4 ms·
Wow. World record for the longest continual operation of a computer... achieved in a radiation bath.
by dTal 5y ago
Wow. World record for the longest continual operation of a computer... achieved in a radiation bath.
- tomxor 5y agoPretty much, although I think the RTG is mounted on a limb as far away from the other equipment as possible, but still the computer needs to be able to tolerate a decent amount of radiation. It also has an interesting redundant design where it has double the component count and can either exploit that for extra compute or redundancy in case of component failure.
- anthropodie 5y agoI think parent comment is talking about cosmic radiation and not the one from RTG which most probably is properly shielded.
- tomxor 5y agoPossibly. I wonder which is the more significant source given it's distance from the Sun.
- mgdlbp 5y agoSolar particles become less of a threat, but the sun's atmosphere actually shields the solar system from some types of cosmic rays. Don't know what proportion of electronics faults stem from each, though.
- monocasa 5y agoIt used a memory called "plated wire memory" which, like the very related core memory is very resistant to changes caused by radiation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plated_wire_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plated_wire_memory