Xbox 360 is More Powerful Than Space Shuttle Computer

[lathe26]

Originally it was reported that shuttle had around as much processing power as an Apple IIe. If those reports were accurate, than an Box 360 would be expected to run circles around the shuttle computer.

Regarding Apollo, the memory would have closer to 128 bytes than 128KB. I don't know the exact number.

 

[christop]

I would have guessed there was a dual core under the hood of the shuttle..

 

[Guest]

Yes but the shuttle is newer technology than what we are using now 😛

 

[oneblackened]

Pretty sure the shuttle runs on 386's.

 

[Jerky_san]

Apollo 18 "Uhh Huston we have a problem.."
Huston "Go ahead apollo 18"
Apollo 18 "It would appear our computer is showing a red ring of death do you confirm"
Huston "We confirm and we've contacted microsoft. They've told us its out of warrenty and your screwed unless we want to buy another."
Apollo 18 "Shit..."

 

[drwho1]

[citation][nom]Jerky_san[/nom]Apollo 18 "Uhh Huston we have a problem.."Huston "Go ahead apollo 18"Apollo 18 "It would appear our computer is showing a red ring of death do you confirm"Huston "We confirm and we've contacted microsoft. They've told us its out of warrenty and your screwed unless we want to buy another."Apollo 18 "Shit..."[/citation]

LOL

 

[mlopinto2k1]

More power = More problems. Period .

 

[hmp_goose]

Always herd the Shuttle used a stack of PCjrs to fly …

 

[WR2]

XBox 360 is probably a better choice than a Nintendo Wii.

 

[_Cubase_]

So it's official: It can send men into space... but it most definitely cannot play Crysis.

 

[josejones]

"The Xbox 360 that you have set up next to your TV may be nearly six years old, but believe it or not, it's got more computational power than the computer aboard the space shuttle."

That may be true, however, it would drain the power so quickly on such a constant basis that it wouldn't be worth it.

Energy consumption is out of control - wish the PC industry would do something about that. It's crazy how things have changed just since the first space shuttle. Now, we have 3 computers, 3 TV's and an XBox and they're all on all the dang the time. It's sucking my will to live - since I have to pay the energy bills. I need these kids and the Ol' lady to get out or get a job.

 

[hetneo]

[citation][nom]lathe26[/nom]Originally it was reported that shuttle had around as much processing power as an Apple IIe. If those reports were accurate, than an Box 360 would be expected to run circles around the shuttle computer.Regarding Apollo, the memory would have closer to 128 bytes than 128KB. I don't know the exact number.[/citation]
Actually Appollo had 36KB of ROM and 2K of RAM.
This article is very old new, and such today defunct architecture was used because of two reasons. While all the math needed to be done during flight operations is very complex, shuttle's computers do not need to draw fancy DX9 graphics or Windows' interface. Current IBM AP-101 architecture is sufficient to do all that is needed. Thrusts get turned on/off by it very nice. Second reason is that it is already flight certified and getting some other architecture flight certified would cost too much and would provide no substantial benefits to warrant such spending.

 

[cookoy]

imagine if they had Xbox 360 with Kinect for navigation and Joy Ride for mission control program. who knows we'd have someone on Mars by now.

 

[Guest]

the space shuttle uses 8086 processor. a while ago I recall them buying them on ebay cause no one made the processor anymore and they need "new old stock" to make sure they had enough. since each shuttle had 5 of those flight computers.

 

[ta152h]

[citation][nom]interesting fact[/nom]the space shuttle uses 8086 processor. a while ago I recall them buying them on ebay cause no one made the processor anymore and they need "new old stock" to make sure they had enough. since each shuttle had 5 of those flight computers.[/citation]

Not so. The 8086 was used in the diagnostic equipment to make sure the twin boosters were working properly, not in the Shuttle itself. A lot of the equipment NASA scavenged wasn't necessarily for the Space Shuttle itself, but for supporting systems.

 

[bison88]

And a smartphone is more powerful than the electronics running a jumbo jet. Nothing new here.

 

[belardo]

The shuttle was designed with 70s tech. Yes, its quite old... but it only needs to do one thing... launch, fly and land - but the hardware has been upgraded to 80s stanard. There is nothing else the computers can do, no Angry Birds.

Also, there are ways to locate and purchase space-quality electronics. Last time I look a few years ago... something like a 16mhz 32bit CPU goes for about $3000 (I'm guessing badly), they do not come in standard packages that we see. While a normal CPU goes for $50.

They also run their own special SPACE OS, which is very raw... it allows NASA to send information with as little bandwidth as possible. Which has saved a few missions by not having to upload tons of code.

A lot of our horse power is to deal with the bloat that we use for our nice pretty systems.

Sure the 360 is far more powerful than the onboard computers in the shuttle (not including notebooks, etc) but would you bet your life on it?

 

[mikeangs2004]

360 is also faster than most consumer CPU's b/c it's more like an APU than a CPU

 

[memadmax]

Why is this a comparison?
The shuttle computer only monitors/runs/navigates the shuttle...
The xbox 360 renders high resolution images as fast as it can while creating a mediocre A.I. for single player games, etc etc.

Besides that. I would take any spacecraft computer from NASA any day. The things are built like a tank. The CPU's normally go thru a 30+ day burn in(NOT a burn in where you overclock it to death) and they are built to withstand X-rays, gamma rays, alpha/beta radiation, gravitational flux, EMI, electron flux, power surges, changes in temperatures that would make our own proc's croak faster than a frog on meth, etc etc...

 

[l23j4l2jjgljwsjsk]

If you count the cpus and the gpu in the xbox its probably about 100-1000 times faster at a rough guess.If you only count the cpus then its probably about 30-100x as fast.

I think itw as more the reliability that they didnt upgrade.They would have had to gut the electronis package, as well as completely redesign the software to upgrade. Thats no small undertaking. It probably would have taken the better part of a decade and billions of dollars to upgrade the computers. Might as well just start over.

The shuttle should have been retired about 15 years ago tho. Sucks that we were stuck with it for so long. Sucks that we didnt spend the money to replace it for so long.