Does NASA still use 386's?

[Torn Mind]

What a brutal environment "outer space" is. Us Earthlings are very well protected by that ionosphere.

 

[Torn Mind]

I guess both for both space and military applications you want reliability and consistency rather than the latest-and-greatest.

This must be why the Colonial Marines in Aliens seem to use sentry guns controlled by pre-80286 laptops - in the year 2176!

(one of these, apparently)

Latest and greatest would die an early death due to all the radiation hammering from all over the place once you leave Earth. Then people die or at the least, billions of dollars are wasted.

 

[Zodiark1593]

They dont need lot of processing power for space missions.

I wouldn't say they don't need it so much as they can work around the limited compute power.

 

[John Connor]

This is a very interesting thread. Hypothetically I bet a neural net CPU could be used in space. LOL! http://terminator.wikia.com/wiki/Neural_Net_CPU

I wonder how fast a FMC is in commercial aircraft?

 

[Shivansps]

I wouldn't say they don't need it so much as they can work around the limited compute power.

Most of it is to manage equipment and basic function failsafes, the Curiosity did need processing power, as all the landing and final stages had to be calculated and executed by his own, if that can be done in such slow CPU them there is no need for anything more.

At least not until we hit the space era and that may take a while.

 

[jumpncrash]

One of my friends works for a defense contractor that builds parts for certain helicopters, jets and tanks. I went for a visit of the shop and they had some PCBs on display and there was an AMD k6-2 in one of them. I asked if it was current stuff they were workin on and he seemed to think it was.

 

[ShintaiDK]

What a brutal environment "outer space" is. Us Earthlings are very well protected by that ionosphere.

Plus the ozone layer and the magnetic shield.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Latest and greatest would die an early death due to all the radiation hammering from all over the place once you leave Earth. Then people die or at the least, billions of dollars are wasted.

Maybe not die, but alot of bitflipping would certainly happen.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I wonder how fast a FMC is in commercial aircraft?

They are quite fast. But they are also below the earths different shields. Regular Xeons can be found.

 

[BrightCandle]

I wonder how fast a FMC is in commercial aircraft?

Basically the same thing, PowerPC's running up to about 750Mhz. You don't really need any more for the avionics systems anyway and lower efficient, reliable and radiation resistant parts are still important. Not to mention the fact that planes take decades to design and build so the computer parts in them tend to be equally ancient.

 

[tweakboy]

You can find some beneath the ground at the NASA station.

 

[nenforcer]

Each project is different but you don't find any 3 Ghz CPUs in space or in aircraft. Modern fighter jets use surprisingly old and slow processors as well as very strange looking custom operating systems that are truly real time as is the software running on it. You find a lot of Ada and a special cut down version of C in these systems.

It all depends on what you define as modern. The F14 Tomcats date from the 1970's, the F15-E Strike Eagle and F16 Falcon to the 1980's and some versions of the F18 Hornet to the early 90's.

I'm pretty sure most of those planes have been retrofitted wither newer x86 class processors that were most likely designed and definitely manufactured after the planes themselves.

I'd honestly have no idea what you could find in a "modern" F-22 Raptor or F-32 Joint Striker Fighter. I'd expect double or triple redundancy x86 and something like a JSF could even have ARM cores since its a coalition fighter.

 

[John Connor]

They are quite fast. But they are also below the earths different shields. Regular Xeons can be found.

Do you have a link about the CPUs used in a FMC?

 

[Dribble]

I remember reading American nuclear subs used 386's - they were trying to buy second hand ones off ebay so they had spares.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I'd honestly have no idea what you could find in a "modern" F-22 Raptor or F-32 Joint Striker Fighter. I'd expect double or triple redundancy x86 and something like a JSF could even have ARM cores since its a coalition fighter.

At least the F22 uses a couple of Raytheon CIP (PowerPC-based) CPUs rated at 10.5GFLOPS alongside 300MB RAM (I suspect 384MB physically, with the reminder used for various ECC). All avionics are connected with the IEEE-1394b bus, and it runs the INTEGRITY-178B operating system.

 

[AtenRa]

Also, modern F-16s (Block 50 and later) and upgrade programs like the European MLU(mid Life Upgrade) and later CCIP(Common Configuration Implementation Program) use the Raytheon MMC (Modular Mission Computer) and not x86 anymore.

The F-16 MLU is using the MMC that consists of several MIPSCO R3000 32-bit RISC microprocessors running ADA language.
Latest MCC is the MMC 7000 used in the Greek F-16M (Block 52+ Advanced) and every other F-16M produced the last 10 years or so.