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Hubble's Computers Upgraded
MRcow writes "A story at ABCnews.com says the Hubble Space Telescope that was recently repaired by the crew of space shuttle Discovery is having its computer system upgraded. The new system will be 'three linked computers that run on the Intel 486 microchip.' It says older processors are used because they have to be tested for radiation and such. That makes me wonder if the computers are going to be "linked" and if so, how? Maybe a Beowulf cluster on Hubble? Talk about 'geeks in space'." The processors on the Hubble are being upgraded from what I understand are 1980s versions. The new hard drive is going to be a whopping 10 gigs with three 486 processors. The processors and drive have to be specially shielded and made to handle heat/cold extremes.
In comment to a couple replies asking why such old technology is used... If I remember correctly it has to do with how radiation can effect the state of the processor and chipsets. Newer processors have increasingly smaller distances between the pathways on the surface of the chip. Since this distance is smaller, radiation can cause the electrical charge to "jump" across. There are ways to minimize these effects with shielding, but as far as I know this is an "add on" that is not done by the chip manufacturers themself. I guess this would create a lead time.. IE: A new P3 chip needs x months of work to have a good shielding design developed, x months to test that... Coupled with the fact that this hardware is designed years before launch and you can see how things can slip. Remember also that comparing your desktop to something in orbit that was designed 20 years ago for a specific task isn't as easy as it might appear...Until recently NASA custom designed it's hardware and software. So, the Hubble running at 25 Mhz using all custom hardware and software is going to be a lot more efficient than a 25 Mhz 486 running Windows since it's all task oriented. I'm no expert of course, but I haven't seen some of our resident Super-Technical Answer Dudes (tm) post anything yet. (Probably still working on the formulas for their posts hehe). Case