Enjoy!

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/03/02/nasa-mars-perseverance-rover-imac-powerpc/

_________________
Amiga 1200 + WARP 1260 + AmigaOS 3.2

@DiskDoctor

Very cool. I wonder if they will port OS4 to it #milspec.

_________________
Amiga A1200, 3.1 ROMs, Blizzard 1230 MKIV 64MB & FPU, 4GB DoM SSD, Workbench 3.1

@A1200

Definitely OS4 machine material, even price is right there. Starting from $200k.

@DiskDoctor

Not sure its relevant to AmigaOS, it uses a too slow CPU for desktop by today’s standards anyway. NASA ordering two old G3’s, don’t really effect the price of new PowerPC chips.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 07-Mar-2021 at 08:33 PM.

_________________
http://lifeofliveforit.blogspot.no/
Facebook::LiveForIt Software for AmigaOS

@NutsAboutAmiga
Quote:

Not sure its relevant to AmigaOS, it uses a too slow CPU for desktop by today’s standards

Beyond the small handful of PowerISA MCUs/CPUs that have seen AmgaOS 4.x ports, pretty much everything else in the PowerPC/PowerISA world is not really relevant to AmigaOS.

The fact that a rover on the surface of Mars in 2021 is using a CPU from the late '90s is just an interesting bit of computing news.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

Hang on a minute wasn't the G3 used on the Eyetech AmigaOne XE? Relevant in that respect surely? As for not being powerful enough by today's standards, that maybe true but by Amiga standards it's a lot quicker than my 030 A1200!

_________________
Amiga A1200, 3.1 ROMs, Blizzard 1230 MKIV 64MB & FPU, 4GB DoM SSD, Workbench 3.1

@A1200

It can be better compared to a CSPPC due to a low clock speed, any AmigaNG is faster than RAD750 (400 MIPS cpu).

_________________
Pegasos II G4@1GHz 2GB Radeon 9250 256MB
AmigaOS4.1 fe - MorphOS - Debian 9 Jessie

I am sitting before a computer that tells this about herself:

New Shell process 7
7.Wb:> cpu
System: PPCIBM PowerPC 750 GX (emulated MC68020/FPU) (INST: Cache) (External Cache)
Level 1 Cache size: 32768, Level 2 Cache size: 1048576
7.Wb:>


So when I will live in Mars and need some parts for my uA1 I will pick up a rover instead of ordering from Earth. :)

@Fl@sh

CSPPC is like 233Mhz, unless over clocked, G3 on AmigaONE-SE is clocked at 600Mhz, and 800Mhz on XE, G4's are clocked at 800 or 933Mhz (I believe.)
G3 don’t have AltiVec, but lot more modern than old PowerPC 603/604.

G3 are about 39% faster per MHz, compared to 604e, and 604e can't be clocked so high, I seen some overclocking to just 300Mhz.
The Atrica S chip pretty bad Northbridge chip, but considering that old PowerUp cards did not have one at all, I’m pretty sure it does not really matter at all hare.

I’m also guess that there is big difference in memory transferee speed, something often overlooked when talking about benchmarks.

https://computer.fandom.com/wiki/Instructions_per_second

Anyway, I suggest avoid looking at old MacOS7 benchmarks, because most of old OS was emulated on PowerPC, and MacOS itself is not actually best multitasking OS.

I will also suggest that MIPS does not show hole picture, because AltiVec can do 4 x the amount compared to a normal instruction, it can affect video and picture decoding drastically. In the special case its used.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 08-Mar-2021 at 05:21 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 08-Mar-2021 at 05:17 PM.

_________________
http://lifeofliveforit.blogspot.no/
Facebook::LiveForIt Software for AmigaOS

@NutsAboutAmiga

G3 might be 39% faster than 604e but RAD750 ain't. It's missing L2 cache and runs with 66Mhz FSB.

Here is nice chart of benchmarks of "space grade" CPU's and RAD750 seems to be pretty much par with 603e. BTW, RAD5545 on that list is radiation hardened quad core e5500.

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

G3 are about 39% faster per MHz, compared to 604e

Source for such claim? Benchmarks I saw show similar per MHz performance (at least with integer workload).

Newer RAD5500 uses CPU derived from the e5500 core (as in the X5000).

As of RAD750 on Mars. It is obvious PowerPC is a mainstream CPU architecture... on that planet.

@pavlor

Quote:

As of RAD750 on Mars. It is obvious PowerPC is a mainstream CPU architecture... on that planet.

Yup, that's why I said it's perfect for NG Amiga, I mean they even made press release that they sold 150 of em in 10 years!

I wonder if they encoded the landing videos on that chip or if they have an additional hardware encoder. If they did this on PPC, I would really like to see the source code...

Last edited by jacadcaps on 08-Mar-2021 at 06:48 PM.

@jacadcaps

Quote:

jacadcaps wrote: I wonder if they encoded the landing videos on that chip or if they have an additional hardware encoder. If they did this on PPC, I would really like to see the source code...

Nope, like earlier landers/rovers camera setups are done by Malin Space Science Systems and have some iteration of this http://www.msss.com/brochures/dvr4.pdf with h.264. Bit smaller piece of kit than one in Curiosity http://www.msss.com/all_projects/mmm-dea.php , which is still sending pics

Last edited by Rose on 08-Mar-2021 at 07:43 PM.

@jacadcaps

It could be really interesting to look inside source code.
There’s a little possibility it’s all in assembly, due small memory limits and necessity to know what every instruction really does.
Someone should advice them to call MOS Team for next missions.

_________________
Pegasos II G4@1GHz 2GB Radeon 9250 256MB
AmigaOS4.1 fe - MorphOS - Debian 9 Jessie

@jacadcaps

They (famously) use ffmpeg a lot.

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@agami

Quote:

The fact that a rover on the surface of Mars in 2021 is using a CPU from the late '90s is just an interesting bit of computing news.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening#Examples_of_rad-hard_computers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_embedded_computer_systems_on_board_the_Mars_rovers

Last edited by kolla on 09-Mar-2021 at 12:03 PM.

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@Fl@sh

Quote:

There’s a little possibility it’s all in assembly, due small memory limits and necessity to know what every instruction really does.

Nope, C since it's more manageable when working in group. They are using VxWorks for OS and Wind Rivers Diab is pretty pretty good for a compiler for mission critical code and also keeps executable size in check. Only down side is that single compiler license is in tune of ~$8000 USD.

@Rose

Quote:

Yup, that's why I said it's perfect for NG Amiga, I mean they even made press release that they sold 150 of em in 10 years!

This could be used by A-Eon (and ACube) marketing!

Bringing the AmigaOS to the PPC technology, so good that it is being delivered to Mars!

_________________
Amiga 1200 + WARP 1260 + AmigaOS 3.2

@jacadcaps

Quote:

jacadcaps wrote: I wonder if they encoded the landing videos on that chip or if they have an additional hardware encoder. If they did this on PPC, I would really like to see the source code...

How cool would that be if source code from the Mars rover were used to improve video encoding for a MorphOS web browser! I would love to see that on my local news some day.

_________________
Amiga! The computer that inspired so many, to accomplish so much, but has ended up in the hands of . . . . . . . . . .