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The Computers on the NASA mission I'm helping with...

Submitted by gbock on Thu, 07/31/2008 - 10:08pm.

The evening after the presentation I made about the mission I'm helping out on, I tracked down the computers that are on the spacecraft. BAE R3000's (nearly equivalent to an Alpha+), Rad 750's, Coldfires, many running VXWorks. We have a lot of SDNs (Subsystem Data Nodes) or what most are familiar with, networked computers & and a rather robust "LAN" that makes up the backbone of the system.

Glenn

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The Computers on the NASA mission

Submitted by k3ndm on Fri, 08/01/2008 - 10:09am.

Glenn,

I'm not familiar with the computers, but I am with VXWorks. The company that I do a little consulting for uses VXWorks. It works better for the purpose than does either Microsoft or flavors of Unix operating systems. VXWorks operates very nicely on the 68xxx series processors which do math better than the older Intel chips; I haven't seen the comparisons of the new generation chips. I do know if you structure your code correctly for the Altavec processor on the 68000 series chips, the power is awesome.

If any of your guys are interested in pursuing the subject, have them contact Dr. Jay Sklar, Dr. John Mann, or Dave Goldfine up at MIT Lincoln Lab. They figured out how to really maximize the Altavec for some efforts that I was involved with.

73,
Barry
K3NDM

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