Hubble's Computers Upgraded 97
MRcow writes "A story at ABCnews.com says the Hubble Space Telescope that was recently repaired by the crew of space shuttle Discovery is having its computer system upgraded. The new system will be 'three linked computers that run on the Intel 486 microchip.' It says older processors are used because they have to be tested for radiation and such. That makes me wonder if the computers are going to be "linked" and if so, how? Maybe a Beowulf cluster on Hubble? Talk about 'geeks in space'." The processors on the Hubble are being upgraded from what I understand are 1980s versions. The new hard drive is going to be a whopping 10 gigs with three 486 processors. The processors and drive have to be specially shielded and made to handle heat/cold extremes.
DO YOU KNOW what they WERE REPLACING! (Score:1)
Yet another PHB space program manager chosing x86 (Score:1)
Two of the hardest things to do in a spacecraft is obtain electricity and dissipate heat. A 486 consumes at least several watts. You can get roughly the same level of performance as a 486 using an ARM7TDMI MPU using nearly two orders of magnitude less power (and have smaller code size to boot - the T stands for Thumb code compression) If NASA has a buy US policy then check out IBM's 40X series of PowerPC embedded control cores.
And the Pentium? There's a huge f**king waste of silicon area and Amps for an embedded control application that doesn't need to be x86 compatible. Every heard of StrongARM? the MIPS R5270?, the PowerPC 603e? Are these guys idiots or is Intel paying them to use Pentium. I can hardly wait for the next Mars probe to be lost from a divide error or F00F bug. Anyone ever check that the state machines in the Pentium's complex instruction decoder are fully recoverable from single event upset error ("bush behavior" encoded).
Now, for a completely different view of all this. (Score:1)
What new x86 CPUs being designed that need no fan? (Score:2)
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To me, excessive cooling requirements for a CPU is a sign of bad design.
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This is why I avoid the latest CPUs. I suspect they're just slower CPUs that are overclocked. The ones that pass the performance test are relabeled as being faster CPUs. The ones that became unstable are sold as lower speed CPUs. Notice hou much cooler cheap $60 400MHz AMD K6-2s run compared to the first 200MHz CPUs? I still run a 200MHz p55MMX Intel and that sucker runs HOT. The aforementioned 400MHz chip's heat sink is merely warm to the touch. Touching the heat simk on the 200MHz chip will leave lines on your finger. I'll wager that the 700 and 800 MHz chips being produced 2 or 3 years from now will run much cooler. Why? Because by then the design will be FIXED unlike what we see now, which was rushed to the market on the advice of marketers... not engineers.
Re:why 486's? (Score:3)
Re:You're not far off. C64's as repeater controlle (Score:2)
Acutally there are. You need to look in industrial computer catalogs. Considerable number of (expensive) parts for situations like this, including solid-state disks.
...phil
Re:More info... (Score:2)
...phil
Redundant Array of Inexpensive Nodes (Score:1)
Anyway could be using this technology - works a bit like RAID only for whole computers rather than just disks.
Yes I know its been done before, but theres a twist -if only I can find the damn article.
Martin
Re:why 486's? (Score:2)
In addition to the radiation and reliability concerns, as we all know the newer chips are larger thermal loads. And unlike here on the ground, you can't use fans for cooling. ;-)
Another thing I wonder about is, are the more powerful chips really necessary, anyway? In none of the satellite designs I've been involved with has processor speed been a design driver or technical limitation. Mass, cost, and power are generally the design drivers (sometimes schedule). I would imagine that a chip optimized for low mass, power, and cost (like a 486) would trade off very well against more powerful chips, especially if it is also very reliable. ;-)
Re:Just out of curiosity.... (Score:2)
:-) Spacecraft manufacturers always use computer architectures specifically suited to space use. They tend to have a lot of unusual devices to connect to the processors, sometimes more cards than a typical motherboard handles. As well, they're driven by the shake, rattle, and roll of launch, and the need to keep mass, power, and cooling requirements to a minimum.
The attention to detail that goes into the design of a spacecraft's computer architecture is pretty amazing, too, especially given that often the computer architecture is only used (as designed) once. And all too often, we're faced with integrating things designed for multiple different architectures (imagine getting a PC modem, SGI video card, and Sun monitor integrated into a Mac chassis.)
Failure Tolerance and Computational Expense (Score:3)
There are two ways to deal with failures: Work to prevent them, or accomodate(and recognize) their presence.
NASA generally chooses to use failure prevention(via "hardening" engeering that adds voting circuits, for example) until it can get a high enough success rate such that the rare failed computations are an acceptable cost in the face of a vast majority of successful operations.
One thing to think about is that, in general, the Hubble itself is not the device that requires ridiculous amounts of computational power. It's far cheaper to have your supercomputers terrestrially based than to launch them twenty thousand miles in the sky! The Hubble is rather like the equivalent of a wireless VVVWAN passive sniffer / protocol converter, exchanging photons sent from distant lands into data which is then sent to the ground based equipment for rendering.
Do you demand that your network card have a Sixth Generation x86 chip? Same difference.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Re: (Score:1)
Worked on space telescopes (why 486) (Score:3)
I worked on the Alexis Project at Los Alamos New Mexico in 1993/4. It was a X-ray telescope and used processors I thought were positively ancient for the time. However I found out that these were needed because the amount of times a reset occured because of X-ray, gamma-ray, highspeed particles is really scary in space. These particles have very small wavelengths but high energies and the smaller the circuit the more circuits that they are going to affect. This will cause anything from NO-OPS to hard damage of the circuit (which eventually causes the chip to be useless.)
I am pretty sure that the 4 486's are doing the same thing that the 6-8 gyroscopes are doing.. they all do the same thing but if they dont agree they do it over again to see if the second time they do. If multiples do agree the wrong one is marked bad and may be shut down depending on how many times it occurs.
The next generation chips that will need to be used in space are the ones that are both hardened and redundant. I think it was Motorola or IBM that had a chip that you could physically abuse and it would keep going due to the amount of redundancy in it. The problem is that it aint speedy :)
BTW, in case people think that this doesnt happen on earth. I also learned the hard way that above 1km you get more and more problems from radiation on chips. A lot of non-repeatable memory problems we had at Los Alamos got linked to high energy particle/waves coming in from space that usually get blocked by the atmosphere... I also remember reading a paper where similar things occur in buildings with large amount of granite (general decay of various elements) or other stones.
Stephen Smoogen (Physicist in Support clothing)
Re:Beowulf? (Score:2)
The comedy pro technical term for it is 'running gag'. They've been used pretty successfully throughout comedy history, and every culture seems to have them. For example, North Carolina's had Jesse Helms as a running gag for decades now.. And I hear England's royal family continues to garner laughs after centuries, I guess that joke never gets tired...
Your Working Boy,
Re:Moderate this down (Score:1)
Just out of curiosity.... (Score:3)
(Although each computer can have a network device, and be hooked up to a standalone drive system. That's possible, and makes more sense.)
How cool would that be to have "National Aeronautics and Space Administration" plus the NASA logo embedded in your computer's BIOS and displayed on boot! Killer.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
Re:You're not far off. C64's as repeater controlle (Score:2)
Re:Older processors... (Score:1)
Re:Just out of curiosity.... (Score:1)
Intel != PC (Score:1)
And having mutiple processors hooked up together dosent necessaraly mean SMP or any other kind of // processing you can think of. Given that it was ABC news, 'three linked computers' could mean anything.. It could be some kind of single computer with mutiprocessors (intel had supercomputers with hundreds of 8088's working together, after all) but this is a very specialized piece of hardware. The desiginers know that system FOO will peek at X cycles, BAR at Y, etc. FOO and BAZ use processor A, BAR and FRED use processor B, and C is held in reserve.
And they might only be 'linked' in the most basic sence - if the aiming system has its own computer (distinct from the others) they it would only have to communicate with the data aquisition computers with "stop collecting" and "start collecting"
Re:"Linked Processors" (Score:2)
http://www.resilience.com [resilience.com]
Re:BSOD in Space (Score:1)
Re:why 486's? (Score:2)
There are two programs, PASS (primary avionics software system) and BFS (backup flight system). PASS runs on 4 computers and BFS runs on 1 computer. They were developed by two separate groups, IBM (PASS) and Rockwell (BFS). If PASS fails due to hardware or software problems, BFS can be used to fly the Shuttle.
Re:new chip? (Score:3)
AMD is still manufacturing 486, It is also manufacturing 386 and 486 embedded derivatives with integrated RAM control, bus control, dma controllers and even PCMCIA controllers (something like 80186 but with all the 486DX100 bells and wistles).
Re:Now, for a completely different view of all thi (Score:2)
But it took five long screens of prattle about Beowulf clustering and space-based IP and 486 floating point calcs and NASA-branded BIOS and space-Kelvan overclocking to get to the point that the Hubble is just an appliance: in effect a scanner with the ability to point itself very precisely in three dimensions.
It's the world's biggest hot-synched Palm. It doesn't need Windows. It doesn't even need -- perish the thought -- Linux.
Interplanetary Internet Protocol (Score:1)
IIRC, there was talk of utilising the IP protocol we all know and love to communicate between 'craft' for want of a better expression. details can be found here [slashdot.org]. As it stands, far too many of my packets are routed to Mars for this to be a real innovation...
Re:"Linked Processors" (Score:1)
Beowulf? (Score:1)
What is it with Slashdot's dweeping of Beowulf clusters? Noone seems to be able to mention "new computer" without Beowulf being mentioned by someone.
Could someone please explain what on earth Hubble needs a Beowulf cluster for? It's kind of pointless of drooling over a Beowulf cluster without having an idea what to use it for.
-- Abigail
Overclocking..... (Score:1)
Did anyone else think about how fast you could overclock your processor in space?
Re:Older processors... (Score:2)
it doesn't have "disks." (Score:1)
If you read link above, you'll read following quote:
"'You have to keep in mind that we don't run Windows, we don't have disks, we don't do Internet,' John Campbell, project chief
for the Hubble, told reporters."
Re:Yet another PHB space program manager chosing x (Score:1)
Re:Just out of curiosity.... (Score:1)
Related info (Score:4)
http://www.sandia.gov/media/rhp.htm [sandia.gov]
http://www.sandia.gov/LabN ews/LN12-18-98/intel_story.htm [sandia.gov]
Re:Older processors... (Score:3)
Not quite. Ionizing radiation induces carrier pairs in the silicon, possibly causing conduction when it shouldn't happen. Charged particles (esp. alpha) actually deposit charge where it can cause trouble. The most susceptible circuits are memories; dynamic memories actually store data in charge states, and static memories are intentionally very low-energy. Newer processes use smaller features and lower supply voltages, which reduces the charge needed to change state.
Unfortunately, for speed/power reasons all leading-edge processors use dynamic logic (similar to dynamic memory, except that the charges can be even smaller since the storage time is so much less.)
There are ways to minimize these effects with shielding,
Shielding is actually worse than useless, since cosmic rays are too penetrating to block effectively, but they do kick out secondary radiation from the shielding.
I'd love to know whether they're using the original Intel 486 or one of the newer 486 replacements that use static logic (which is handy in really-low-power systems since it lets you start and stop the clock at any time.)
Use of "well-tested" chipset... (Score:1)
Joseph R. Kiniry
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~kiniry/
California Institute of Technology
Yep, I'd have to say this is offtopic (Score:1)
--
"HORSE."
Re:why 486's? (Score:1)
Re:why 486's? (Score:4)
1. A time tested system (one that has proven itself over several years of "real world" as well as experimental development use) is a more acceptable one to them. Thy don't want to send a device into space and six months later have it fail because of a processor bug that know one knew about.
2. As the circuits on computer chips get smaller and smaller, there is a concern over the ability for solar radiation to trigger (or disable) the circuit's switches.
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Re:why 486's? (Score:4)
The tighter dies are more sensitive to charged particle events (Single Event Upsets, 'SEUs'), and the thinner nature of deposition makes the hardware more prone to heavy particle (permanent) events.
Older CMOS processors and memory were less prone to both types of error because of line thickness and spacing, depth of deposition and because of the voltage levels used.
The COSMAC 1802 is still a widely used space-borne processor!
Rad-hard planning is a non-trivial task, expecially when it's new to the designer. Trying to develop a design for a medium-altitude satellite was a challenge that a group I was once involved with was never able to satisfactorily overcome, and we lost the project because of it.
Having watched the evolution of the Shuttle system General Purpose Computers (GPCs) migrate from IBM proprietary processors to 80186s was a painful process. The software was clean-roomed, and 2 seperate groups of people developed code with identical functionality, while a 3rd group was responsible for testing. None of the groups was supposed to interact at all, and to the best of my knowledge, didn't even talk over beer... I suspect the Hubble ports are similar, although the rules for Manned Spaceflight code are more stringent.
Re:Just out of curiosity.... (Score:2)
The BIOS is only a factor up until boot time with a ``real'' OS such as Linux or FreeBSD. I had an old crappy Acer Aspire which thought it could read a 3.7GB drive but definitely could not, hosing it at every step of the way. However, once FreeBSD booted off a floppy, it was just fine. So I created a custom boot floppy and just left it in the drive. :-)
That said, 8 GB should be your hard limit there, though I do not speak from experience and just hearsay. LBA is required to even access drives above 8 GB because they exceed the IDE specs.
Re:Beowulf; sounds like the name of a bad B movie (Score:1)
Beowulf is a hero from old Celtic tales. The stories of his escapades were traditionally passed by word of mouth. They were not written down until the monks got ear of them and thoroughly injected them with Catholic dogma. The aforementioned priests published the Beowulf myths shortly before Chaucer published "The Canterbury Tales." Reading Chaucer and these stories of Beowulf will give you a fairly good understanding of how Elizabethan England came to be (and perhaps explain some of the method to the madness of writers like Shakespeare).
Why it was decided to name some clustering software after this ancient character, I'm not sure. It's possible that it is explained somewhere on their website or within their documentation.
Hope I've helped.
Guess what Nokia uses for their DX-200 (Score:1)
BSOD in Space (Score:1)
We don't do Internet
Well, there goes my chance in space. Unless I can get a powerful transmitter down here that will let me read Slashdot with about a 40 second delay. Oh well, can't be worse than my connetion now.
We don't have disks
Disks that are able to endure an incredible amount of G force and an incredible amount of cold/heat. Interesting.. no wonder why they are not feasible, my disks don't even last from home school.
With not even going to touch the Windows issues,
Matthew
_____________________________________
Re:why 486's? (Score:1)
why 486's? (Score:1)
I'm not a science expert, but I'm sure the hubble doesn't need a horrible amount of CPU. Why don't they just use an AMD-k63 450mhz? Last I heard those were around 50$ and I'm sure even NASA can afford that
Tyler
Re:why 486's? (Score:1)
Umm, no (Score:1)
Besides, you can't control a sattelitte with ~2-5 second latency. Also, should the Hubble crash when their's an ion storm or other disturbasnce that breaks the communication with the base station? Think about it; something that expensive and that far away better have a high degree of autonomy...
Re:What new x86 CPUs being designed that need no f (Score:1)
That's exactly what chipmakers do: they design a chip and then ramp the frequency up until "she can't take much more 'o this." Then it's time to design a new core: more efficient, smaller die, something like that. Coppermine, anyone?
This is also the reason that a good old Celeron-300 is the hottest chip intel ever made. That's the highest that manufacturing technique could go. It's pretty high too, you can cook meat on that puppy!
I still think it's cool how after hours of operation, my PIII-500 is much cooler than the voodoo3 main chip.
Re:Space Station is on Solaris! (Score:1)
-Nick
Who volunteers to go up there with a Mandrake disk and help those poor astronauts out.
Solid state (no moving parts) (Score:1)
1.)No moving parts. (A service mission costs a couple of million per trip)
2.)Any spinning object (like a HD spindle) would impart rotational inertia on the satelite as a whole, and throw you off of the star you were trying to look at.
-Nick(my 4 canadian cents)
Found the link... (Score:2)
-Nick
Re:why 486's? (Score:4)
Another issue is the floating-point concern; though Intel has come a long way from the notorious Pentium 60.876564 MHz errors, there are still enough quirks in the more advanced calculations (especially in the IBM/Cyrix copycat processors) to make their use by an orbiiting telescope impractical.
As a 486 is exssentially a 386 chip with a built-in math coprocessor, its reliable calculation scale, along with the right operating command scheme would be as close to a RISC-based system as one could getwithout building a new chip out of whole cloth, or using larger clusters of older MAC - and of course, Motorola Dragonball - processors to achieve the same results.
Space Station Computers (Score:1)
P.S. - How can the Shuttle astronauts use their pentium portables?
Older processors... (Score:5)
the reason for old technology (Score:1)
Another reason for using old technology in space is that there is so long between the design of a project, and its approval and funding.
When the money finally comes, nobody wants to redesign the whole project.
Re:why 486's? (Score:1)
They shoulda gone with celerons... (Score:1)
I wonder if there has been any attempts at quake in space...Call up the Grays and lets have a lan party!!
NightHawk
hardened 486 (Score:2)
The other factor is that the chips (and sometimes the whole solid state component) are coated with a thin layer of diamond. This increases its resistance to radiation, and EMP (electro magnetic pulse) in particular. A great deal of the NASA engineering specs are based on mil-spec so they must be able to withstand attack by EM weapons. Military satellites are supposed to be able to operate after a radiation burst as powerful as a nuclear explosion.
IMHO, I'm just glad to see that NASA is using off the shelf (inexpensive) components rather than custom designed stuff.
Smaller (Score:3)
"Linked Processors" (Score:3)
All 3 CPU's do the processing and if one of them is different that one is deemed faulty and dropped off line. This system is also used with in the shuttle, although they have a 4th CPU due to the value and vunerability of the shuttles cargo.
How this triple redundancy works in actual practice is a question for some one else to answer.
most posters are contradicting NASA. (Score:1)
The press release states that the new computer allows the use of a more modern programming language. Presumably, they are using something like VxWorks for the OS?
Does anyone recognize the name of the old computer mentioned on the link, or know anymore details about the old (or new) computer? I wish NASA would be more open with details -- the average slashdotter knows more about his mobo than NASA is telling us about the hubble's brains!
More info... (Score:3)
The old processors were 386's with
Re:Hubble Bubble ? (Score:1)
Re:Hubble Bubble ? (Score:1)