> The article (nor the product page for the X280) doesn't say whether these chips are radiation hardened, or whether NASA is now more comfortable with software

> The article (nor the product page for the X280) doesn't say whether these chips are radiation hardened, or whether NASA is now more comfortable with software solutions to the difficulties of reliable computation in space. > If the latter, that seems (to a layperson) quite exciting, since more local processing capabilities will hopefully lead to more efficient use of the very limited radio bandwidth these missions have available at such vast distances. Is that either/or, though? I could imagine building a probe with a radiation hardened central processor (or two), plus a non-radiation hardened "accelerator" CPU that's not considered mission critical. The "accelerator" could be tasked with things like pre-transmission data analysis/triage, and if it fails the mission could continue without feature (like Galileo continued without its high-gain antenna). Though the value of that might be less than it seems at first look: New Horizons had literal years of time to transmit its data back to Earth.