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What's Inside the Mars Rovers
Captain Zion writes "Space.com has a story about the hardware and software of Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Basically, they're radiation-shielded, 20MHz PowerPC machines wirh 128Mb RAM and 256Mb of flash memory, running VxWorks. I wonder if I could make a nice firewall with one of these for my home network..."
There is TONS of information to be learned from the levels of isotopes and natural radiation in our solar system, but spewing radiologically hot stuff out the backs of rockets would ruin that data for all time. On Earth, carbon 14 dating can't be used to date materials from after the first atomic bomb blast. Who knows what information you'd ruin with a dirty rocket?
Eat at Joe's.
WHAT THE ARTICLE SAYS IS WRONG.
THE WEB OF THE LINK SAYS: "THE PROCESSOR CARRIES OUT 20 MILLION INSTRUCTIONS PER SECOND". EACH INSTRUCTION MAY TAKE AT LEAST 4 CLOCK-CYCLES TO BE EXECUTED. SO THE REAL SPEED OF THE PROCESSOR'S CLOCK WOULD BE 100MHZ AT LEAST.
EVEN WITH THIS CLOCK SPEED THERE ARE COMPUTERS (LIKE MACS) WHICH GET THE PERFORMANCE OF A COMPUTER "APARENTLY" EVEN 4 TIMES FASTER-->CLOCK SPEED IS NOT COMPUTER PERFORMANCE AT ALL, IT'S JUST ONE MORE FACTOR
NOW THINK ABOUT THE PENTIUM-I AND THE FIRST RISC (REDUCED INTRUCTION SET COMPUTER). THIS ARCHITECTURE IS BASED ON THE USE OF FEW INSTRUCTIONS FROM A SET OF SIMPLE INSTRUCTIONS TO REPRESENT A SET OF COMPLEX INSTRUCTIONS WICH MAY TAKE A LOT OF CLOCK CYCLES (EACH ONE WITH A LENGTH OF 1/MHZ SECONDS), TO IMPROVE PERFORMANCE.