NASA Perseverance rover 200 MHZ CPU costs $200K

Caesar

2021-02-25 08:51

Yes....... They have been tailored for specific purpose. Mining soil.......and so.... Here on earth......cryptomining...

#5890427

Moonbogg

2021-02-25 09:15

"A similar system has been running on Curiosity for nearly 10 years" Yep, and so will my 1080Ti if thing don't change.

#5890436

Kaarme

2021-02-25 09:37

It's a good thing running scientific instruments on another planet is a lot easier than running Crysis back here on Earth.

#5890445

Backstabak

2021-02-25 10:10

Well, people were flying to the moon and back with a CPU that is worse than modern day calculators. It's a bit amazing if you think about it, but definitely all space and even military applications require robustness over speed.

#5890457

Devid

2021-02-25 10:41

So there isn't such a thing like 5GHz all core or velocity boost and stuff up there? o_O

#5890493

asturur

2021-02-25 12:38

0.25um = 250nm, sure must be shit 😀

#5890509

Fediuld

2021-02-25 13:28

Moonbogg:

"A similar system has been running on Curiosity for nearly 10 years" Yep, and so will my 1080Ti if thing don't change.

Seems I have to say the same for the 5700XT 😀

#5890519

cucaulay malkin

2021-02-25 13:57

hwunboxed : "we still would have recommended nasa used a ryzen"

#5890520

Fediuld

2021-02-25 13:57

Kaarme:

It's a good thing running scientific instruments on another planet is a lot easier than running Crysis back here on Earth.

Consider the Space shuttle (Atlantis etc) computing power was less than 1% that of a Xbox 360 CPU. Until 1991 used 512kb RAM which was upgraded to 1Mb afterwards until their retirement. Originally back in the 1970s used 32 gauges, four cathode-ray tubes and a variety of electro-mechanical devices. Even the new Orion capsule is less powerful than a mobile phone. Is using 2 IBM PowerPC 750X single core processor from 2002!!!! Soyuz until the 2003 upgrade used a 6kb RAM and computer from the 60s!!!! The computers used for the lunar landings had 4Kb RAM!!!!! While Voyager 1 & 2 are running today on a CDP1802 CPU, 70Kb RAM and they communicate to earth with 160 bits per second rate from 13 and 11 billion miles away respectively. It puts everything in perspective. FYI SpaceX is not cheapening on computing power. Falcon 9 is using 3 dual cores, dozens of PowerPC microcontrollers. Crew Dragon several Tegra 2 for the tablets, touch screens. It has a lot of computing power to even play CP2077. 😀

#5890636

anticupidon

2021-02-25 18:12

All fine and dandy, but the crucial, most important thing is reliability. Maybe the CPU is made on that specific node just to give the circuitry more density on trace paths for redundancy and transmission. New technology is a "convoluted mess" older technology can be refined and honed to perfection, thus achieving reliability. Convoluted mess - on a tech channel (sorry, I am still looking for it ) an tech engineer confessed that even that everything is well though and designed, there are shortcuts, workarounds and trade secrets. Sh!t works, but don't send that in space, it has a huge probability of failure. So, NASA wanted the most boring and trustworthy, reliable CPU out there. Maybe I am wrong and talking crap. Maybe not. What say you?

#5890644

Moonbogg

2021-02-25 18:25

Also, that process is so huge they could have just used Legos.

#5890750

scoter man1

2021-02-26 00:23

anticupidon:

All fine and dandy, but the crucial, most important thing is reliability. Maybe the CPU is made on that specific node just to give the circuitry more density on trace paths for redundancy and transmission. New technology is a "convoluted mess" older technology can be refined and honed to perfection, thus achieving reliability. Convoluted mess - on a tech channel (sorry, I am still looking for it ) an tech engineer confessed that even that everything is well though and designed, there are shortcuts, workarounds and trade secrets. Sh!t works, but don't send that in space, it has a huge probability of failure. So, NASA wanted the most boring and trustworthy, reliable CPU out there. Maybe I am wrong and talking crap. Maybe not. What say you?

Yeah you're right on. They're paying for redundancy, low usage, and reliability. It's just like car embedded systems. They use chips that are slow, "dual core" (but they actually just do the same thing and compare computation), etc. I'm sure if they popped out 100k of those chips, it would be way cheaper. They just don't need 100k of them. It's like comparing a desktop pc to a server. Way more expensive to buy a server but they're designed to run 24/7 for a long time with no problems.

#5890790

EspHack

2021-02-26 02:51

yay government given what military tech prices look like(900k per round zumwalt gun?), and that whole senate launch system boondoggle, I would love to know more about this amazing cpu

#5890851

GreenReaper

2021-02-26 09:34

Kevin Mauro:

NASA = decades-long budgetary constraints; SpaceX does not.

NASA is also going through the radiation belts and outside the magnetosphere, neither of which SpaceX has done to this extent. Launching a car into low Earth orbit is one thing, driving around on Mars for years is another. They have something they know works and it would cost a lot more to replace it if you wanted the same level of reliability.

#5891307

Venix

2021-02-28 01:01

Every electronic on earth hit by a solar flare ...dead.... Mars rover be like "hihi that tickles!"

Kevin Mauro:

My comment isn't an insult to NASA. Think of it this way - had NASA more funds, who knows how they might approach the aforementioned. It isn't to also say they need to either. Now - it has been well documented that budget issues long stunted the shuttle program; that's not in dispute so you cannot discount what I said earlier there is merit to it. I don't think that is to say its affected every area of NASA or methodologies but it does speak to private contracting on some level. On the other hand, private contracting (SpaceX and others) has provided additional innovation and perspective.

Well they kinda showed what they can do with unlimited budget ! I mean they went to the moon and back with hand knitted memory over half a century ago!

#5891319

Astyanax

2021-02-28 01:57

Venix:

Every electronic on earth hit by a solar flare ...dead.... Mars rover be like "hihi that tickles!"

Solar flares are diffused by the atmosphere.

#5891355

Venix

2021-02-28 08:45

Astyanax:

Solar flares are diffused by the atmosphere.

The usual ones yes they do, but if it is big enough ...it can cause local blackouts and much much worse . https://www.pnas.org/content/116/47/23368 . Also my point was that such things as the mars rover etc they have to make em able to endure solar flares.

One of the most powerful solar flares ever seen, the Carrington Flare of 1859, was accompanied by a CME that hit Earth and buffeted the planet’s magnetic field, generating electric currents strong enough to melt telegraph wires. The flare energy is estimated at around 5 × 10^25 joules, equivalent to 10 billion megatons of TNT. During the past few decades, spacecraft have kept a close eye on the Sun. The strongest flare yet seen, in November 2003, was about 3 × 10^25 joules

#5891367

Raserian

2021-02-28 09:14

It's not just reliability but also low weight and dimensions, contemporary desktop CPUs have huge dies just to begin with and need whole other motherboard circuitry to work. Weight and size of the things is huge problem for spaceflight. However, they use regular lenovo computers on ISS. So it depends on application too.

#5891627

BLEH!

2021-03-01 12:48

They're also testing some ARM chips on that little helicopter, I believe, so be interesting to see how well that'll run.