Re: Ada Success Story

["Marin David Condic, 561.796.8997, M/S 731-93" <condicma@PWFL.COM>]

Mike Stark <michael.e.stark@GSFC.NASA.GOV> writes:
>The Space Station uses Intel 386 (and presumably 387), which aren't
>*quite* as old as the 1750 ;  I think there are other rad-hard
>processors, but I'm no expert so I won't name them.
>
    I think we looked at this processor and determined that it just
    plain wasn't rad-hard enough for the missions we've got to run.
    It's one thing when it's inside a vehicle and is shielded and only
    goes into low orbit. Apparently, we've got to go outside the Van
    Allen belt where the gamma radiation gets much higher, plus it's
    mounted to the side of a rocket engine (gets *real* cold, *real*
    hot, vibrates a whole bunch, operates in a vacuum, etc, etc,
    etc,). Maybe something that they're using on one of those Voyager
    jobs?

    When our hardware guys looked at it, they could only find a small
    number of processors rugged enough to pass muster - and they were
    all 1750s. Maybe by now, there's some things that have gotten
    better & I should go take another gander at the Intel product
    line.

    We never get to play this game with the hardware we'd like, do we?

    MDC

Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer    ATT:        561.796.8997
M/S 731-96                                      Technet:    796.8997
Pratt & Whitney, GESP                           Fax:        561.796.4669
P.O. Box 109600                                 Internet:   CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
West Palm Beach, FL 33410-9600                  Internet:   CONDIC@FLINET.COM
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