NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover runs on processors used in 1990s Apple iMacs

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The same processor that powered Apple’s iMac computers from the late 1990s is being used to run NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover.

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While NASA is technically using a specialized processor to power the Perseverance rover, it’s not far removed from the world of consumer electronics—about 23 years ago.

NewScientist reports that the Perseverance rover is powered by a PowerPC 750 processor, which was used in Apple’s original 1998 iMac G3 — you remember, the iconic, colorful, see-through desktop. If the PowerPC name sounds familiar, it’s probably because those are the RISC CPUs Apple used in its computers before switching to Intel. (Although now the company is back on the RISC train with its homegrown M1 processor.)

There’s a major difference between the iMac’s CPU and the one inside the Perseverance rover. BAE Systems manufactures the radiation-hardened version of the PowerPC 750, dubbed RAD750, which can withstand 200,000 to 1,000,000 Rads and temperatures between −55 and 125 degrees Celsius (-67 and 257 degrees Fahrenheit).

NASA’s Curiosity rover — which landed on Mars in August 2012, also used a RAD750 radiation-hardened single board computer. NASA’s Orion spacecraft employed the same RAD750 processor.

“Compared to the [Intel] Core i5 in your laptop, it’s much slower…it’s probably not any faster than your smartphone,” Matt Lemke, NASA’s deputy manager for Orion’s avionics, told The Space Review back in 2014. “But it’s not about the speed as much as the ruggedness and the reliability. I need to make sure it will always work.”

Via: Gizmodo.com