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There is a curious effect that seems to bring together the most advanced science and technology with very old tech otherwise thought obsolete. The place where y
by TorKlingberg 10y ago
There is a curious effect that seems to bring together the most advanced science and technology with very old tech otherwise thought obsolete. The place where you are most likely to find floppy discs is probably a research lab, because a rare, very expensive instrument saves its data on them. Space probes use ancient CPUs like 386's as they can handle the radiation.
- onion2k 10y agoI suspect the effect at work is simply a lack of money. Those ancient technologies aren't better in any way, but developing new ones has an implicit cost that's hard to justify when the old technology still does the job, however poorly. It would be possible to use a radiation hardened CPU that's far better than a 386 but only if someone spends millions in research and testing first - no one is willing to do that when an existing variation of a 386 does the job already.
- slededit 10y agoAs feature sizes shrink it becomes much more difficult to create rad hardened integrated circuits. Modern DRAM just barely works at ground levels of background radiation, let alone what it would see in space.