64 Bits in Space

HerringFlavoredFowl writes: "Older, slower RAD HARD chips have been the norm in space applications. Acording to this article it looks like MIPS is about to go 64 bits in the far fringes."

Re:Sales pitch-BFHD-The real news is at the bottom

[Nodatadj]

No, the spelling was correct. That's is a contraction of "That is", so "That is news" becomes "That's news".

And no, it looks sucky with bold.

Re:-40 C?

[stilwebm]

I was actually thinking 85C was a little low. As someone else mentioned, space is so empty that it is like a giant insulator, and only radiation removes heat. I looked up the specs for my Athlon processor, and it's maximum operating temperature is 95C. Of course it needs a heat sink and air circulation to stay below that temperature, but it is interesting to compare the operating specs of earthbound CPU's.

-40 C?

[Vuarnet]

One of the requirements on those chips, according to the article, was:
- Operating temperature of -40 to +85 degrees C

Now, call me an ignorant, but I thought the temperatures in outer space were considerably lower than -40 C. Does this means that they'll need some kind of heat insulation, or what?

Or maybe they're gonna overclock their CPUs, i dunno...

Sales pitch-BFHD-The real news is at the bottom

[Rick the Red]

This is a PR piece from MIPS and Toshiba. Big Deal.

The real fun is at the bottom of the page:

Huntsville - Jan. 27, 2001 It's a mission where failure will be success -- and that's exactly what NASA engineers are hoping for. They anticipate failures in six experiments on the NASA Space Radiation Electronics Testbed, a payload now orbiting Earth aboard the Space Technology Research Vehicle-1-d. The satellite was launched Nov. 15 on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana.

Ariane lauched a NASA satellite? That's news!

mean temp is very low, but little heat transfer

[typical geek]

The mean temperature in space is very low, not too many K above absolute zero.

The problem is that heat transfer in space is also very low, so heat buildup is one of the biggest issues in any spacecraft.

Heat is commonly transferred by three mechanisms; conduction, convection and radiation. In the vacuum of space, you get no conduction or convection, the only way you can get rid of heat is by radiation. So, it doesn't take too many electronics running to start worrying about overheating.

Thus, the shuttle flies with it's doors open to expose it's radiators and cool down. Satellites use various esoteric heat tubes and exchangers to remove heat and radiate it to space. Internal operating temperatues end up being -40 to +85 degrees C.