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- giskard88, on 10/26/2008, -0/+78*sigh. why do people constantly write articles like this while being totally ignorant of the practices used to build high reliability embedded systems. why do they use 486s? because they're rad hardened, produce almost no heat, and most importantly of all, it's much easier to create verifiable, deterministic behavior on a system that is simple and well understood. a more modern microprocessor adds a whole bunch of unnecessary features that have the potential to introduce bugs, and will almost certainly make the microprocessor behave in unpredictable ways (i.e perform operations faster or slower than expected) the 486 has just the right amount of power for this particular job, and adding more computational power would not make it do it's job any better.
- studdenfadden, on 10/26/2008, -1/+54Rational and informed comments have no place on Digg. Please edit your comment to include some hyperbole so I can Digg it.
- spepin, on 10/24/2008, -4/+57I'd make a Crysis joke, but... you know.
- Alexio, on 10/24/2008, -2/+39The things you can do with just 20 to 100 million calculations every second.
- SaintStryfe, on 10/26/2008, -0/+25Please don't be silly.
The reason they use them is simple: they're tested. They can be made nearly indestructible. New processors, even as new as Pentium II's, are not. They're extremely fragile - we all know people who have burnt out chips due to a bad fan or block air port or burnt out cooling pump. Well it doesn't happen with these older chips, with extremely tiny power needs and decades of engineering in them. - indieboy86, on 10/26/2008, -1/+24But ... but will it run CUBE?!
- SubjectiveC, on 10/26/2008, -0/+23I'm afraid I cannot do that, Dave. Error: Not enough RAM.
- marcabminion, on 10/26/2008, -1/+22Hubble is playing Wing Commander II - it's best on a 486.
- d0nkeym0nkey, on 10/26/2008, -1/+22Apparently Intel still sells 386 chips for embedded systems...
- subtle, on 10/26/2008, -4/+22Oh, I get it: You selected that particular portion of the article and reproduced it here because you're an idiot. That's fascinating.
- orlyfactor, on 10/26/2008, -3/+20I don't know if I'd call a 486 "ancient"...
- Brii, on 10/26/2008, -0/+16Because you don't read articles, that's why.
- guytoronto, on 10/26/2008, -2/+17"Hi, I'm a Mac"
"And I'm the Hubble Telescope..." - HCviolence, on 10/25/2008, -1/+15You shouldn't make your 360 moist.
- studdenfadden, on 10/26/2008, -3/+17There is nothing wrong with 486 processors, I lost my virginity to one.
- bobbknight, on 10/26/2008, -4/+16Just imagine what they could have done I they had sent an Amiga up there.
- inactive, on 10/26/2008, -0/+12Will it run DOOM?
- ngch, on 10/26/2008, -0/+11when the computer to be upgraded is on an orbiting observatory that can only be serviced by an aging space shuttle... yup, it's not economical
but as they say, the oldest things may the most reliable - sstidman, on 10/26/2008, -1/+11LOOK EVERYBODY....IT'S AND OLD GUY ON DIGG!!
I'll bet you had a pet dinosaur when you were a kid, right? - Myztry, on 10/26/2008, -0/+1032k is a lot of memory when you don't have a generic Operating System in the way. They don't have to deal with things like UniCode so they can directly compare an ASCII character to it's numerical equivalent. Not that text would play much of a role.
Seems a bit weird how they chose such a register sparse processor like the Intel x86 when memory was sparse/critical. The Motorola 680x0 series had enough on die registers to allow fairly complex calculations without pushing out to memory constantly.
The thing I find most confusing is how do they store the captured images in < 32k. Unless the frame/transmit buffer is not counted as part of the computer, or they transmit each scanline at a time. - Exekutor, on 10/26/2008, -0/+8I'd make a joke about a couple of friends dying while making Crysis jokes, but.... you know
- sega01, on 10/26/2008, -0/+8A 486 is plenty. Enough to survive the Digg effect :-). http://digg.com/hardware/486_can_survive_the_Digg_ ...
- Kyan, on 10/26/2008, -1/+9Dunno about that, but FTA: "While Hubble's dated hardware probably couldn't run World of Warcraft, Hendrix says that the telescope's computer systems do exactly what they need to do. "It's really reliable," she said. "There really is no need to upgrade it."
Take that, up-graders everywhere! In other words, this makes me feel better about having a four-year old laptop. :P - oda1, on 10/26/2008, -1/+9"find themselves dealing with 486 processors and other outdated computer technology."
That makes it sound like NASA isn't used to dealing with outdated computer technology. Hell, in today's world, every couple of days renders a computer outdated. - slapded, on 10/26/2008, -0/+7ascii porn FTW?
- inactive, on 10/26/2008, -1/+8If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
- inactive, on 10/26/2008, -0/+6To upgrade the computer would require validating all the software and operational characteristics of the system. So yes, very expensive.
- drlha, on 10/26/2008, -0/+6All space hardware needs to be rad hardened, regardless of the orbit. The radiation environment even in LEO is much harsher than on Earth, plus spacecraft with inclined low Earth orbits such as Hubble pass through the South Atlantic Anomaly which is an extremely high radiation environment.
- inactive, on 10/26/2008, -0/+6Until the components blow out from old age. How long are the CPUs supposed to last, anyway? Is age rated in years or cycles?
- drgruney, on 10/26/2008, -0/+6Also, the 486 wasn't all that bad when the Hubble was sent up.
- Junior612, on 10/26/2008, -0/+5Try not to think so much in terms of speed and power but in reliability and precision.
Increasing cycles per second (hertz) doesn't make an operation more precise. - drlha, on 10/26/2008, -0/+5Sorry but that is simply incorrect. I speak as someone who works with NASA on a currently in-orbit satellite. You clearly don't have a clue how things are actually developed at NASA.
NASA uses off the shelf rad hardened chips. These often lag behind the newest chips, because space qualification is not high on the priority list of people like Intel. Also the point at which the CPU is selected and the spacecraft flies can often be many years, meaning the chip is already "out of date" by launch. - Rudegar, on 10/26/2008, -3/+8if they need spare parts my attic is booming
though got rid of anything from before 80286 så hurry! - carpespasm, on 10/26/2008, -0/+4Actually cooling is a big problem in space. They have to radiate the heat out and there's no medium (air) to circulate the heat away with. When MIR was going kaputski they said it was nasty hot in there most of the time.
- subtle, on 10/26/2008, -2/+6Frighteningly, this has the potential to become a new meme.
- drlha, on 10/26/2008, -0/+4Spacecraft usually hava a thing called a "solid state recorder" for storing data, think of it like a hard drive with no moving parts. It's capacity will be much larger than the 32k of memory the on-board computer has to play with. Hubble doesn't have a tape recorder onboard any more after the 1997 servicing mission.
- Identity4, on 10/26/2008, -0/+4Yeah... So?
- cloudberries, on 10/26/2008, -3/+7I accidentally 360 moist the time
- copypastry, on 10/26/2008, -0/+3But will it run Jazz Jackrabbit?
- sstidman, on 10/26/2008, -0/+3That's right. I don't think those are the exact same chips that went into computers back in the 80's, but smaller, more efficient versions that are compatible with the original chips. To engineers designing embedded devices, power consumption is critical. But when all you are doing is making an LED blink or scrolling a message on an LCD, CPU speed usually isn't that important.
- Alexio, on 10/26/2008, -0/+3Haha, you should say that you're Hubble telescope powered. Also, I can't believe you still have that thing running.
- rft3rd, on 10/26/2008, -0/+3How about the James Webb Space Telescope set for launch in 2013?
http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/
There is billions more of out tax dollars at work, just as you asked for. Enjoy! - trogdor282, on 10/26/2008, -1/+3The 486 was installed in 1999, which means it was 10-year-old tech already. This time they'll probably install something that was cutting edge in 1998. It doesn't have to run Crysis, it has to be rad-hard, low power and proven rock solid reliable.
- inactive, on 10/26/2008, -0/+2Unless you have money to piss away
- SarahC, on 10/26/2008, -2/+4The article mentioned tape, so I suppose it writes things to tape. When the time comes to transmit the data, it's read off the tape.
- farfegnugen, on 10/26/2008, -0/+2Ah, an informed, technical comment. I miss the old Digg =(
- BoneheadFarker, on 10/26/2008, -0/+2Probably a 386DX of some sort. There's just some things you can't do in a 16 bit space...
- robbh66, on 10/26/2008, -1/+3@Dunnix
While you try to sound like you know what you're talking about by throwing out numbers you probably just looked up on wikipedia, you didn't read enough up on the subject to actually appear to know what you're talking about.
There are numerous errors in what you're saying in this submissions but i'll stick to the most glaring one: The software was written for 486s- 64 bits or 128, 1024bits doesn't mean ***** when the software is 16 or 32.
So, no. - Lunarbunny, on 10/26/2008, -0/+2I hear they need to use a different type of RAM that's much more expensive as well, as typical DRAM is not resistant to radiation and can cause errors.
- maus56, on 10/26/2008, -0/+2 It will play Zork!
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