A 1990s iMac Processor Powers NASA’s Perseverance Rover

aristarchus writes:

More details on Perseverance, at Gizmodo.

As we watched NASA put a rover on Mars last month, it definitely seemed like the agency had to be using some sort of high-tech processor in its machine. Surely the rover is built on something much more powerful than the components in devices us civilians use, right? But while NASA is technically using a specialized processor to power the Perseverance rover, it's not far removed from the world of consumer electronics-about 23 years ago.

NewScientist reports that the Perseverance rover is powered by a PowerPC 750 processor, which was used in Apple's original 1998 iMac G3-you remember, the iconic, colorful, see-through desktop. If the PowerPC name sounds familiar, it's probably because those are the RISC CPUs Apple used in its computers before switching to Intel. (Although now the company is back on the RISC train with its homegrown M1 processor.)

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