Re: (no subject)

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <5q1rf3$kqr$1@enyo.uwa.edu.au>,
Joseph Turner  <jturner@tartarus.uwa.edu.au> wrote:
>I heard that they choose cpu's like that also cause they are less
>susceptible to destruction by radiation..i.e. radiation from the sun
>destroys integrated circuits...smaller technolgy being more suspectible.
>Just something I heard.

   Yep. There are certain chips rated at high resistance to radiation,
shock (sorry, but you do not ship dinner table china on the Mars
superball express), ease of interfacing, development & compiler
technology, familiarity to the designers, etc. 

   Looking at the pix from Mars on web sites makes them look like
they've got some Jpeg-like compression right from the start when they
were transmitted to Earth.  Something like that *really* benefits from
on-chip integer multiplication and the like-- precisely an operation
the 65xx series has been historically weak at. [When Nintendo licensed
the mask for the 65816 and added an 8-cycle multiply to the SNES, that
wasn't there just for kicks] Most designs from Intel and Motorola have
had multiply and other features that really help to efficiently run
code.

   Just because you really like something doesn't mean it's the
optimal design for someone else. Something may too underpowered and
fragile for your code and engineering, or any other host of reasons.

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein