NASA Has Finally Built a Computer Chip To Survive on Venus

[Coaxialgamer]

Don't know if this is sufficiently tech related to be considered tech news.  Feel free to move it. 

 

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NASA researchers developed a new computer chip and tested it without any cooling or protective packaging in a high-pressure, high-temperature environment like the surface of Venus—and it worked. Humans haven’t sent a lander to Venus since 1982 (that Russian lander lasted just over two hours) although NASA could launch a rover in 2023, according to Forbes. That visit won’t happen unless NASA has a computer chip that can withstand the planet’s 800-plus degree Fahrenheit environment.

 

Neudeck explained that the most important challenges for a chip on Venus to overcome are the temperature and chemically-reactive atmosphere. Most chips are made out of silicon, but at high temperatures it starts behaving like a regular conductor instead of a semiconductor. Neudeck’s chips are silicon carbide instead, which maintain their good ol’ semiconducting properties. The team also ensured the interconnects—the wires connecting all of the pieces of the chip—wouldn’t fry by using exotic materials like tantalum silicide, among other challenges.

 

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The researchers created special chips that let out an electronic signal, and put their setup into NASA’s Glenn Extreme Environments Rig or GEER, a toxic high pressure cooker that can recreate Venus’ atmosphere. The chip survived and continued to function even under the recreated Venus atmospheric conditions, for over 21 days, and published their results in the journal AIP Advances.

 

It’s awesome that these chips worked, but they’re definitely not ready for primetime yet. As of now, the chips only have 24 transistors on them—comparable to much older microchips rather than those found in modern computers. “We’re back to the very early 1970s on Moore’s law in terms of the complexity of the chip,” said Neudeck. But he already has a 100-transistor chip in the wings, and scientists have already explored the solar system with less-complex chips. Plus, aside rom the computer, scientists still need to design the remaining pieces of the Venus-faring rover.

This is pretty cool imo (pun intended) .  For the longest time rovers have had about an hour or so to explore the surface of Venus.  Hopefully we'll be able to get more pictures because of this.  Ground level reporting. 

 

Source :http://gizmodo.com/nasa-has-finally-built-a-computer-chip-to-survive-on-ve-1792149284

[LucidMew]

10 minutes ago, Coaxialgamer said:

But he already has a 100-transistor chip in the wings, and scientists have already explored the solar system with less-complex chips.

correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you need at least two transistors per logic gate (or/nor/xor/and/nand). How can you "explore the solar system" with something that can barely count to ten? much less transmit megabytes of data back to earth.

[historicalpoultry]

Now that's all fine and neat for NASA, but the only thing I see in my head is an i7 overclocked to 10 GHz without a cooler on it 

[Snooli]

1 hour ago, LucidMew said:

correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you need at least two transistors per logic gate (or/nor/xor/and/nand). How can you "explore the solar system" with something that can barely count to ten? much less transmit megabytes of data back to earth.

Science has been done without microchips for ages, and the first rockets had no microchips on them. Before ARM became mainstream, all American space adventures were powered by some ancient Intel chip at best. You don't need to count to ten to turn left, stuff can be made simple.

[Dabombinable]

7 minutes ago, Snooli said:

Science has been done without microchips for ages, and the first rockets had no microchips on them. Before ARM became mainstream, all American space adventures were powered by some ancient Intel chip at best. You don't need to count to ten to turn left, stuff can be made simple.

A standard calculator is more powerful than the computers used back then.....

[Prysin]

1 hour ago, LucidMew said:

correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you need at least two transistors per logic gate (or/nor/xor/and/nand). How can you "explore the solar system" with something that can barely count to ten? much less transmit megabytes of data back to earth.

Cuz most of the exploration was done by incredibly slow image processors and the data then slowly sent back to earth 

[Prysin]

20 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

A standard calculator is more powerful than the computers used back then.....

Most electronic McDonald's toys are more advanced than back then