IBM Hardware Heads Back to Mars
IBM Hardware Heads Back to Mars
August 3rd, 2007: It isn’t often that hardware vendors send their products to the fourth planet from the sun, yet that is exactly where IBM’s Power Architecture is heading.
Power architecture will travel out to space on board the ‘phoenix’ Mars rover in NASA’s latest Mars exploration mission. This probe will be outfitted with a radiation-hardened RAD6000 computer by BAE Systems and based on IBM’s power architecture. "We selected Power Architecture as the most amenable architecture for space-based missions," said Vic Scuderi, space product manager for BAE Systems.
Once deployed, the rover will have to survive wind storms lashing at the platform with speeds of up to 128km per hour and temperatures as low as -92 degrees Celsius. The phoenix launch will cost US$420 million (AU$489 million) and will travel over 680 million kilometres.
IBM’s computing platforms have left our atmosphere before; in 2003 NASA launched the first two Mars Exploration rovers ‘spirit’ and ‘destiny’ who were both running on power architecture. Experience is coming to play with this latest mission, with the space community accepting the power based RAD6000 “as the workhorse for space computer applications" Scuderi said.
This latest development continues IBM’s reign as having 100% of all the computing platforms on Mars run on its architecture. This has prompted IBM to declare power architecture as being “the most versatile computing platform in the solar system" said Raj Desai, vice president IBM Global Engineering Solutions,