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NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity essentially has same brain as Apple’s Bondi Blue iMac G3

Monday, August 6, 2012 · 5:28 pm · 27 Comments

“The Curiosity rover — which landed last night on Mars, remote controlled by a team of NASA scientists armed with MacBook Pros — runs on a RAD750 radiation-hardened single board computer,” John Brownlee reports for Cult of Mac.

“This computer, in turn, is based on the IBM PowerPC 750 CPU, which Intel first introduce on November 10, 1997,” Brownlee reports. “This CPU was used by Apple in many computers in the late 1990s, including the original iMac.”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Dan K." for the heads up.]

Related article:
NASA control room packed with Apple Macs during Mars Curiosity rover landing – August 6, 2012

Categories: News

Tags: Bondi Blue, Curiosity rover, IBM PowerPC 750, iMac G3, Mars

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Comment Feed

27 Comments

John Hyde

Monday, August 6, 2012 - 5:32 pm · Reply

So Apple did make the iCar after all.
- Spark
  
  Monday, August 6, 2012 - 5:53 pm · Reply
  
  First pics here:
  
  http://creativepartnersgroup.com/xtra/bondibluecuriosity.jpg
  - Ballmer's left nut
    
    Monday, August 6, 2012 - 5:59 pm · Reply
    
    Good one, Sparky.
  - Indiemuppet
    
    Tuesday, August 7, 2012 - 5:55 pm · Reply
    
    Jony would be proud!
Dave H

Monday, August 6, 2012 - 5:37 pm · Reply

Considering the rover has a Plutonium fueled power supply surely it has enough juice for a G5…

…second thoughts, maybe not :p
- The Other Steve
  
  Monday, August 6, 2012 - 6:16 pm · Reply
  
  +1
- ken1w
  
  Monday, August 6, 2012 - 6:17 pm · Reply
  
  When it comes to an embedded application such as this rover, something that is simple that can get the job done is better. Simple means less things (that are mission critical) can potentially go wrong.
  
  Personal computers are designed to handle an “open-ended” set of tasks. For many users, a typical PC is “overkill.” The processor on the Mars rover only needs to perform a very well-defined set of tasks. Adding unneeded complexity serves no purpose and makes it potentially more unreliable.
macman1984

Monday, August 6, 2012 - 5:38 pm · Reply

“This computer, in turn, is based on the IBM PowerPC 750 CPU, which Intel first introduce on November 10, 1997,”

Excuese me, which INTEL introduced?? AFAIK, IBM & Motorola made the PowerPC, not Intel…
- Rob
  
  Monday, August 6, 2012 - 5:47 pm · Reply
  
  and Apple co-designed, no?
- Cubert
  
  Monday, August 6, 2012 - 5:54 pm · Reply
  
  Sloppy reporting.
- Jeff II
  
  Monday, August 6, 2012 - 6:02 pm · Reply
  
  Good catch. Good thing I read the comments here before adding my own take on that.
  
  Also, if it was introduce [sic] in 1997, why is the verb in the present tense?
  
  Brownlee needs to go back to school.
Cubert

Monday, August 6, 2012 - 5:55 pm · Reply

And it’s running Sherlock!!!
Ballmer's left nut

Monday, August 6, 2012 - 6:00 pm · Reply

Steve Jobs came from Mars, and back to Mars he went.
Bat Smasterson

Monday, August 6, 2012 - 6:22 pm · Reply

Wall•E Strikes again!
The Other Steve

Monday, August 6, 2012 - 6:49 pm · Reply

So . . . the warrantee is out?
Really

Monday, August 6, 2012 - 6:56 pm · Reply

The previous rovers ran power PC processors.

NASA uses the VxWorks OS on the Rover(s)
Alan

Monday, August 6, 2012 - 8:29 pm · Reply

> So . . . the warrantee is out?

By the time you get to Mars you can’t return it to the store for a refund.

Also doesn’t cover planetary impact collision or Alien encounters.
Johnj

Monday, August 6, 2012 - 10:15 pm · Reply

iCuriousity
althegeo

Monday, August 6, 2012 - 10:43 pm · Reply

Hell, I’m still using the same brain I was using back in the 50s.

Thank god I didn’t use it much in the 60s.

It still has lots of miles left on it.
the joker

Monday, August 6, 2012 - 11:27 pm · Reply

The software in the mars rover is 750,000 lines long. How the hell can a pathetic and wimpy G3 processor handle that code??
- Really
  
  Monday, August 6, 2012 - 11:41 pm · Reply
  
  In small chunks it can digest of course!
  
  Figure the Rover does not have a GUI, no graphics card, minimal file system and a ton of other missing features a modern OS on a home computer has and that wimpy 200Mhz. processor has more than enough power to handle the load.
  
  On something like the Rover you’d want just what you need and nothing more. you’d also want it to be very reliable.
- \ln
  
  Tuesday, August 7, 2012 - 1:23 am · Reply
  
  750k code base would be no issue on most modern processors. Since the rover would need to be fairly self sufficient and highly energy efficient, just using so few lines of code would be a major challenge.
- Wingsy
  
  Tuesday, August 7, 2012 - 7:24 am · Reply
  
  One line at a time, quickly.
- Gxx
  
  Tuesday, August 7, 2012 - 8:44 am · Reply
  
  Quote: The software in the mars rover is 750,000 lines long. How the hell can a pathetic and wimpy G3 processor handle that code??
  
  “pathetic and wimpy G3″??
  
  At 500MHz only needs 6Watts, thats probably more interesting.
aaAttendee

Tuesday, August 7, 2012 - 7:44 am · Reply

What the kids here don’t know, because now everyone is used to millions and billions of bytes of RAM, is the large amount of work that can be done with only 32 kilobytes of RAM, when you have the right peripherals.
- Ton
  
  Tuesday, August 7, 2012 - 11:37 am · Reply
  
  I’m currently working on a dot matrix for a GUI for a consumer appliance with an 8 bit controller @32 MHz with 8K RAM and 128 ROM… Including font tables, icons and UI statemachine, communication protocolstack and potmeter, button i/o… And it only costs about €4.00 in hardware too (@250 k/y) It is amazing what you can do if you with the right tools and skils.
mysterian

Tuesday, August 7, 2012 - 1:10 pm · Reply

It is a 750FX on a RAD750 board made by BAE Systems. The six, or so, of the boards are being used in the Orion spacecraft.