4 ms·

It adds weight but why not put all the computing hardware in one spot and build a lead or water shield around it?

by flangola7 3y ago

hammock 3y ago
Try doing that in space
- flangola7 3y ago
  Doing what?
tomxor 3y ago
Hardware radiation hardening techniques have existed for a long time, and are applied commonly in space, satellites, nuclear power, military. Roughly speaking it breaks down into a couple categories including the manufacturing of electronics and chips themselves, including everything from substrate differences to using entirely different types of RAM and block storage [0], to the higher level strategies employed by many generations of space probes where a variety of total system redundancy is employed, e.g the Voyager probes used discrete component level redundancy, and most modern probes use almost full system redundancy where they run 3 complete computers in lock step, the idea being that triple redundancy is the minimum needed to detect which computer is wrong. Another potential strategy not so commonly applied for this purpose is software resilience, such as the techniques applied by the Minix3 microkernel, the idea being to minimise the critical kernel code to be so small that it's unlikely to have bugs or be affected by hardware level affects, then everything else underneath can be kept alive by the kernel, even block device drivers, by employing triple redundancy and a "resurrection server". This was intended to protect against bugs in critical software like device drivers and hardware/firmware bugs rather than radiation, but it could be similarly effective especially as a layered strategy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening#Radiation-hardening_techniques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening#Radiation-...
rfdonnelly 3y ago
That's part of the strategy for Europa Clipper. https://europa.nasa.gov/resources/210/complete-europa-clipper-vault-and-its-twin/ https://europa.nasa.gov/resources/210/complete-europa-clippe... https://europa.nasa.gov/resources/342/electronics-vault/ https://europa.nasa.gov/resources/342/electronics-vault/

It adds weight but why not put all the computing hardware in one spot and build a lead or water shield around it?

hammock 3y ago

Try doing that in space

flangola7 3y ago
Doing what?

tomxor 3y ago

Hardware radiation hardening techniques have existed for a long time, and are applied commonly in space, satellites, nuclear power, military. Roughly speaking it breaks down into a couple categories including the manufacturing of electronics and chips themselves, including everything from substrate differences to using entirely different types of RAM and block storage [0], to the higher level strategies employed by many generations of space probes where a variety of total system redundancy is employed, e.g the Voyager probes used discrete component level redundancy, and most modern probes use almost full system redundancy where they run 3 complete computers in lock step, the idea being that triple redundancy is the minimum needed to detect which computer is wrong. Another potential strategy not so commonly applied for this purpose is software resilience, such as the techniques applied by the Minix3 microkernel, the idea being to minimise the critical kernel code to be so small that it's unlikely to have bugs or be affected by hardware level affects, then everything else underneath can be kept alive by the kernel, even block device drivers, by employing triple redundancy and a "resurrection server". This was intended to protect against bugs in critical software like device drivers and hardware/firmware bugs rather than radiation, but it could be similarly effective especially as a layered strategy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening#Radiation-hardening_techniques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening#Radiation-...

rfdonnelly 3y ago

That's part of the strategy for Europa Clipper. https://europa.nasa.gov/resources/210/complete-europa-clipper-vault-and-its-twin/ https://europa.nasa.gov/resources/210/complete-europa-clippe... https://europa.nasa.gov/resources/342/electronics-vault/ https://europa.nasa.gov/resources/342/electronics-vault/