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Apollo 11 vs. USB-C Chargers (2020)

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Re: Apollo 11 vs. USB-C Chargers (2020)

#2

Post by kristopolous »

When we go back to the moon, I wouldn't be surprised if Zilog-Z80s were a major part of the hardware. Well known, well understood, predictable hardware goes a long way. There's a bunch of other considerations in outer space and z80s have proven robust and reliable there. Also I'd expect a bunch of Kermit and Xmodem to be used as well.

Re: Apollo 11 vs. USB-C Chargers (2020)

#3

Post by m463 »

It is amazing they were able to miniaturize a computer to fix into a spaceship.

Previously calculators were a room full of people, all of which required food, shelter, clothing and ... oxygen.

Re: Apollo 11 vs. USB-C Chargers (2020)

#5

Post by monocasa »

kristopolous wrote: post #2

When we go back to the moon, I wouldn't be surprised if Zilog-Z80s were a major part of the hardware. Well known, well understood, predictable hardware goes a long way. There's a bunch of other considerations in outer space and z80s have proven robust and reliable there. Also I'd expect a bunch of Kermit and Xmodem to be used as well.

I'm not sure if there's a RAD hard z80 variant.

They've got their own chips and protocols going back just as far, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIL-STD-1553

Re: Apollo 11 vs. USB-C Chargers (2020)

#6

Post by dogma1138 »

kristopolous wrote: post #2

When we go back to the moon, I wouldn't be surprised if Zilog-Z80s were a major part of the hardware. Well known, well understood, predictable hardware goes a long way. There's a bunch of other considerations in outer space and z80s have proven robust and reliable there. Also I'd expect a bunch of Kermit and Xmodem to be used as well.

I doubt so and if they will they’ll be abstracted to hell behind modern commodity hardware, Apollo had no bias when it comes to HDI/MMIs so astronauts could be trained on the computer interface that was possible at the time.

The reason why the controls of Dragon and Orion look the way they do is that they are no far off from modern digital cockpits of jets like the F-22 and F-35 and everyone is used to graphical interfaces and touch controls.

Having non intuitive interfaces that go against the bias astronauts and later on civilian contractors already have by using such interfaces over the past 2 decades will be detrimental to overall mission success.

The other reason for why they’ll opt to use commodity hardware is that if we are going back to space for real now you need to be able to build and deploy systems at an ever increasing pace.

We have enough powerful human safety rated hardware from aerospace and automotive there is no need to dig up relics.

And lastly you’ll be hard pressed to find people who still know how to work with such legacy hardware at scale and unless we will drastically change the curriculum of computer science degrees around the US and the world that list would only get smaller each year. We’re far more likely to see ARM and RISC-V in space than z80’s.

Re: Apollo 11 vs. USB-C Chargers (2020)

#8

Post by GlenTheMachine »

kristopolous wrote: post #2

When we go back to the moon, I wouldn't be surprised if Zilog-Z80s were a major part of the hardware. Well known, well understood, predictable hardware goes a long way. There's a bunch of other considerations in outer space and z80s have proven robust and reliable there. Also I'd expect a bunch of Kermit and Xmodem to be used as well.

They won’t be. We will use RAD750’s, the flight qualified variant of the PowerPC architecture. That’s the standard high end flight processor.

https://www.petervis.com/Vintage%20Chips/PowerPC%20750/RAD75...

The next generation (at least according to NASA) will be RISC-V variants:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/nasa-has-chosen-these-cpus-to-...

Re: Apollo 11 vs. USB-C Chargers (2020)

#9

Post by kristopolous »

monocasa wrote: post #5
kristopolous wrote: post #2

When we go back to the moon, I wouldn't be surprised if Zilog-Z80s were a major part of the hardware. Well known, well understood, predictable hardware goes a long way. There's a bunch of other considerations in outer space and z80s have proven robust and reliable there. Also I'd expect a bunch of Kermit and Xmodem to be used as well.

I'm not sure if there's a RAD hard z80 variant. They've got their own chips and protocols going back just as far, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIL-STD-1553

The space shuttle used both z80 and 8086 until it ended in 2011. The international space station runs on among other chips, 80386SX-20s. IBM/BAE also has a few RADs based on POWER chips.
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