Radiation Hardening. Space Sicence Missions are analyzed from a perspective of risk, when designing the hardware specifications. The CPU specifically, is called

Radiation Hardening. Space Sicence Missions are analyzed from a perspective of risk, when designing the hardware specifications. The CPU specifically, is called a RAD750. It is essentially PowerPC 750 Architecture, with radiation hardening. http://wordpress.mrreid.org/2012/08/25/curiositys-rad750-radiation-hardened-computer/ http://wordpress.mrreid.org/2012/08/25/curiositys-rad750-rad... The key risk vector in semiconductors in a space environment is things like bitflips. So, when a high energy particle collides with your transistor in DRAM and a 0 becomes a 1, that is a problem. There are deep architecture changes made to the RAD 750 specific to deep space missions, for example SRAM is used instead of DRAM, as SRAm is less succesptable to bitflips from high energy particles. There are other alternative RAD CPUs, such as the Leon. But ultimatley, a space vehicle does not need a lot of compute to have a successful mission. It runs VxWorks, a real time operating system. And a far, far, high risk of failure comes from bit flips, rather than having a bunch of compute for no reason