processing commands and drained the batteries. NASA executed a swap to the Side-B computer so that engineers could perform remote diagnostics on Side-A. In the following months, it was confirmed that part of Side-A’s memory was damaged. The unusable regions of memory were quarantined, though NASA decided to keep Side-B as the primary computer due to the larger amount of usable memory.

The Side B computer would operate for most of Curiosity’s mission but in October of 2018 computer issues would surface again when it began experiencing problems that prevented the rover from storing key science and engineering data. Left with no other options, the curiosity team spent a week evaluating the Side-A computer and prepared it for swapping back in as the primary computer. With Side-A was once again active, the Curiosity team was able to investigate the issues of the side-B computer in greater detail, determining that it also suffered from faulty regions of memory. Similar to how Side-A faults were handled, the bad regions of side-b memory would also be flagged and quarantined from use.

As of June 2019, Curiosity is still operating on its Side-A computer, on the lower memory capacity caused by its initial failure. However, on March 12th, 2019, the side-A computer experienced a computer reset that triggered the rover’s safe mode. This was a cause for concern as it was the second computer reset in three weeks. Both resets were caused by a corruption in the computer’s memory, suggesting further damage within the memory of the side A computer.

Despite the glitches, the Curiosity rover still remains functional on its Side-A computer with the team contemplating an eventual switch to the side-B system. But with the slow decline of both computer’s memory systems, it’s possible that the death blow to Curiosity’s extraordinary mission performance may come from within the hand full of chips that form the memory of its computers.

[americanfreighttrucking]

GPS III Satellite Launches with BAE Systems RAD750 Single Board Computers

GPS III Satellite Launches with BAE Systems RAD750 Single Board Computers

MANASSAS, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The U.S. Air Force today launched its second GPS III satellite, the most powerful Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite ever built. BAE Systems’ RAD750™ Single Board Computer (SBC), part of Harris Corporation’s navigation payload for GPS III prime contractor Lockheed Martin, will provide radiation hardened, high-performance onboard processing capability for the…

[componentplanet]

The Power of Perseverance: NASA’s Latest Rover Headed for Mars

NASA announced a successful liftoff for its latest Mars rover, Perseverance (also known as the Mars 2020 Rover) on Thursday. If all goes well, the vehicle will reach the Red Planet in February.

At first glance, Perseverance looks like a repeat of Curiosity. The two spacecraft are built on a similar platform, but Perseverance has larger, more robust wheels with a larger diameter. These are intended to avoid the damage Curiosity has sustained during its time on Mars. Perseverance also carries MOXIE (Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment), which will attempt to produce a small amount of oxygen using the existing atmosphere on Mars.

I am healthy and on my way to Mars, but may be too loud for the antennas on Earth while I'm so close. Ground stations are working to match my signal strength so that I can communicate clearly with my team. https://t.co/vLaRxcKomR

— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) July 30, 2020

The MOXIE unit aboard Perseverance is a 1 percent scale model of a full-sized production plant. If the experiment is successful, it may mean astronauts traveling to the planet could use Mars’ atmosphere to create both breathable air and their own supply of propellant for the return trip. This would represent a substantial weight savings — most of the weight of a spacecraft is fuel, and any journey to another planet has to either carry the fuel for the return trip or make it at the destination. If MOXIE works, NASA could land an automated facility to begin creating oxygen before astronauts even arrive on Mars, ensuring a ready supply of available air from the moment they touchdown.

The Perseverance rover. Credit: NASA

Perseverance also carries Ingenuity, a small (1.8kg / 4lb) helicopter intended to demonstrate the practicality of flight on Mars. Ingenuity doesn’t carry any scientific instruments, but it’s intended to scout potential routes for the rover and to demonstrate that flight on Mars is something we can accomplish remotely in the first place. Perseverance will also carry spacesuit samples to Mars to determine how they hold up to the rigors of the environment. Power is provided via an multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG) containing enough plutonium to provide ~110W of power. The rover also carries two lithium-ion batteries to provide additional energy during peak requirements.

Both Perseverance and Curiosity use the same CPU, a RAD750 built by BAE. The RAD750 is based on the PowerPC 750, which debuted in 1997 as the CPU inside the original iMac. Once Perseverance arrives on Mars, PowerPC will dominate CPU deployments, with 60 percent of the total Mars rover market and 100 percent of the functional Mars rovers. Is this the spacecraft equivalent of being big in Japan?

Jezero Crater. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/JHU-APL

In all seriousness, the reason NASA continues to send such underpowered hardware into space is due to radiation hardening. Newer CMOS processes tend to be more vulnerable than old ones, and for a rover on another planet, reliability is the top concern. We can afford to wait for Perserverance to spend a while crunching data. We can’t afford for its CPUs to be scrambled by incoming cosmic rays. Perseverance appears identical to Curiosity, with 256MB of onboard RAM, a backup BAE750 CPU in case the first fails, 2GB of onboard flash memory, 256MB of RAM, and a 256K EPROM. Clock speeds between the two rovers are identical, at 200MHz.

The night before the Perseverance launch. Credit: NASA

One major difference between the two rovers is that Perseverance has the ability to drill into Martian rocks and extract core samples. These samples can then be analyzed and stored for future retrieval in an as-yet unplanned mission. The SuperCam unit is also a significant upgrade from the ChemCam aboard Curiosity and should be capable of assessing biosignatures and making a more thorough search of the environment for signs that Mars once supported life. It’s headed for Jezero Crater, which shows all the signs of having held a substantial body of water for a long period of time, making it one of the better places to search for life.

Now Read:

Perseverance Rover Will Take a Tiny Piece of Mars Home to the Red Planet

NASA Mounts Perseverance Mars Rover on Atlas V Rocket

Curiosity Rover Begins Summer Road Trip to Avoid Sinking Sand

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/313355-the-power-of-perseverance-nasas-latest-rover-headed-for-mars from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-power-of-perseverance-nasas-latest.html

[satnewsevents]

BAE Systems RAD750™ Single Board Computers are Part of Payload On U.S.A.F.'s GPS III 

http://dlvr.it/RBl07G

[multipublicity]

BAE Systems unveils rad-hard space computer

BAE Systems unveils rad-hard space computer

Cosmic rays and other radiation sources make space a very hostile place for electronics, so BAE Systems announced today that it’s rolling out its latest generation of radiation-hardened computers. The new RAD5545 single-board computer (SBC) is designed to survive the hard radiation in space while providing “exponential improvements” over the company’s previous RAD750 SBC in terms of size, speed,…

[jaroffacts]

The RAD750 is a radiation-hardened single board computer manufactured by BAE Systems Electronics, Intelligence & Support. Posted under Fun Facts. Click here for some more interesting facts and Tumblr quotes.

[componentplanet]

The Best CPUs Ever Made

We’ve already covered the worst CPUs ever built, so it seemed time to flip around and talk about the best ones. The question, of course, is how do we define “best?”

In order to qualify for this article, a CPU needed to do more than just introduce significant new features or support a new instruction set. The Pentium Pro, for example, was a very important chip. It pioneered features still in use today and demonstrated that out-of-order execution and micro-op translation were viable techniques for high-end, next-generation processors. At the same time, however, the Pentium Pro had issues. It was slow when running 16-bit code and its FPU performance was only about half of comparable RISC cores at the time. The Pentium Pro was a very important CPU core, in other words — but it doesn’t meet our criteria when making a list of the best CPU cores ever invented.

To see which cores do measure up, check the slideshow below. We’ve taken a broad look at the industry over the past 40+ years, with mobile, server, and desktop CPUs all represented. Our selections were based on a variety of factors, including feature set, market impact, total strength of the product, and long-term performance.

Intel Celeron 300A

The Celeron 300A was one of the greatest enthusiast CPUs of all time. Overclockers quickly realized that the chip, which sold for $180, could regularly be overclocked to 450MHz. At that speed, it could match or outperform the Pentium II 450MHz, which sold for $655. Furthermore, when paired with the Abit BP6 dual-core motherboard, an enthusiast could run two CPU cores for less than the price of a single high-end Pentium II. Intel prevented this in later Celeron models and low bus speeds would handicap later chips, but the Celeron 300A was supremely well-positioned.

MOS 6502

The MOS 6502 was critical to the home computer revolution that began in the mid-1970s. It powered the original NES, Commodore VIC-20, Atari 400 and 800, and Atari 2600, as well as two minor machines you may have heard of — the Apple I and Apple II. The famous Commodore 64 was powered by its direct descendent, the 6510. Far cheaper than competing CPUs, the MOS 6502 revolutionized affordability in the early computing era.

AMD Duron 600

AMD’s K7 architecture put the company on the map as a competitor with Intel, but it was the Duron 600, in 2000, that truly put the screws to Intel. The CPU’s large L1 (128K) compensated for a small 64K L2. If a pencil was used to unlock the CPU multiplier and lock the chip to a 1.85v vCore, the chip could boot at FSB speeds as high as 190MHz if high-speed SDRAM was used. An overclocked Duron 600 could regularly hit 950MHz-1GHz, annihilated the Celeron, and could even challenge the Pentium III at a fraction of its price.

BAE RAD750

The BAE RAD750, first built in 2001, is a radiation-hardened version of the PowerPC 750 CPU core. It’s on this list for the way it has enabled our exploration of the cosmos. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Kepler Space telescope, the Jupiter probe Juno, and the Mars probes Curiosity and InSight all use the RAD750. Plenty of chips make our lives easier on Earth, but only a handful of designs have touched the surface of other planets.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600

There were plenty of good Core 2 Duo CPUs, but Intel’s first mainstream quad-core was one of its longest-lived and most popular products. The Q6600 was in a relative sweet spot in terms of features and performance, with some professional VM capabilities Intel otherwise restricted and support for four cores at half the price of the Core 2 Extreme QX6700. Overclockers could push the chip from a base of 2.4GHz to well over 3GHz with the G0 stepping. Of all the C2D CPUs Intel launched, the Q6600 was the best overall part, hitting a near-perfect blend of price, performance, features, and overclocking capability.

Intel Core i7 2600K CPU top view

Intel Core i7-2600K

Intel has launched a lot of good Core CPUs, from original Nehalem to the Core i7-8700K. The 2600K, however, arrived at a uniquely good time for the company. AMD’s Bulldozer had missed. The PC market had only barely begun to slump. The 2600K had great overclocking headroom and strong single-thread performance — there’s a reason it’s been a challenging CPU for Intel to convince consumers to move on from.

AMD Opteron 275

The AMD Opteron 275 and the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ were basically the same chip (the Opteron clocked slightly lower, at 2200MHz). The server variant gets the nod in our best-CPUs list for one huge reason: It delivered absolutely crushing quad-core performance on motherboards that also had AGP slots. Up until the advent of dual-core CPUs, there were no ATX or even EATX motherboards with four sockets and AGP. It wasn’t physically possible. Quad-socket motherboards were very expensive, while dual-socket boards were much cheaper. The Opteron 275 made quad-core workstations with high-end graphics possible for the first time and offered dramatically better performance than Intel’s equivalent Xeons of the day.

LG E455 Optimus L5 II Dual – Mediatek MT6575A

ARM Cortex-A9

The Cortex-A9 was the second CPU in ARM’s high-end Cortex family, but arguably the first mobile CPU to show what modern smartphones were truly capable of. The combination of higher IPC, dual cores, and higher frequencies relative to the Cortex-A8 made the A9 a popular chip for a number of high-end devices, including Apple’s iPhone 4S. When Intel wanted to bring its Medfield phones to market, the Cortex-A9 was the competitor product they had to position against. ARM continues to launch well-regarded mobile CPUs, but the Cortex-A9 deserves credit for launching the dawn of a new smartphone era in style.

Intel Banias (Pentium M)

Intel’s Banias (aka Pentium M, aka Centrino) solved a critical problem for Intel in the early 2000s: The P4 was emphatically not a mobile CPU. To solve this issue, Intel created a new CPU architecture based primarily on the P6 (Pentium 3) microarchitecture, with some strategic enhancements from Netburst’s DNA. The result was a power-efficient, fast CPU that Intel wrapped into a new push around mobile networking and branded Centrino. Centrino-branded laptops sold extremely well, and Banias became the first in a series of CPUs that would evolve into the Core 2 Duo, Nehalem, and eventually, Coffee Lake. Banias wins a nod for its impact on the notebook market, the overall success of the Centrino program, and its own excellent performance.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 800

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 was the dominant player in overall mobile performance and powered a huge number of high-end handsets virtually from launch. If we stretch a bit to include the Snapdragon 805, devices of this era were pushing the boundaries of LTE and smartphone performance farther, with larger screens, higher resolutions, and rapidly improving camera technology. Networking performance on the Snapdragon 800 was far better than previous-generation LTE devices.

Apple A9

Apple has led the pack on single-threaded ARM CPU performance for years, but picking a single SoC was tricky. I’ve settled on the A9 for several reasons. First, it was objectively a great performer — the iPad Pro in 2015 used a derivative of this SoC, the A9X, to challenge Intel and Core M. That didn’t stop Apple from also scaling it into its diminutive iPhone SE, which showed the design’s flexibility. The iPhone 6S didn’t sell as well as the iPhone 6, but it was considerably better made than that device and did not suffer from the so-called “Touch Disease” that afflicted the iPhone 6 Plus.

Honorable Mentions

Writing a “Best CPUs” list means that inevitably, a lot of really good CPUs are going to get left off the list. CPUs like the Intel 8086 or Motorola 68000 are often regular staples of articles like this, because of how they transformed the computing industry (launching the IBM PC in one case and launching the Macintosh as well as the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga in the other). We address many of Intel’s chips in more detail in our history of Intel products, parts one and two.

Honorable mentions for great chips that didn’t quite make our list would include the original Intel 4004, Pentium Pro, Pentium III, Intel’s Pentium 4 Northwood, AMD’s original K7, and CPUs like the Core i7-8700K. AMD’s recent Ryzen 3 parts are also potential contenders for this list, but I’m not comfortable naming such recent arrivals to the “Best ever,” list. Not quite yet. But the market impact of Ryzen can’t be denied — the third-generation Ryzen CPUs and Threadrippers have redefined performance in this market segment. Intel has slashed its prices across the Xeon and Cascade Lake families and dramatically improved its value proposition. All of these are factors that position Ryzen well in future comparisons, as far as inclusion on my personal “Best ever” list.

If I had to name a single “best ever” CPU, I’d go with the Opteron 275. Here’s my reasoning: Prior to the launch of dual-core CPUs, it wasn’t possible to have both a quad-socket motherboard and an AGP / PCIe slot. Quad-socket boards simply didn’t feature them. These boards were also quite expensive — thousands of dollars, IIRC, and while the initial Tyan boards for AMD were also pricey, at $500 – $800 (again IIRC), they were vastly less than a four-socket motherboard — and they shipped with features like PCIe. In a stroke, AMD had made far more computing horsepower available than ever before and done so while simultaneously adding graphics support. In terms of sheer impact on the market, and absolute reduction in cost, I have always felt the Opteron 275 deserved a special place in history.

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from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/computing/295393-the-best-cpus-ever-made from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-best-cpus-ever-made.html