NASA’s Perseverance Rover is powered by the same processor as a 23-year old iMac

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NASA's Perseverance Rover is powered by the same processor as a 23-twelvemonth old iMac

(Image credit: Nasa/JPL)

Practise you recall the quondam anecdote that Nintendo'south GameBoy had more computing power than the systems NASA used for the Apollo eleven moon landings? We're in a similar state of affairs with the Perseverance Mars Rover from the sound of things.

While Perseverance may be the most avant-garde Martian rover ever congenital, it's running on the same PowerPC750 processor that powered the 1998 iMac. And so your smartphone has more computing power than the robot that just landed on a different planet.

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You may think that NASA could have done a lot ameliorate, only according to New Scientist, NASA couldn't have used something more recent like Apple tree's M1 chip. All because of the fact Mars is a different planet, and what works on Earth isn't necessarily going to work there.

The main outcome is how the two planets' atmospheres block radiations and other charged particles. Mars — also as outer infinite — doesn't offer anything shut to equally much protection as Globe, and that means ane bad outburst of radiation can fry the electronics of more than modernistic processors.

NASA can't bandy out electronics if something goes wrong, and a more than complicated fleck ways there are more ways for that to happen. So not only does Perseverance have a fill-in figurer (plus a third for prototype analysis), its processor has had to be specially designed to survive the harsh weather on Mars.

Instead of being the standard consumer-class PowerPC750 scrap, it'south actually a modified version called the RAD750 scrap. That scrap has been hardened confronting radiation, and has been used several times in NASA'south recent history. The Curiosity rover, Fermi Space Telescope, Kepler telescope and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter are just a few examples of NASA-fabricated machines that are powered by RAD750.

Oh and it costs more $200,000 per flake, so don't go tearing autonomously your old iMac trying to build your ain extraterrestrial rover. You probably don't have the $iii billion you'd need to become it to Mars anyhow.

The RAD750 may merely offer a 200MHz clock speed, and 2GB of flash retention, simply information technology's still a heck of a lot more powerful than rovers that arrived on Mars earlier Curiosity. It may be laughable compared to the power of your iPhone 12, but chances are your iPhone 12 wouldn't last very long on the Martian surface.

Perseverance is at present almost two weeks into its month-long mission, so clearly the RAD750 is doing a pretty proficient task of things. Meanwhile Curiosity has been on the red planet since 2012, and is still going strong after all that time. Conspicuously the fact those fries wait underpowered at first glance isn't a specially big deal.

Tom is the Tom's Guide's Automotive Editor, which means he can usually be found knee deep in stats the latest and best electrical cars, or checking out some sort of driving gadget. Information technology'south long way from his days as editor of Gizmodo United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, when pretty much everything was on the table. He's usually found trying to squeeze another giant Lego set onto the shelf, draining very large cups of java, or complaining that Ikea won't let him buy the stuff he really needs online.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/nasas-perseverance-rover-is-powered-by-the-same-processor-as-a-23-year-old-imac

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