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Mars Rover Curiosity: Less Brainpower Than Apple's iPhone 5

Nerval's Lobster writes "To give the Mars Rover Curiosity the brains she needs to operate took 5 million lines of code. And while the Mars Science Laboratory team froze the code a year before the roaming laboratory landed on August 5, they kept sending software updates to the spacecraft during its 253-day, 352 million-mile flight. In its belly, Curiosity has two computers, a primary and a backup. Fun fact: Apple's iPhone 5 has more processing power than this one-eyed explorer. 'You're carrying more processing power in your pocket than Curiosity,' Ben Cichy, chief flight software engineer, told an audience at this year's MacWorld."

168 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. Just goes to show. . . by MagusSlurpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    . . . how wasteful most commercial software packages are.

    --
    My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
    1. Re:Just goes to show. . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, good comparison.

      Hundreds of millions of dollars spent on code for a very specific purpose compared to anything else.

    2. Re:Just goes to show. . . by JasoninKS · · Score: 1

      Agreed. When you're looking at as "tight" a package as Curiosity, you make some darned efficient code.

    3. Re:Just goes to show. . . by smittyoneeach · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or how bloody-minded comparisons tell you little. The reason you need horsepower on the board is not because computations are bearish. Rather, all the human interface code.
      I worked on government systems two decades ago that had four-decade old technology and worked great. Why? All the user interface agony was offloaded to dedicated consoles.
      Case in point: which is harder to code against: a command line interface, or a full-on GUI?

      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
    4. Re:Just goes to show. . . by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ". . . how wasteful most commercial software packages are."

      That's certainly true. And the huge volume of our data, too, but mostly software. I have programs on my computer that are easily 20 times the size of entire hard drive of one of our office computers back in 1994... and that hard drive contained a complete install of Microsoft Office as well as Lotus 1-2-3 for those who didn't like Excel. With lots of room to spare. As a long-time programmer, I celebrate the increases in capability we have seen over the years, but I decry the bloated inefficiency of much of our modern software. I would go so far as to say I am dismayed by it sometimes.

    5. Re:Just goes to show. . . by smash · · Score: 4, Informative

      Nah, it just goes to show how far behind the performance card the radiation hardened, military/aerospace grade equipment is.

      Plus, you really don't want to be bleeding edge on this sort of stuff. Discovering a mission ending critical CPU bug when you're astronomical scale distance away = bad.

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
    6. Re:Just goes to show. . . by smash · · Score: 1

      errr.. performance CURVE, obviously.

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
    7. Re:Just goes to show. . . by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well, if you're doing it in a modern software package like C# for example, there's little to no difference at all. I could write a stopwatch app... and the gui would have a single button and a display. The console version of which would be a lot harder to write. It all depends on what you're doing. Most GUIs make it easy to write for them, and offload a lot of their load onto the GPU.

      By the way, Curiosity's UI is still on earth... and on dozens of different computers at Nasa. It's kind of silly to say curiosity is only powered by this tiny processor.... that processor is just accepting and implementing commands. All the data crunching is happening back here on earth by massive banks of computers.

      P.S. Apple probably paid them to say this.

    8. Re:Just goes to show. . . by oakgrove · · Score: 1

      Hundreds of millions of dollars spent on code

      The OS running on the phone didn't just spring out of nowhere. If you add up all the development time spent on the code running on an OOTB iPhone 5 what do you think would be the cost?

      --
      The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
    9. Re:Just goes to show. . . by X0563511 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ... and where do you think the code to display that button came from? Not from C#, but from the .NET or Mono environment... which is... more code!

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    10. Re:Just goes to show. . . by tbird81 · · Score: 1

      They should have given us the specs of Curiosity's GPU.

    11. Re:Just goes to show. . . by tbird81 · · Score: 5, Funny

      After a mistake like that, you've got to hand in your geek curve.

    12. Re:Just goes to show. . . by VortexCortex · · Score: 2, Informative

      Case in point: which is harder to code against: a command line interface, or a full-on GUI?

      Do I get to use GNU readline and ncurses? If not then I'd rather code to the GUI. Seriously, you're kidding yourself if you think terminal discovery, terminal emulation, META-DATA for Signaling & Control within the char stream (escapes), even dynamic resizing, and KEYBOARD SCANCODE TRANSLATIONS are a walk in the park. Seriously, write your own OS from scratch, all that UI stuff (even for a console only OS) is every bit as complex as the GUI stuff. In fact, ncurses keeps multiple off-screen buffers 'character windows' and performs delta compression to translate screen updates into efficient escaping of updates, esp for sub-screen size scrolling. Ugh. Its actually less complex to make a client/server for a graphical VNC. I'd much rather just write pixels directly to video memory -- Have you even LOOKED at what you have to do to create and load new textmode terminal fonts?!

      Don't get me wrong, I agree with your overall point: UI eats tons of CPU & memory. However, the difficulty of coding against either command line or GUI depends on the API in use, not the complexity underneath.

      There's another reason why the CPUs on Curiosity are slow. Cosmic Rays. Smaller & Faster chips are more prone to Cosmic Rays flipping bits. Bigger silicon is more reliable, but is also slower, and it takes more juice to power, but that's OK, because the alternative is having more frequent spurious code and data errors. I actually do use my own stateful malloc(), free(), etc replacements that emulate (pseudo)random bit flipping in memory in my hobby OS's DEBUG_COSMIC_UNCERTAINTY mode -- a user defined compile time constant, to adjust bit flipping frequency for size vs density of the chips, wall clock time vs cycle speed (it's a cycle bound counter), and cosmic ray frequency (we're in between two spiral arms of our galaxy, in the arms there are more cosmic rays).

      Look, it's not that I'm ever going to be running my OS in deep space, I'm just a Cyberneticist who likes to think ahead a bit. Maybe my Machine Intelligences will thank me one day for the foresight, maybe not, but we've got is easy down here under Earth's thick protective bubble of magnetic fields. Interestingly: Curiosity uses AI to drive itself, We can tell it, go over there and let it find its own way, stopping if it runs into trouble. That software was uploaded after it landed, occupying the memory that the flight and landing programs took up.

    13. Re:Just goes to show. . . by JimCanuck · · Score: 1

      Basically it's a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_G3

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750

      Each computer has includes 256 kB of EEPROM, 256 MB of DRAM, and 2 GB of flash memory to go with those 400 MIPS.

    14. Re:Just goes to show. . . by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      But geeks are never allowed to touch curves.

    15. Re:Just goes to show. . . by tqk · · Score: 1

      Case in point: which is harder to code against: a command line interface, or a full-on GUI?

      What a stupid question. What are your priorities; pretty or correct?

      "Should I launch the missile now or not?" You can ask that question at the command line (defaulting to yes, no, or maybe), or you can offer the user a pop-up window which would do the same.

      Choices, choices, choices, ... Why do I so often feel like I'm in a Douglas Adams novel?

      --
      "Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit ..." -- Pink Floyd.
    16. Re:Just goes to show. . . by treeves · · Score: 2

      I think elliptic curves are OK, in the context of cryptography, debates about 100-page math proofs, etc.

      --
      ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
    17. Re:Just goes to show. . . by tqk · · Score: 2

      By the way, Curiosity's UI is still on earth... and on dozens of different computers at Nasa. It's kind of silly to say curiosity is only powered by this tiny processor.... that processor is just accepting and implementing commands.

      It's also done an "apt-get dist-upgrade" remotelely, by design. Cool bot.

      --
      "Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit ..." -- Pink Floyd.
    18. Re:Just goes to show. . . by martin-boundary · · Score: 3, Informative
      That's still graphical/visual programming in text mode, not command line programming in the conventional sense.

      A typical command line program simply reads data from STDIN, parameter values from argv[], and writes some values to STDOUT, maybe some error messages to STDERR. Command line programs don't care if the user is a human being or a script, unlike a ncurses program, whose fancy display formatting is all about human interactivity, but is often difficult to script.

    19. Re:Just goes to show. . . by aaronb1138 · · Score: 1

      Really, if you think about it, I suspect NASA has a higher percentage of high grade to elite programmers than Apple. Consider the type of personality who is going to work full time at NASA. To even apply for a job there, you're already looking at the top 20% IQ range just because everyone knows the pay will generally suck, but the work could turn out very interesting. Second, you're going to get a lot more people with the "I just f---ing love science + space" mentality which gets you a lot more top grade applicants.

      Apple on the other hand has to wade through probably a 2000 to 1 crappy programmer to good programmer ratio due to pay + prestige. So, yeah, I would bet the Curiosity guys could have made it work just fine on a 486-DX and 500k lines of code (in assembly) but used 5M lines and something slightly newer off the shelf due to time and availability.

      Also, functionally it's a few evolutionary stages past a Roomba. Significant processing power is not needed for mass spectroscopy, snapping photos or even navigating terrain (not having GPS actually makes the math computationally easier).

    20. Re:Just goes to show. . . by smash · · Score: 2

      I handed that in long ago when i started sleeping with women and being gainfully employed :D

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
    21. Re:Just goes to show. . . by Zorpheus · · Score: 1

      It's kind of silly to say curiosity is only powered by this tiny processor.... that processor is just accepting and implementing commands. All the data crunching is happening back here on earth by massive banks of computers.

      P.S. Apple probably paid them to say this.

      Could you give some details? I mean, as far as I know one of the most interesting purposes of the Curiosity software is that it is making decisions right on Mars, to steer the rover around obstacles and to stop if it finds something interesting. This is done on Mars and replacing Human control, because the transmission of control signals would take too long from earth. A computer on earth would have the same problem for that task. So which tasks are done by super computers on earth?

    22. Re:Just goes to show. . . by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      And where do you think that code for command line I/O comes from? After all, it isn't as if your console program directly polled the keyboard for scan codes.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    23. Re:Just goes to show. . . by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      and 12 lines of machine code that are actually running.

      I've never seen a processor whose machine code had lines.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    24. Re:Just goes to show. . . by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      Why do I so often feel like I'm in a Douglas Adams novel?

      Maybe you're listening to too much bad poetry? :-)

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    25. Re:Just goes to show. . . by maxwell+demon · · Score: 3, Funny

      I handed that in long ago when i started sleeping with women and being gainfully employed :D

      You're lying. Otherwise, what would you still do here on Slashdot? :-)

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    26. Re:Just goes to show. . . by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      Not only commercial software packages.

      But anyway, neither curiosity not the iPhone has brain power. They have processing power, which is something completely different.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    27. Re:Just goes to show. . . by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      So where do I get this STDIN, argv[], STDOUT and STDERR hardware? I somehow cannot find it at the local retailer ... or maybe it's code which is called?

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    28. Re:Just goes to show. . . by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      The command line stopwatch app could be coded as a CP/M app.

      Or, in Assembly Language.

      The only way the GUI stopwatch to then compete would be to also be written in Assembly Language. Have at it, champ!

    29. Re:Just goes to show. . . by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      I've never seen a sequence of machine code that didn't involve an incrementing address counter. The human analog is 'lines' as people observe when watching on a debugger console.

    30. Re:Just goes to show. . . by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2

      STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR hardware is all encompassed in a UART chip. You can't find the chip for sale at your Apple Store, but they probably still sell a 16550 chip at Frys. On modern processors that use said console as interface, the UART can be embedded right in the processor.

      Granted, they throw a whole wad of code in the middle these days with the USB interface, because bare hardware is scary to people like you for some reason, but the serial console is still out there for the rest of us.

    31. Re:Just goes to show. . . by History's+Coming+To · · Score: 1

      Yup. An iPhone also has more processing power than my washing machine, but the washing machine does a far better job of cleaning clothes. Also, try booting up an iPhone after it's been in space soak for a couple of years, it's going to need a huge update before it'll even let you phone somebody.

      --
      Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
    32. Re:Just goes to show. . . by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      The command line stopwatch app could be coded as a CP/M app.

      Which would still use the CP/M code.

      Or, in Assembly Language.

      Which would probably still make use of the OS or at least the BIOS.

      Yes, you could write a stopwatch app which runs on the bare metal, without relying on anything but the hardware (OK, and the part of the BIOS which starts the bootloader, unless you want to re-flash the BIOS). However that would be more complicated than you think. You'd have to initialize all the hardware yourself and handle everything on the lowest level.

      The only way the GUI stopwatch to then compete would be to also be written in Assembly Language. Have at it, champ!

      Doing a GUI stopwatch on the bare metal would be no more complicated than doing a text stopwatch on the bare metal ("CLI" wouldn't exactly apply then, because without some operating system, there would not be a command line to begin with, unless you'd take the unnecessary complication of additionally writing a CLI to run your stopwatch from). Just the data structures to be copied into video RAM would be a bit bigger. But then, the mouse handling code would probably be much simpler than the keyboard handling code you'd need for the text version.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    33. Re:Just goes to show. . . by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      By the way, Curiosity's UI is still on earth... and on dozens of different computers at Nasa. It's kind of silly to say curiosity is only powered by this tiny processor.... that processor is just accepting and implementing commands. All the data crunching is happening back here on earth by massive banks of computers.

      Not true at all. Curiosity's computer must keep track of time (for communications windows). It also mediates between the processors out in the science instruments and formats the data for transmission. It processes images from the various cameras both for science data collection and for navigation. (Curiosity has an automatic navigation and hazard avoidance system, I.E. self driving software, the same as Opportunity and Spirit.) Etc... etc...
       
      I'm not saying the earthbound portion of the system doesn't carry a good part of the load, but the onboard processor is a busy little beast that does much more than just "accepts and processes command [from Earth]'.

    34. Re:Just goes to show. . . by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      Since the address counter addresses bytes, the corresponding human-level structure would be letters. Or at best words, although even this isn't completely right because words are delimited by non-word characters or white space, while machine level commands don't have any separators (you can jump right in the middle of a command, and the processor will happily interpret the bytes starting there as commands with completely different borders, as long as the bytes starting from there happen to form some valid command pattern.

      How a debugger displays the machine code is irrelevant because it translates it into something human readable for display. The processor doesn't look at the debugger output, it looks at the actual bytes in memory. And those are not arranged in lines.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    35. Re:Just goes to show. . . by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      Don't get me wrong, I agree with your overall point: UI eats tons of CPU & memory. However, the difficulty of coding against either command line or GUI depends on the API in use, not the complexity underneath.

      And then there's the complexity and power requirements (both cycles and electrons) of the OS and the CPU/chipset that handles multitasking and background tasks... There's a lot more going on even in something as (seemingly) 'simple' as an iPhone than meets the eye - and even more so on a full sized desk- or lap- top. I think many coders fail to appreciate this because at best they don't have to deal with it (the OS or CPU does it automatically), and at worst they call a library function that someone else has written. Few on Slashdot seem to really appreciate the difference between consumer boxen (with all their bells and whistles) and dedicated systems.

    36. Re:Just goes to show. . . by Sulphur · · Score: 3, Informative

      and 12 lines of machine code that are actually running.

      I've never seen a processor whose machine code had lines.

      Segments.

    37. Re:Just goes to show. . . by Sulphur · · Score: 1

      I've never seen a sequence of machine code that didn't involve an incrementing address counter. The human analog is 'lines' as people observe when watching on a debugger console.

      Old drum machines used an address over scheme where each instruction specified the next one. Micro code can show similar behavior.

    38. Re:Just goes to show. . . by tqk · · Score: 1

      Why do I so often feel like I'm in a Douglas Adams novel?

      Maybe you're listening to too much bad poetry? :-)

      I do not want to think about Vogon poetry this early on a Saturday morning. :-O

      --
      "Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit ..." -- Pink Floyd.
    39. Re:Just goes to show. . . by Hamsterdan · · Score: 1

      ^- This...

      Besides, it's not like you're gonna run games on the thing. What you want is *proven* stuff running really tight code. Back in '93-94 what we learned in CEGEP was 6809 assembly (auto-pilot systems to be exact). It has to be proven and reliable stuff, not buggy bloated cutting-edge stuff. There's also the matter of limited power supply.

      --
      I've got better things to do tonight than die.
    40. Re:Just goes to show. . . by repvik · · Score: 1

      Yes, you could write a stopwatch app which runs on the bare metal, without relying on anything but the hardware (OK, and the part of the BIOS which starts the bootloader, unless you want to re-flash the BIOS). However that would be more complicated than you think. You'd have to initialize all the hardware yourself and handle everything on the lowest level.

      The BIOS initializes all that is needed for a text-mode stopwatch. It would really not be hard to write in asm.

      Doing a GUI stopwatch on the bare metal would be no more complicated than doing a text stopwatch on the bare metal ("CLI" wouldn't exactly apply then, because without some operating system, there would not be a command line to begin with, unless you'd take the unnecessary complication of additionally writing a CLI to run your stopwatch from). Just the data structures to be copied into video RAM would be a bit bigger. But then, the mouse handling code would probably be much simpler than the keyboard handling code you'd need for the text version.

      While USB keyboards work in compatibility mode - requiring no USB driver, the same is not true for a mouse. That would require USB drivers. That in it self would be far more complex than writing a text-mode stopwatch.

    41. Re:Just goes to show. . . by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      The BIOS initializes all that is needed for a text-mode stopwatch. It would really not be hard to write in asm.

      Thus you have to count the BIOS as part of the total code needed.

      While USB keyboards work in compatibility mode

      In compatibility mode? You mean, the USB port is rewired to an old PS2 mouse port? Or else, how would that not need code?
      BIOS code is code, too. It was about considering all code needed, remember?

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    42. Re:Just goes to show. . . by tqk · · Score: 1

      Curiosity can get by with less brainpower because it's not going to be put in the hands of all those senile old Apple customers.

      Or, prepubescent doofuses (Morons / "morans"? Imbeciles? Twits? Nutbars?) who think cell phones are the cat's meow.

      --
      "Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit ..." -- Pink Floyd.
    43. Re:Just goes to show. . . by tbird81 · · Score: 1

      But geeks are never allowed to touch curves.

      Quite correct. I understand that Apple has a patent on curved surfaces.

  2. So... by sootman · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... not enough power to run Angry Birds then?

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    Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
    1. Re:So... by sco08y · · Score: 5, Funny

      Not even enough power for Mildly Peeved Birds, Canadian edition.

    2. Re:So... by treeves · · Score: 2

      No, and especially not Angry Birds SPACE Edition.

      --
      ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
    3. Re:So... by History's+Coming+To · · Score: 1

      Depends on whether you want to run Angry Birds in space or Angry Birds In Space (in space).

      --
      Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
    4. Re:So... by node+3 · · Score: 1

      So, if Curiosity were to encounter structures built and manned by pigs, it won't be able to knock them down to see if there's any life hidden in the soil beneath them.

      Nice going NASA!

  3. iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by ZorinLynx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sure, the iPhone 5 may have more processing power... But I bet if you put that thing in space, the first cosmic ray that comes along will happily crash the OS. Game over.

    Hardware in spaecraft has to be hardened big time against radiation. Off the shelf junk will NOT work. Just sayin'.

    1. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by jfdavis668 · · Score: 5, Funny

      That is why the Spirit rover got stuck, it was using Apple Maps.

    2. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      even if we could make the latest and greatest chip radiation hardened it would still be outdated by the time it got to Mars

    3. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by dfghjk · · Score: 1

      Off the shelf junk works in space all the time. Processing power is unrelated to radiation shielding.

      Lack of processor power has to do with qualification processes and lead times. Your pitiful opinion is misdirected and uninformed.

    4. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Off the shelf junk works in space all the time. Processing power is unrelated to radiation shielding.

      Lack of processor power has to do with qualification processes and lead times. Your pitiful opinion is misdirected and uninformed.

      OTS works in the Earth's magnetosphere. Get outside of that and you have to start making major design compromises, particularly with RAM.

    5. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Cosmic rays go straight through the earths atmosphere.

      They absolutely do not, as the article you cite makes clear in its second sentence. Sheesh.

    6. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's not outdated by 20 years. The CPU is a RAD750, based on PPC750 which means it's roughly equivalent to a PPC G3 so the thing has a similar amount of power to the original iMac. That's leaps and bounds over the 386s that NASA used to use.

    7. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by WWJohnBrowningDo · · Score: 5, Informative
      Did you even read the article you linked?

      Cosmic rays go straight through the earths atmosphere.

      No, it doesn't. If that were true we'd be all dead. Comic radiation in interplanetary space is 400 to 900 mSv annually, which is 1000 to 2200 times stronger than dosage at sea level on Earth (0.4 mSv). Earth's atmosphere blocks most radiation below 1 GeV.

      Off the shelf computer hardware does indeed work just fine in space. You can watch people on the ISS using normal laptops and cameras all the time.

      That's because ISS is in LEO and thus is still protected by the thermosphere and Earth's magnetic field. On a trip to Mars neither of those protections would be available.

    8. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      To my knowledge, Curiosity has never sent messages like this:

      omg r u siris gt out! lol :)

    9. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by Dorianny · · Score: 2

      On the iss astronauts can do hands on troubleshooting, and if the worst happens they can just fly replacement parts in the next resupply mission.

    10. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by stephanruby · · Score: 1

      Hardware in spaecraft has to be hardened big time against radiation. Off the shelf junk will NOT work. Just sayin'.

      And yet, the HTC Nexus One has passed many of those tests without much problems.

    11. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by dgatwood · · Score: 3, Informative

      So only 16 years, then.... The PPC750 was introduced in 1997. Not quite 20, but closer to 20 than to "recent"....

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    12. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by p0p0 · · Score: 1

      As a previous poster had pointed, astronauts are not far enough out of orbit for the electronics to be in danger of cosmic rays as they are still within the protection of the Earths atmosphere.

    13. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by MagusSlurpy · · Score: 1

      On the iss astronauts can do hands on troubleshooting, and if the worst happens they can just fly replacement parts in the next resupply mission.

      So if the ISS blows up and each chunk survives reentry and smashes a different nuclear plant, causes dozens of meltdowns simultaneously across the Earth we'll just fly some parts up on the next resupply?

      --
      My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
    14. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Things I like about your comment

      6 digit UID
      Giving a citation that is contrary to your post
      Being moderated offtopic
      Your sig bemoaning 'unfair' modding

      I'm lovin' it.

    15. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by Wyatt+Earp · · Score: 1

      Remember that the hardware requirements for the rover were set in 2004, or when the PPC750 was 7 years old and the RAD750 was 3 years old.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750

      The 740/750 models had 6.35 million transistors on a 260 nm process has a die of 67 mm2

      The RAD750 has 10.4 million transistors, is manufactured by BAE Systems using either 250 or 150 nm process and has a die area of 130 mm2

    16. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Informative

      This is the computer chip in the Mars Rover: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750
      Specifically, they're using two *133Mhz chips rated for 1 Megarad.
      1 Megarad is about double the hardening they actually required,
      but I'm guessing they overspecced so that the Mars Science Laboratory will outlast its planned mission length.

      Anyways, if you're in low earth orbit (like the space station) you can get away with radiation tolerant electronics.
      But out in cold hard space, without the earth's atmosphere, you need radiation hardened electronics.
      *Not 200Mhz as so many articles are quoting

      Most satellites and space based processors are no more successful at
      hardening than your garden variety laptops. They just program them better and watch for memory errors.

      What? If it was that simple, we'd be using modern processes, instead of technology that debuted in 1997.
      Instead, it's quite the opposite, where a modern 24nm process is impossible to harden to the same strength as an old 150nm process.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    17. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by ArsonSmith · · Score: 1
      --
      Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
    18. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually its not a Myth. I work for an aerospace company, specifically in electronics HW design, and specifically for satellites (we built some of the instruments on Hubble as well as the spacecraft bus for several DigitalGlobe birds).

      Its not immediate "cosmic rays" that get you.. its the long term rad exposure that a satellite gets over its intended life. The problem is aging effects and end of life performance. We do rad testing on all our flight level parts and derate the performance and then design so at the end of life point you still get intended operation.

      For example, we use Actel one time programmable FPGAs, SRAM parts like Xilinx can get random bit flips from radiation. And even in the Actel parts, we "scrub" memory in use frequently. We can fix single bit errors, and detect double bit errors, etc etc.

      On many programs we use low performance CPUs... something like 66MHz is common, and 16MB ram. But thats all you need for most applications. Remember, no GUI, no touch screen. Data processing is typically done on the ground, so you just have to get the data out the downlink... not hard to stream data fast.

      Anyway, there are rad hard or rad tolerant higher performance solutions that are in development. Tilera (MIT spin off) has 64 and 49 core chips that will have a rad hard varient for space. Xilinx is starting to ship a rad tolerant Virtex6. So thats great.. the problem is, if you are someone buying a $1bn bird and you have basicalyl one shot at getting the HW right, much less appetite for super cutting edge in the electronics. Better to use tried and proven that will get the job done and squirt data out of downlink for later use...

    19. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by MagusSlurpy · · Score: 1

      Whatever. I wish I had that massive trainset.

      --
      My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
    20. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by tbird81 · · Score: 2

      That's the reality distortion field, which is more powerful than the magnetosphere.

    21. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by Jeremi · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Sure, the iPhone 5 may have more processing power... But I bet if you put that thing in space, the first cosmic ray that comes along will happily crash the OS. Game over.

      Yes, probably... but you could send up a dozen iPhone 5s in a box, all running the same software, set to auto-reboot-on-crash, and have the rover use whatever results the majority of the phones agree on. The iPhone RAIP array would be smaller, faster, and more reliable than what they are using now.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    22. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by Sterling+Christensen · · Score: 1

      You mean Earth's magnetosphere. If it were within the atmosphere enough to be protected by it, it would never be able to remain in order due to drag.

      See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iss#Radiation

    23. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      The radiation wouldn't just cause the iPhone to crash, they would be fried. Dead.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    24. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by cnettel · · Score: 2

      Off the shelf junk works in space all the time. Processing power is unrelated to radiation shielding.

      Lack of processor power has to do with qualification processes and lead times. Your pitiful opinion is misdirected and uninformed.

      Well, there are sound arguments for why smaller manufacturing proceses would inherently be more radiation sensitive, so saying that the two are unrelated is a bit misleading.

    25. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      Comic radiation

      I guess when that hits, it writes a big "bang" into space near its target? :-)

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    26. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by Fished · · Score: 1

      Could wrap it in tin-foil... works for my head!

      --
      "He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
    27. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by tibit · · Score: 3

      There's space, and then there's space. LEO is not really much of space, because you're in the magnetosphere bubble. Get into interplanetary space and things change very drastically. Radiation (cosmic ray) doses go up by 3-4 orders of magnitude. You have no clue what you're talking about.

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
    28. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by tibit · · Score: 1

      The location of ISS is to space like the wading water next to a beach in Bahamas is to deep ocean. There's the LEO that you call "space", and then there's interplanetary space, the real thing. Your bumbling about "chances of a cosmic ray" blah blah is so uninformed it's not even funny. Protip: there's plenty of well paid people whose job is to do the stuff you claim is unnecessary. Obviously they live in a reality distortion field, and it's you who is right. Whatever, but I've got a nice bridge to sell, and you're a prime buyer it'd seem. You're like the young earthers, to whom obviously all the geologists who work in the petrochemical industry know nothing and are demonstrably wrong all the time. I mean, come on there's denial, and then there's what you're spouting.

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
    29. Re:iPhone 5 is faster.. for a few minutes maybe. by Hamsterdan · · Score: 1

      And one solar flare later, they're all dead. That's why they need radiation hardened stuff. Besides, the energy requirements would be a problem...

      --
      I've got better things to do tonight than die.
  4. So? by bmo · · Score: 1

    The iPod isn't expected to survive the same environment.

    Sometimes ruggedness beats clock cycles.

    --
    BMO

    1. Re:So? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Different signal.
      Different signal.
      How big is the power pack?
      Different device.
      Try dropping curiosity a second time and see what happens.

    2. Re:So? by Col+Bat+Guano · · Score: 1

      Hmmm... I am ...curious... about this thing you describe.
      I would like to order one on a 2 year plan.

    3. Re:So? by aaronb1138 · · Score: 1

      The iPod / iPhone has trouble surviving Earth gravity at distances around 1 meter (a missed pocket). I would give good odds on failure just being accelerated out of the troposphere on most launch vehicles.

    4. Re:So? by AlabamaCajun · · Score: 1

      Also both are tracked everywhere they go. They include hi-res digital cameras. The i5 won't work on mars, who cares about itunes and curi can have all the music it wants. The i5 does not have a laser or built in device to sniff rocks nor wheels to get around.

    5. Re:So? by JasoninKS · · Score: 1

      Yes they are different devices. So I wouldn't exactly go around bragging about an iPhone's "brain power" when the "lesser" device is by and far the more capable device.

  5. Misleading by Tourney3p0 · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is misleading. The rover has dozens of LRUs, all individually computing sensory input, crunching it, and sending it across the bus for the main computer to process. Yet it's only taking into account the main computer's processing power.

    1. Re:Misleading by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      What is an LRU?

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:Misleading by Orion · · Score: 5, Informative

      Line Replaceable Unit, meaning it's an unit that can be swapped out quickly.

      Somehow I don't think that term really applies here...

    3. Re:Misleading by lastx33 · · Score: 2

      Each control system requires comparatively little processing power but high reliability and redundancy. As an example, the back-up flight computer on the space shuttles was an HP-41CV/CX pocket calculator and later, an HP42S. These models were chosen specifically for build quality, reliability and lack of known inherent bugs, oh - and low outgassing.

      --
      "You can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be lead!" - Stan Laurel
    4. Re:Misleading by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      Each control system requires comparatively little processing power but high reliability and redundancy. As an example, the back-up flight computer on the space shuttles was an HP-41CV/CX pocket calculator and later, an HP42S.

      Um, no. The flight computers (prime and backup) on the Shuttle were IBM AP-101 - if they went, it was game over as the Shuttle was fly-by-wire. No handheld toy need apply.

    5. Re:Misleading by Tourney3p0 · · Score: 1

      Close, but no. It means that it is designed to be swapped out quickly *at an operating location*. The moon is not an operating location, at least not yet.

    6. Re:Misleading by Tourney3p0 · · Score: 1

      Dozens of little processing adds up to something more than a little processing. Point still stands. The comparison was done only to the central processor, which is misleading.

  6. What a waste by Stele · · Score: 2

    And yet, from my observations, all the iPhone is ever used for is cutting virtual rope and tweeting (low-res) pictures of food. Seems like quite a waste by comparison.

    1. Re:What a waste by cnettel · · Score: 1

      And yet, from my observations, all the iPhone is ever used for is cutting virtual rope and tweeting (low-res) pictures of food. Seems like quite a waste by comparison.

      If Curiosity would ever send back even a low-res picture containing anything resembling food, it would be deemed a tremendous success. How unfair to our dear Apple gadget friends.

  7. power use and battery life have to be deal with as by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    power use and battery life have to be dealt with as well.

  8. Hubble upgraded to 486 by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    And the Hubble Space Telescope was upgraded to an 80486 during one of the shuttle maintenance missions.

  9. That shouldn't impress anyone. by gTsiros · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Voyager 1/2 could run about 100K instructions per second, maybe less.

    It's about the objective, not raw processing power.

    And this is a fine opportunity! to pour some of my bile about the miserly state in which modern software is.

    --
    Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
    1. Re:That shouldn't impress anyone. by 0123456 · · Score: 2

      Voyager 1/2 could run about 100K instructions per second, maybe less.

      The Apollo Guidance Computer was about the same, I believe. Emulating it in real time takes about 2% of a 3GHz Pentium-4.

  10. Lots more eyes than one by sighted · · Score: 3, Informative

    Nitpick with the summary: the rover is not 'one eyed'. It uses a bunch: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/rover/eyesandother/ That said, it does have that one big laser on its head: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/instruments/spectrometers/chemcam/ Robots on Mars with lasers. It doesn't get much better.

    --
    Saddle up: Riding with Robots
    1. Re:Lots more eyes than one by wvmarle · · Score: 1

      They just use robots for lack of sharks.

  11. There's a reason by GodfatherofSoul · · Score: 1

    Years back I read that NASA uses older, battle tested chips rather than going with cutting edge hardware that might crap out on you from an obscure bug.

    --
    I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
  12. Re:Ms Rover by mister_playboy · · Score: 1

    They could be just continuing the tradition of referring to ships as "she".

    While they people running the mission do not depend on the rover for their livelihood the way sailors depended on their ship, I'm assuming it's still a group of mostly men working together over a long time period.

    I would probably go with "it" myself, though.

    --
    Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law ::: Love is the law, love under will
  13. Why do they always have to refer to the iPhone? by bogaboga · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Fun fact: Apple's iPhone 5 has more processing power than this one-eyed explorer.

    Never mind that iPhone's source code is closed. I don't dispute the fact above.

    My trouble though is on the constant reference to Apple's device as if a generic term like "Smart Phone" would not suffice!

    Personally, I am tired of seeing the term "iPhone" day in and day out. I am tired!

    Can anyone refute 'my fact that' any smart phone has more processing power then the the one-eyed explorer?

    1. Re:Why do they always have to refer to the iPhone? by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 1

      . . . because sometimes, Libraries of Congress aren't appropriate as units.

      You could, however, measure total processing power as number of Libraries of Congress filled with iPhones. Which would make just amount sense of comparing a Mars Rover to a smart phone in the first place . . .

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    2. Re:Why do they always have to refer to the iPhone? by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Maybe it's because of the fact that the speaker was addressing a crowd at Macworld...

      'You're carrying more processing power in your pocket than Curiosity,' Ben Cichy, chief flight software engineer, told an audience at this year's MacWorld.

      --
      Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
  14. heh yea but by Osgeld · · Score: 5, Funny

    Curiosity's computer(s) can handle extreme cold and radiation of space while keeping radio communication for millions of miles, An iPhone is prone to overheat during normal use and has had trouble sending a radio signal though your hand.

    1. Re:heh yea but by aitikin · · Score: 1

      I don't know about "overheat during normal use", but the rest of this statement is pretty damned accurate. Your iPhones have more processing power than your car usually does to, that's not considered a big deal because the processing power in your car is task specific and designed to handle much higher and lower temperature swings.

      --
      "Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
    2. Re:heh yea but by atgaaa · · Score: 1

      An iPhone is prone to overheat during normal use and has had trouble sending a radio signal though your hand.

      You are holding it wrong

  15. So? by JasoninKS · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'll give Curiosity the gold medal any day.

    Lets compare, shall we?

    iPhone - sometimes flaky signal. Curiosity - working from millions of miles away. WIN Curiosity.
    iPhone - works on Earth within range of cell towers. Curiosity - working on frakking Mars. WIN Curiosity.
    iPhone - 1 day power life. Curiosity - radioactive power pack. WIN Curiosity.
    iPhone - plays games, makes calls, takes pictures of girls making duck faces. Curiosity - scientifically explores and photographs another planet. WIN Curiosity.
    iPhone - will shatter if you handle it wrong. Curiosity - dropped onto another world and still going. As designed. WIN Curiosity.

    Curiosity, doing way the hell more, with way the hell less.

  16. way back in 2008... by mschaffer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Way back in 2008 most of the hardware and software development was complete, so it should be compared to the original iPhone or the iPhone 3G.

  17. Re:The title is so obvious by JasoninKS · · Score: 3, Informative

    Better double check your figures. Curiosity launched November of 2011. Just landed August of 2012.

  18. Re:Ms Rover by martin-boundary · · Score: 2

    The Mars Rover is now a She? Could it ever have been a He?

    No. The Rover is an It.

    Tut, tut! Don't assume! Go to Mars, turn her over, and check!

  19. Reliable devices lag consumer devices by steveha · · Score: 2

    Devices prepped for the harsh environments will take longer to build than consumer devices, so the spec gets frozen sooner.

    Plus, as long as it has enough horsepower, why mess with the design to upgrade it?

    P.S. This is not really a new observation. Consider PhoneSat, the project to take an off-the-shelf Android phone and use it as the heart of a micro-satellite. Clearly the processing power is enough, plus they can use the camera, inertial sensors, and I guess even GPS. (I wonder if the GPS software can cope with orbital altitude?)

    http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/home/PhoneSat.html

    --
    lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
  20. Not needing a foolproof UI is most of it by spiritplumber · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've written an universal autopilot in 2007 that fits in 32K of eeprom. I say that not to brag, but to mean that these things are not unusual. Software on PLCs and so on is often very small -- it also has to be very good at not crashing. Fortunately that's all it has to be: nobody cares if the scroll bar doesn't glow when it's hit the end and so on, it just has to keep the power plant working :)

    --
    Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
  21. Huh? by Matt_Bennett · · Score: 1

    Why does it matter at all? It doesn't matter the relative processing power of my phone, there's a hell of a lot more to it than processing power. Like the simple fact that my phone isn't on a different planet.

  22. Most one-eyed explorers by new+death+barbie · · Score: 1

    ... aren't as smart as they think they are.

    --

    It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.

    1. Re:Most one-eyed explorers by fikx · · Score: 1

      remember: in the land of the blind....

      --
      AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
  23. Headline: iPhone 5 users use less brainpower. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Offloaded conscious brain processing to Siri.
    Takes worthless pictures.
    Can't figure out way to San Jose.

  24. iphone5 connectivity problems by Dorianny · · Score: 1

    Apple released ios 6.01 and 6.02 to fix connectivity problems with the iphone5. Its kinda hard plugging the rover into itunes to perform updates for connectivity problems.

  25. Compare it to Nintendo, Atari? by retroworks · · Score: 1, Informative

    I could compare the software used in the Statue of Liberty to any phone on the market, and create the same headline.

    --
    Gently reply
  26. The explanation is simple by jones_supa · · Score: 2

    The cold fact is just that running a rich graphical UI, games, etc. can actually require more horsepower than some serious science stuff, even though the latter might seem more demanding.

    1. Re:The explanation is simple by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      Even if you look at the computers on things like the F-15 you will see small memories and slow CPUs. It takes time and a lot of money to get something like a spacecraft or radar system verified. You use what you know works. If an 8085 will do the mission why not use it?

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  27. who cares about the *software*? by v1 · · Score: 1

    Rovers still have the best hardware

    This one's even got a laser tough enough to blast rocks. It's gonna be awhile before we see a cell phone with those kind of specs.

    --
    I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
    1. Re:who cares about the *software*? by Prof.Phreak · · Score: 1

      This one's even got a laser tough enough to blast rocks. It's gonna be awhile before we see a cell phone with those kind of specs.

      Forget cell phones, I'm waiting for sharks!

      --

      "If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy

  28. iPhone 5? by c · · Score: 1

    Phew. I must be getting old. It feels like it was just yesterday that computing power was measured in VIC-20's. Now days it seems iPhones are a unit of speed, weight, pixel density *and* marketshare.

    It doesn't bode well for metrification...

    --
    Log in or piss off.
  29. not got any sort of circuitry in my pocket by johnwerneken · · Score: 1

    The last thing on Earth that I desire is mobile empowerment. I find I have more than enough power as it is; often quite sufficient to cause me all sorts of hassles later. But yes progress is kinda cool. In college (1966) we had one of the first 'home' video setups, the camera was about the max size of a suitcase for checked airline baggage and weighed God only knows what it was on wheels; the recorder was about the size and weight of a washing machine; the media might fit in a bread box but I doubt it; and the whole thing cost us about $20,000.00 USD. There's a cell phone on my desk here (in case CommunistCast ISP goes down, uncommon but far from surprising); it was free and does video better; its half the size of a cigarette pack...the studio rig we bought was paid for by the USG, we got a grant to hire hookers and a suite to make a porn movie, for a class capstone project; made a profit selling 'the only copy' of the results to our customers, whose funds we (being gentlemen) let the working folks keep..

  30. That's Pretty Common in Aerospace by Greyfox · · Score: 1

    They design those things so far in advance that they're pretty much obsolete as they're sitting on the launch pad. For all that the images coming back are pretty amazing, the CCD it's packing really isn't that great. If they started designing a new one now, by the time they go to launch it we'll all have lightfield 3-D infinitely zoomable cameras on our pocket-Watsons.

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  31. Wrong Comparison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Have you checked out the wireless coverage map for Gale Crater on Mars? iPhone - zilch, no signal. Not even roaming. AT&T and Verizon are nowhere to be found. But Curiosity - good signal everywhere. That's why my next phone contract will be with NASA's Deep Space Network.

    1. Re:Wrong Comparison by rossdee · · Score: 1

      What carrier do the Martians use then?

  32. If OS crashes, just reboot it by Su27K · · Score: 2

    And make sure you have more than one running at the same time. SpaceX uses non rad-hardened computers on Dragon, and in their last mission one computer had to reboot due to a radiation hit, but the system works fine since they have redundancy, this is explained in detail here. So no, hardware in spacecraft does not have to be hardened against radiation, and off the shelf junk will work. Of course this doesn't mean you can use iPhone on Mars rover since in Dragon's case it's a short mission and they're under the protection of Earth's magnetic field, it just means you need to design your system in a case by case basis and avoid over-generalization.

    1. Re:If OS crashes, just reboot it by tibit · · Score: 1

      I find that calling LEO "space" is really wrong. It's not space, it's vacuum, but otherwise it's just barely any worse than a couple hundred km down on the surface of our planet. Space is where your average laptop will work for less than an hour without crashing, potentially crashing in a way that is permanent (latch up that leads to a magic smoke escape).

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
  33. Hmm by Ryanrule · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Is there any point to this article? This seems like one of those "your desktop has more power than the space shuttle" type shits of the 90's.

  34. space qual/rad tolerant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    You're conflating serveral things..
    Space Qualification doesn't have a lot to do with rad hardening. It's more about manufacturing processes, reliability, and testing to work over wide temps. That off the shelf computer probably won't work at -40C or +75C, while the processors in most spacecraft do. ISS or shuttle isn't a good example: it's basically an office environment: it even has *air*.

    Rad hardening is something else. And the space processors *ARE* more successful at hardening than garden variety CPUs. Take a look at the LEON3FT SPARC core, for instance (Available commercially as the Atmel AT697 or the Aeroflex UT699, or you can burn it into an Actel RTAX2000, if you like). It has register paths that have error correction, etc. The demonstrated performance in a radiation environment *is* better than the non FT version.

    There's single event upsets (SEU) aka "bit flips" which EDAC or parity works nicely for. Your laptop flipping a bit might not be a big deal.. most consumer software has enough bugs and things that you just restart and move on. If the processor controlling the rocket motors during entry descent and landing screws up it's a $2.5B hole in the ground. So internal registers in the space CPUs tend to be triple redundant or other upset mitigations.

    But that's really not the big issues. There are things like Latch-Up.. that particle going through causes a latchup, and the resulting high current at a small location melts the chip. Oops, dead. There are latchup immune designs and processes, and there are latchup monitor/reset circuits, but it's not universal.
    There's single event gate rupture (SEGR) which is where a MOSFET gate gets punctured because the normal charge on it is close to the failure level in normal operation, and the particle deposits just enough more to push it over the edge. Would you notice this on a modern CPU? Maybe it's in the microcode for calculating square root or something and you wouldn't for a long long time.
    We use a lot of FPGAs in spacecraft these days.. If it's a xilinx, that particle can flip a configuration bit, and now you've just programmed your FPGA to have two outputs connected to the same "wire" and they have opposite values. Oops some dead gates now, or if it's bad enough dead chip.

    ISS is a benign radiation environment.. about a Rad(Si) per year or so. There are *humans* on ISS, after all. After all 600 Rad will kill someone in days, 100 Rad will make them pretty sick. A typical design dose for a Mars mission might be 20kRad. For going to Jupiter, maybe a MegaRad?

    But even in that benign radiation environment, a lot of COTS equipment will fail, and there's no way to predict, short of test. So they take all those COTS widgets and run them in a proton beam and figure out what the mean time til failure is. If it's long enough, you send it up to ISS and have at it. There's an awful lot of stuff that has "expected life on ISS" of something like 90-180 days. Google for the papers or look at the website http://www.klabs.org where a lot of this stuff is collected. 180 days on ISS is plenty if you're sending new stuff up on a regular basis. Even at $100k/kilo, that's pretty inexpensive to just send a new iPad up every few months if one dies.

    If you're sending a billion bucks to Mars for 10 years, I think you might want something a bit better.

  35. brainpower = power by snemiro · · Score: 1

    Maybe the comparison should be made using power needed by cpu/modules instead. There are no plug sockets in Mars...yet.

  36. Not so much cosmic rays by localroger · · Score: 2, Informative

    Cosmic rays actually interact very little either with the Earth's magnetosphere, atmosphere, or sillicon chips. They're going so fast that they don't hang around long enough to interact with atomic nuclei unless they score a direct hit. There really isn't much difference in cosmic ray exposure between the ground and, say, the surface of the Moon. The real problem is solar weather. The Sun regularly spits out particle blasts that would fry anything made of semiconductors. Those blasts are what power the aurorae. But those charged particles aren't going so fast so they're deflected by the magnetosphere (which is what protects the ISS) and they're also more readily absorbed by the atmosphere, which is why radiation levels at sea level are lower than they are in Denver. If you could get your iPhone and tablet safely out of the solar system, they would probably work fine on a generation starship.

    --
    Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
  37. But it HAS to work by Kwyj1b0 · · Score: 1

    Two reasons why the older hardware is better

    (1) It has to work - that is why you go in for older (read: more tested) hardware. What happens if a bug in the code causes a crash a million miles from home? You can't pull out the battery (oops, you can't do that for the iPhone either ;) ) - and reboot.
    (2) Who cares whether the processing power is greater? What matters is whether the hardware can support the software to do what the system was designed for (which in the rover case is fixed). You use the most RELIABLE hardware to get the mission done. Any additional power/capabilities in the hardware just introduces more points of failure (OTOH, the phone should (ideally) play games that come out in two years, which might require more processing power).

    My phone might also have better processing power than the autopilot hardware on most commercial airlines. You need tens of thousands of flight test/real world hours of testing before you can safely use it. Putting in the latest and greatest processor just creates more rooms for error. I would also expect a lot of the code came from other tried-and-tested systems, so you'd like to use the same hardware.

    It is like using a hammer to crack a peanut shell. Sure, you get greater force with the hammer. But you have to be very, very careful when using the wrong tool for the job. Frankly, I'm not sure what the point of the article is. I don't know of any reasonable person who would even consider using a desktop/laptop/phone processors on mission critical hardware.

  38. My car has a lot more HPs than the rover.. by mrstrano · · Score: 1

    and yet, I just use it to commute to work. What a waste.

  39. Re:what about the cost? by Molochi · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well you have to factor in the shipping cost...

    --
    "The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
  40. Re:Question by Molochi · · Score: 1

    You ever been to Titusville?

    --
    "The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
  41. Horse Bull by holophrastic · · Score: 1

    "Processing Power", what, at S.T.P.? Spherical frog in the microwave anyone?

    Under some forms of ideal conditions, perhaps. But think about what it'd take to get a stupid rubber case/cover for Curiosity?

    Take your beloved iPhone, take it out of the case, use it for the same 253 days (I actually don't know anyone who's used a single iPhone for that long, by the way), and see how that processing power manages to endure on the 254th day. No protector; just your pocket, and the keys in your pocket. Don't lose it, don't drop it, don't crack the screen. Oh yeah, and there are no in-warranty returns either.

    And, forget about the mission, it had to survive the stress tests of all of the other components for years.

    And the hardware was selected and frozen years before the software was, dumbass.

    Oh, and by-the-by, it's controlling a nuclear power plant.

  42. This has always been the case. by C_Kode · · Score: 1

    I remember when 386/486 were still being sent up in space when current PC processors were many times faster. (still are?) They were tested, protected, and proven. Ask yourself this. Do you buy the newest process off Newegg (or whatever) and send it into space hoping it doesn't fail at a price of $500 million or in Curiosity's case $2.5 billion? Umm, hell no.

  43. The command line, always smarter than the desktop by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 1

    Given the same brainpower. When Curiosity landed and transmitted its first grainy photo, it was not a desktop with icons for us to click on.

    Also in a well designed parallel system the smartness exceeds the sum of all the CPUs because there is less context switching.

    In biological systems evolution has given us a smooth transition from the highest notion to the lowest impulse and action. This is parallelism on a scale beyond 'massive' because the systems do not just interact in the sense of modules or layers, there are melded patterns of cause and effect. Organisms that throw fatal exceptions have been weeded out. What remains is a thing of majesty and mystery that could never be completely explained by science.

    I am speaking of a woman of course, But I digress.

    A dog chasing its own tail has more computing power than the iPhone 5. Because it could stop any time it wants to.

    --
    <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
  44. How about "17-eyed explorer"? by Zadaz · · Score: 1

    Curiosity has 17 cameras, not one.

    I mean, if you're coing to criticize, get it right.

    1. Re:How about "17-eyed explorer"? by fikx · · Score: 1

      define "eye" vs "camera"

      --
      AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
  45. These types of comparisons are flawed by fozzy1015 · · Score: 1

    On the surface these comparisons are interesting but when you understand how these systems were designed you'll see it's not accurate. Curiosity is an example of an embedded system. The code that runs on it is only meant to operate the rover and its instruments. Comparing its hardware to a general purpose computer meant to run various applications is flawed. And because their purposes are different so are their operating systems.

    The last time I read about VxWorks and a Mars rover had to do with Pathfinder. They had some problems with the rover randomly rebooting once it was on Mars and had to debug it. The problem turned out to be a classic example of priority inversion.

    http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/raj/www/mars.html
     

  46. Earth to Mars ... by tqk · · Score: 1

    "To give the Mars Rover Curiosity the brains it needs ...

    FTFY!!!111 It's a fucking machine! $deity, I hate this PC garbage! THINK!

    --
    "Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit ..." -- Pink Floyd.
    1. Re:Earth to Mars ... by treeves · · Score: 1

      It's not PC. It's traditional. Sailors always referred to their ships as 'she', and that carried over to aircraft and spaceships as well. If anything it's un-PC, since nowadays sailors, pilots and astronauts can be women, unlike days of yore.

      --
      ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
    2. Re:Earth to Mars ... by rossdee · · Score: 1

      A Mars Rover is not a ship. It is a Robot - and robots often have Male gender.
      R2d2, C3P0, Twiki, Robby, R Daneel Olivaw, Lt Cdr Data, Kryten, and Marvin to name some popular ones.

    3. Re:Earth to Mars ... by tqk · · Score: 1

      A Mars Rover is not a ship. It is a Robot - and robots often have Male gender.

      I'd have been just as offended if TFS had ascribed it a "he." It's an it! Gender has no place when you're speaking about a machine. Well, okay, Data was obviously male, fine. Ptheh.

      As for your list, I've always thought R2D2, C3PO, Kryten, and Marvin were suspiciously female, especially R2 and Marvin.

      --
      "Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit ..." -- Pink Floyd.
  47. Re:Just goes to show. . .People are stupid by aaronb1138 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Indeed, I kept laughing at the MHz / GHz wars in the smartphone arena the last 18 months and couldn't help but nearly choke when I looked at solid integer / floating point performance and saw most of this wiz-bang 1 GHz Dual core stuff still getting stomped by stuff in the PII-450 / PIII-600 range (as I recall Atom started as more or less a process shrunk and trimmed down PIII with some of the Core series improvements and modularity grafted in).

    It's a little weird to consider how much I wish there was a popular Atom x86 based Android in the US. Seriously, running Android and doing ARM emulation, they still stomp the ARM stuff. I wish Intel marketing would have some of their late 90's spirit and push themselves into the US smartphone industry with slogans like, "faster than ARM... at running ARM." Mind you, I actually mostly hate Intel. Nothing to inspire hatred like their GPU driver mess on Windows and Linux.

    (From a year back) http://www.anandtech.com/show/5365/intels-medfield-atom-z2460-arrive-for-smartphones

  48. Re:The title is so obvious by twosat · · Score: 2

    I think you mean Opportunity, the twin of the Spirit rover that stopped working a while back. They were solar-powered versus the nuclear-powered Curiosity.

  49. That's not a bug that is a feature by giorgist · · Score: 1

    It is like saying this is a better car because it has bigger wheels. Curiosity has the specific computational power to achieve the specific job. Is there any doubt it succeeds doing what it is meant to do ? Why would you hope the CPU is twice or ten times faster ? This idea of an ever faster computer has died on desktops and is almost dead with mobile devices too. Who cares if the iPhone doubles it's computational power. Can it do what it is meant to do without requiring a person to recover it from a hiccup ? Curiosity can !!

  50. Marvin by DeBaas · · Score: 2

    Here I am, brain the size of a mars rover, and they tell me to text 'OMG grl, wassup'....

    --
    ---
  51. Re:Just goes to show. . .People are stupid by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Informative

    The reason is that integer performance isn't worth wasting the silicone on in a mobile processor. It is already well beyond "good enough". What does count is power consumption, where ARM is still in another league to x86, and in floating point operations. ARM has NEON SIMD instructions for that and they are pretty good for audio/video processing and games. In addition a lot of stuff is handed off to the GPU now anyway (transform and lighting, video decoding) which is always going to be far more efficient.

    There is a reason there are not many x86 mobile devices. Atom is more expensive and hard to get good battery life from. Raw performance is good but having four low power cores and a good GPU is better for providing a smooth user experience and mobile games.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  52. How unsurprising by drolli · · Score: 1

    Many space probes usually include processors and technology levels which are mature at the time of the initial design of the spacecraft, and which are spun of after being mature into a hardened line (probably adjusted structure size).

    So:
    -Lets say 2-3 years assemly and tests of the total system
    -3-x years design phase
    -specific design and tests of the hardened line (i dont know, les assume): ~1-2 years
    -observing operation of the initial processor in designs on boards at nominal operation speeds to make sure its mature: ~3-5 years (if you look at errata in Microcontroller sheets thats usually when they come in)

    So we arrive at something at the order of 11years from the release of the inital part to the start of the space vehicle.

    So
    -Columbia (start in 1981) had an IBM AP101, with an architecture from the 60s and based on ttl circuits (while the Commodore 64 was around the corner)
    -Opportunity (start in 2003) had a version of power-1 processor (1990)
    -Curiosity (start in 2011) had a version of a powerPC750 (1997)

  53. Re:Just goes to show. . .People are stupid by cnettel · · Score: 2

    Indeed, I kept laughing at the MHz / GHz wars in the smartphone arena the last 18 months and couldn't help but nearly choke when I looked at solid integer / floating point performance and saw most of this wiz-bang 1 GHz Dual core stuff still getting stomped by stuff in the PII-450 / PIII-600 range (as I recall Atom started as more or less a process shrunk and trimmed down PIII with some of the Core series improvements and modularity grafted in).

    Atom is not a PIII. It is closer to the original P54C (Pentium), but not very close (Larrabee is far closer, but still heavily modified). The main argument for this is that the PIII, as a descendent of the Pentium Pro, was out of order. All released Atoms so far are in-order, but they are on the other hand both wider, far more well-cached and better at branch prediction than the original Pentium. Basically, they do a lot to bring down the latencies that can arise from an in-order architecture.

  54. Indeed, why not compare batteries as well? by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 4, Funny

    Mars rover: lasts for years. iPhone barely makes it through the day.

    Or how about speed? Mars rover several meters a day. iPhone, just sits there.

    User upgrades in the field? Mars rover: zero. iPhone: zero.

    Yeah yeah, you have more computing power in your pocket then in NASA machine. That was a fun stat for voyager news briefings. A decade ago. It is not funny anymore, it is just sad and a sign the reporter in question has no idea about tech. This stuff is for morning tv.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

    1. Re:Indeed, why not compare batteries as well? by tqk · · Score: 1

      User upgrades in the field? Mars rover: zero.

      I believe you're mistaken about this. One of the things it did just before touch down, en-route to Mars, was update on-board software. They planned it that way. Get the hardware out there, then give it updated smarts when that's ready. Smart. And, "The rover installed its full surface operations software after the landing because its computers didn't have room for it during flight. The new software essentially replaced the flight software."

      Note, I'm an astronomy junkie, but an amateur. Do your own research and don't consider my words definitive. Just tryin' to help. :-)

      --
      "Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit ..." -- Pink Floyd.
  55. Re:lol by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

    1st comment on slashdot

    It's great that you have finally figured out how to make a comment on Slashdot. Now it's time to advance to the next level: Learn how to make meaningful comments on Slashdot.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  56. So, does the iPhone come with ... by Ihlosi · · Score: 1
    ... a rocket-powered crane, a power source that lasts a few years, a laser that can vaporize rocks and a fusion reactor that spits out neutrons?
    Thought so.

    And I'm not even getting into allowed temperature ranges, radiation hardening and so on.

  57. Re:Just goes to show. . .People are stupid by ustolemyname · · Score: 1

    "Our 32nm chip that won't be available for 8 months beats a chip that has been out for a year and made with a 40nm process" Uhm... duh? By that definition, ARM is better than ARM. Hell, AMD is better than intel :P

  58. Re:Just goes to show. . .People are stupid by node+3 · · Score: 1

    The A6 and A6X are in the same speed range as the high-end G5's and low end CoreSolos (and a few CoreDuos) from 6 years ago. And yes, it is very impressive, especially when you consider the power, heat, size, cooling, and price differences between them. It also makes you wonder about the future, in 6 years will we have Sandy Bridge i5 level performance in our phones?

    It's truly phenomenal. And then you realize that this power, heat, size, price, cooling savings also includes an impressive GPU as well.

    Sure, there are various sorts of things to consider beyond benchmarks and such, but it's quite impressive no matter how you look at it. And even if the specific details for the story in question, PPC 750 (I'm assuming that because you are referencing it, that's what's in Curiosity), vs an A6 SoC isn't a fair fight, I do think most people (including most Slashdot nerds) would either be surprised, or at least find it an interesting tidbit, that the processing power of the solar system's most advanced robot is dwarfed by an everyday consumer phone used by millions. Even those of us who understand the process through which technology is tested, selected, hardened, and programmed for, how reliability and consistency is preferred over raw performance, how embedded processors aren't taxed in the same way desktop, or even mobile, systems are taxed, etc., how even we can see the unique and notable dynamic here.

  59. Re:Just goes to show. . .People are stupid by iamhassi · · Score: 3

    The A6 and A6X are in the same speed range as the high-end G5's and low end CoreSolos (and a few CoreDuos) from 6 years ago. And yes, it is very impressive, especially when you consider the power, heat, size, cooling, and price differences between them. It also makes you wonder about the future, in 6 years will we have Sandy Bridge i5 level performance in our phones?

    It's truly phenomenal. And then you realize that this power, heat, size, price, cooling savings also includes an impressive GPU as well.

    Sure, there are various sorts of things to consider beyond benchmarks and such, but it's quite impressive no matter how you look at it. And even if the specific details for the story in question, PPC 750 (I'm assuming that because you are referencing it, that's what's in Curiosity), vs an A6 SoC isn't a fair fight, I do think most people (including most Slashdot nerds) would either be surprised, or at least find it an interesting tidbit, that the processing power of the solar system's most advanced robot is dwarfed by an everyday consumer phone used by millions. Even those of us who understand the process through which technology is tested, selected, hardened, and programmed for, how reliability and consistency is preferred over raw performance, how embedded processors aren't taxed in the same way desktop, or even mobile, systems are taxed, etc., how even we can see the unique and notable dynamic here.

    The impressive part isn't the speed, it's the fact the A6 in the iPhone 5 is running with the same 3.7v 1400mah battery in the original 412mhz iPhone. That's like throwing the supercharged V8 in your car but still getting 50mpg Prius numbers.

    --
    my karma will be here long after I'm gone
  60. Re:Blackberry 10, QNX. u/COS-II by anubi · · Score: 1

    NASA uses Micrium's OS ( U/COS ) on the Mars curiosity rover.

    ( NetBurners use the same OS )

    Here's the book on it... same one I use.

    Note how compact an OS can be if all the "consumer fluff" is not included and the OS simply concentrates on the task to do and what resources it has to allocate.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]

  61. Re:Just goes to show. . .People are stupid by node+3 · · Score: 1

    You're right, that's impressive, but I did note that dynamic (twice, even):

    And yes, it is very impressive, especially when you consider the power, heat, size, cooling, and price differences between them.

    That this performance comes with impressive power savings.

  62. iPhone 5 is a bad comparison by SanitaryFather · · Score: 1

    Hopefully crashes less too...

  63. Misconceptions Surrounding Computing by StoneyMahoney · · Score: 1

    The iPhone is capable of accomplishing in a perceived instant what entire rooms full of people would've spent years/decades pre-calculating into data tables a century ago, but as we don't collectively remember those times, the fact that mathematics was rendered a largely brain-free process in the proverbial historic blink-of-an-eye a few decades ago escapes our understanding. While "everyone knows" how powerful modern computers are and how quickly things develop, almost no-one appreciates the true scale of the advances we've enjoyed and how we've employed them in consumer devices.

    I once let a user watch while I recompiled a monitoring system I'd written. I was using a command line compiler and the whole thing built in about 5 seconds. Then I ran it under windows and it took about 10 seconds to start running. As you can probably imagine, the user was perplexed by this and my attempts to explain to him the difference in these two operations were thwarted by his preconceptions that effectively put computers on par with magic and made out that anyone who understood them was some kind of Gandalf-like mage, unknowingly powerful and equally unfathomable.

    The principle difference that he couldn't/wouldn't get his head around was the labyrinthine complexity of today's graphical, multi-input human-computer interfaces as opposed to the brutal simplicity of the command line. Each has it's target users and the difference in the resources required is an integral part of the suitability equation. Given that the vast majority of everyday computer users still don't understand the simple relationship between their computer, their user account and their password, despite the age of these concepts, I don't think there is any possibility that we will ever establish an appreciation for the true power of modern processors.

    tl;dr - The embedded perception of smartphones is that of being a personal magic butler and it's too late to change that.

  64. Performance of Apple's iphone5 by akbor · · Score: 1

    The iPhone 5 is a touchscreen-based smartphone developed by Apple. It is the sixth generation of the iPhone and succeeds the iPhone 4S. the phone is a slimmer, lighter model that introduces a higher-resolution, 4-inch screen to the series with 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio. The phone also includes a custom-designed ARMv7 processor called the Apple A6, an update to Apple's mobile operating system known as iOS 6, and support for LTE. http://mastlists.com/