As we reported today, the latest Mars rover Perseverance, which recently landed on the Red Planet, is based on the RAD750 processor, which is a special version of the PowerPC 750 – the heart of the iMac G3 over 20 years ago.
In fact, the use of RAD750 in the new rover has been known for a long time, but it was actively talked about only after the successful landing of Perseverance.
Moreover, the price of the RAD750 has now become known. It turned out that this very old and technically primitive processor costs 200,000 dollars!
The source received information directly from the processor manufacturer – BAE Systems. She added that this CPU is installed in more than 250 spacecraft. By the way, there are two such processors in the new rover – the second is the main backup system in case of failure of the main one.
Interestingly, the Ingenuity helicopter, which flew to Mars with Perseverance, is based on the Snapdragon 801 SoC, and uses Linux as the OS. We can say that a helicopter is thousands of times more productive than its larger satellite.
Probably, such a platform was needed to implement an autonomous piloting system, because, unlike a rover, Ingenuity will fly over Mars on its own. In addition, it is designed for a maximum of 30 sols (Martian days) of work, while Perseverance should work at least 90 sols, but previous NASA rovers have already shown that they can work many times longer.
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