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In the Mars rover Perseverance, which landed on Mars on February 18, it has become a hot topic that the history of the previous Mars rover is written on it. However, it is said that this latest Rover uses almost the same CPU as the 1998 iMac G3.
The PowerPC 750 was mounted on the iMac G3, and a derivative model was later mounted on the Nintendo Gamecube. The model installed in Perseverance is a 32-bit single-core CPU with 6 million transistors and operates at 233 MHz. In the case of the latest CPU used, for example, the Apple A14 Bionic in the iPhone 12, the number of transistors is 11.8 billion and has 16 cores. The miniaturization and high performance are evolving beyond comparison with the power PC days.
So why did Perservance choose a slower CPU 22 years ago? RAD750 is a compatible product manufactured by BAE Systems instead of the original PowerPC made by IBM. The difference from the iMac is that the CPU is designed to work even when exposed to cosmic radiation. In addition, since it operates in a wide temperature environment from -55 degrees to 125 degrees Celsius, it can be used for a long time in harsh places like Mars. For stable Mars rover operation, a CPU focused on stability rather than processing performance was needed.
Also, this CPU is of course expensive. It amounts to 200,000 dollars a piece. The CPU was also adopted by Curiosity, a former rover that still continues to explore Mars, and is also being adopted by NASA and the Orion spacecraft developed by Lockheed Martin. In addition, in the case of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which uses Linux as an operating system and controls it with a touch panel, it adopts three dual-core CPUs, which are specifications for at least 10 years ago. Related information can be found here.
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