[HN Gopher] NASA selects SiFive and makes RISC-V the go-to ecosy...
___________________________________________________________________
NASA selects SiFive and makes RISC-V the go-to ecosystem for future
missions
Author : georgelyon
Score : 377 points
Date : 2022-09-06 17:57 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sifive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sifive.com)
| jvanderbot wrote:
| For context: "This contract is part of NASA's High-Performance
| Space Computing project". I used to work with the HPSC leads and
| paid attention to it. This is one of _many_ parallel threads for
| next-gen computing, including snapdragon and others. Yes, it will
| be rad-hard. That was a program requirement and is mentioned in
| the press release. As such, it fits a particular mission profile.
|
| There is no existing compulsion for missions to use HPSC. This is
| a technology development program seeking to meet the requirements
| of missions. It's great news they converged on an architecture!
|
| As part of their development, HPSC folks will seek mission
| partners for tech demos. Then, missions will voluntarily (or with
| some light compulsion) adopt the technology based on the growing
| heritage and mission need.
| jakedata wrote:
| I'd love to see an implementation in silicon carbide so we could
| drop it on Venus, wait for it to bounce a few times and then
| start exploring.
|
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-radio-we-could-send-to-hell
| babypuncher wrote:
| I always wondered why NASA never sent any surface probes to
| Venus, until I read about the insane engineering (and lots of
| trial and error) that went into the Soviet Union's Venera
| program. Despite all that effort, the successful Venera probes
| only lasted minutes on the surface before failing.
| giantrobot wrote:
| The fact a lander is only going to return an hour (at best)
| of science data is why NASA hasn't bothered with Venus.
| There's a low chance of initial success and then no real
| opportunity for a mission extension if things actually go
| well. A Mars lander returns a lot more science per dollar
| than a Venus lander will.
| jakedata wrote:
| I think a larger mission with some sort of airship dropping
| little science packages would yield quite a trove of data
| without the entire mission burning up in an hour. Hopefully
| the success of the little Martian helicopter gives mission
| planners something to think about. -edited to add,
| something like a molten salt battery could travel to Venus
| completely inert and only become active as it warms, also
| acting as a heat sink.
| [deleted]
| garblegarble wrote:
| The article (nor the product page for the X280) doesn't say
| whether these chips are radiation hardened, or whether NASA is
| now more comfortable with software solutions to the difficulties
| of reliable computation in space.
|
| If the latter, that seems (to a layperson) quite exciting, since
| more local processing capabilities will hopefully lead to more
| efficient use of the very limited radio bandwidth these missions
| have available at such vast distances.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| SiFive is fabless. Looks like they will be collaborating with
| Microchip on actual production.
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-awards-next-generati...
|
| https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/embedded-revol...
| mzs wrote:
| I see Microchip doing nothing but ARM in this space and only
| SiFive folks quoted in their PR:
|
| https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/microcontrollers-
| an...
| jpm_sd wrote:
| This lays it out more explicitly:
|
| https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/microchip-to-develop-next-
| ge...
|
| "NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has selected Microchip to
| develop the High-Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC)
| processor that will provide at least 100 times the
| computational capacity of current spaceflight computers for
| all types of future space missions, from planetary
| exploration to lunar and Mars surface missions.
|
| The radiation hardened, fault tolerant processor will be
| based on 12 instantiations of the X280 RISC-V core from
| SiFive and will be used in a series of ruggedised radiation
| tolerant single board computers."
|
| Microsemi (acquired by Microchip) has built RISC-V hardware
| in the past:
|
| https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/iot/article/2
| 1...
| mzs wrote:
| Thank you, that was the missing piece.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > The article (nor the product page for the X280) doesn't say
| whether these chips are radiation hardened, or whether NASA is
| now more comfortable with software solutions to the
| difficulties of reliable computation in space.
|
| > If the latter, that seems (to a layperson) quite exciting,
| since more local processing capabilities will hopefully lead to
| more efficient use of the very limited radio bandwidth these
| missions have available at such vast distances.
|
| Is that either/or, though? I could imagine building a probe
| with a radiation hardened central processor (or two), plus a
| non-radiation hardened "accelerator" CPU that's not considered
| mission critical. The "accelerator" could be tasked with things
| like pre-transmission data analysis/triage, and if it fails the
| mission could continue without feature (like Galileo continued
| without its high-gain antenna).
|
| Though the value of that might be less than it seems at first
| look: New Horizons had literal years of time to transmit its
| data back to Earth.
| silasdavis wrote:
| What is radiation hardening of chips?
|
| Stuff on the outside to absorb? Different band gaps in the
| silicon?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening
|
| Larger node, different substrate, shielding, and other
| things.
| silasdavis wrote:
| Thanks. Is this always an energetic issue, like the bit
| gets flipped or is it about long term material changes?
| jpgvm wrote:
| Both but primarily the former.
| duskwuff wrote:
| SiFive X280 is an IP core, not an IC. The design itself isn't
| inherently radiation-hard, but there's nothing preventing it
| from being manufactured on a radiation-hard process.
| IshKebab wrote:
| There are definitely things you can change in the design to
| make it more radiation-proof. ECC memory for example, logic
| sanity checks etc.
| mmaunder wrote:
| And yes, having more onboard processing will lead to more
| pre-processing capabilities for data before it's
| sent/received via precious and limited DSN bandwidth. Could
| also allow for a low quality preview and selective-send mode
| of operation.
| noselasd wrote:
| There certainly things you can do in the design to be
| radiation hardened, it's not just in the manufacturing. The
| LEON [1] processor, initally designed by ESA for space
| missions incorporates quite many countermeasures in its IP
| core.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEON
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| In general, the design has gone towards have 3 to 5 redundant
| non-hardened computers with ECC that compare results and if one
| computer disagrees, restart it. Radiation hardening makes sense
| when computers cost tens of thousands, and weigh 10s of pounds,
| but now they are cheap, and only weigh a few grams.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| The last mars rover and its drone run embedded Linux, the JWST
| runs javascript (not node.js though!). NASA is already working
| with much more powerful and capable software stacks.
| noselasd wrote:
| Well almost. The Perseverance rover runs vxworks, like most
| if not all of its predecessors. Ingenuity (the
| drone/helicopter) does indeed run linux.
| [deleted]
| lizknope wrote:
| Where are you reading that?
|
| The Perseverance rover uses the VxWorks real time OS from
| Wind River Systems and the same RAD750 PowerPC processor that
| NASA has been using for the last 20 years. The rover is
| designed to last and operate a long time.
|
| The Ingenuity drone helicopter uses an off the shelf Qualcomm
| Snapdragon 801 and Linux. While NASA wants it to last a long
| time that was not part of its main design.
|
| https://www.pcmag.com/news/linux-is-now-on-mars-thanks-to-
| na...
| pkaye wrote:
| The helicopter uses an RAD hardened FPGA for handling the
| flight computation while the Snapdragon handles the less
| critical stuff. I'm guessing if the Snapdragon faults out,
| the flight computer will slowly descent and go idle.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| except that the more complexity you add and make available
| the more things can break and go wrong.
|
| I imagine it is an interesting balancing act.
| _joel wrote:
| More over, Inginuity uses COTS altimeter from Sparkfun, it's
| still working!
| robocat wrote:
| COTS = Commercial Off The Shelf
| deelowe wrote:
| > the JWST runs javascript
|
| What?! I'd like to know more about this. Does it have GC? I
| just can't fathom that being the case...
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Its scripting engine for running commands sent from the
| ground is based on Javascript. So all the important stuff
| is done in native code, but the orders are taken in JS.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| See [1] (HN discussion: [2]). According to the paper [3] it
| looks like that it does have a GC and its resource usage is
| limited by other means.
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/18/23206110/james-webb-
| space...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32519918
|
| [3] https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/resources/ISIMmanuscript.pdf#
| page=...
| acchow wrote:
| > If you're still worried, do note that the Space
| Telescope Science Institute's document mentions that the
| script processor itself is written in C++
|
| So they decided on Javascript back in 2006 and it uses an
| interpreter/runtime written in C++. Which runtime is
| this?
| sanxiyn wrote:
| It is Nombas ScriptEase. The author updated the homepage
| after >10 years due to interest from JWST.
|
| https://brent-noorda.com/nombas/us/
| deelowe wrote:
| Wow. Thanks!
| nequo wrote:
| In an earlier era, NASA also sent Lisp to Mars.[1] And my
| understanding is that they sent it with GC.
|
| [1] https://corecursive.com/lisp-in-space-with-ron-garret/
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| The rover still uses the radiation hardened PowerPC (RAD750
| circa 2001 = 301K per CPU) but the drone uses a Snapdragon
| 801 SoC - it was not considered mission critical so the team
| could use off the shelf hardware.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750
| UltraViolence wrote:
| The MARCO Mars satellites also used COTS components and
| computers, all running Linux. The worked great AFAIK. They
| even had a cheap COTS breakout-board camera which snapped a
| couple of pictures of Mars!
| Someone wrote:
| Related NASA press release (I think):
| https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-awards-next-
| generati....
|
| That seems to say it's for a radiation-hardened design:
|
| _"In 2021, NASA solicited proposals for a trade study for an
| advanced radiation-hardened computing chip with the intention
| of selecting one vendor for development. This contract is part
| of NASA's High-Performance Space Computing project"_
|
| They also say:
|
| _"The processor will enable spacecraft computers to perform
| calculations up to 100 times faster than today's state-of-the-
| art space computers"_
|
| and
|
| _"Our current spaceflight computers were developed almost 30
| years ago,"_
|
| That, for me, also points towards a radiation-hardened design.
| If it isn't, 100 times faster than 30 years ago is an
| incredibly low hurdle to clear.
|
| Also, it's a $50 million firm-fixed-price contract. I have no
| idea whether that's a sharp price for this, so can't judge how
| much risk SiFive takes on with this.
| UltraViolence wrote:
| The newer designs aren't actually RAD-hardened, but fault
| tolerant.
|
| It's physically impossible to produce RAD-hard semiconductors
| at the small scale we're currently producing high-end CPU's
| with.
|
| I read this in an article somewhere but don't have the link.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Seems it's not quite as dire as one might imagine, for
| example the DAHLIA project is using ST's 28nm FDSOI
| process[1].
|
| In any case, I found this[2] article interesting and
| illuminating, which goes into different aspects of
| radiation hardening, including how the "old = safe" isn't
| strictly true.
|
| [1]: https://dahlia-h2020.eu/about-project/
|
| [2]: https://habr.com/en/post/518366/
| lizknope wrote:
| NASA currently uses the RAD750 which is based on a PowerPC
| 750 that was new in Macs in 1997.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750
| inamberclad wrote:
| I'm ready to throw our old, expensive, and fairly slow flight
| computers with no drivers and terrible lead time to the curb and
| get on board with something new. Especially if an open ISA means
| that our systems will be more portable and faster to develop.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It really seems like the perfect storm. Hopefully other folks
| like NASA will get comfortable jumping on the RISC train now
| that their only option isn't licensing from ARM.
| giantrobot wrote:
| NASA's been on the RISC train for nearly 30 years. They've
| been using the RAD750 since the turn of the century. Before
| the RAD750 they used the RAD6000, a radiation hardened POWER1
| chip. They also use the Mongoose rad hard MIPS chips in a
| number of orbiters.
| gumby wrote:
| There are already companies building hardware and software
| stacks so you can concentrate on the part you care about. I
| think this is great!
|
| Also excited to see RISC V gaining some acceptance in space.
| vaxman wrote:
| RISC-V is NASA bad?
|
| "Launch aborted, whenever we access the pressurization control
| we're getting an 'ISA not implemented in this version of the
| core' error from the controller that arrived overnight. They must
| have received the wrong version of the chip and didn't catch it
| in the test rig we gave them 6 years ago." #roflmao
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| gchadwick wrote:
| I am a little surprised to see this. I'd imagine NASA would chose
| a CPU with an already proven track record (especially for
| something so wide ranging, the press release says it expected to
| be used for 'virtually every future space mission, from planetary
| exploration to lunar and Mars surface missions'. This is a new
| design from SiFive and there's not a huge amount of SiFive IP
| around yet to demonstrate how good (or otherwise) their
| verification is. Running into a hardware bug whilst your CPU is
| in space is not good.
|
| Still good SiFive have convinced NASA otherwise, they must have a
| pretty strong verification story behind the scenes.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| The whole point of choosing SiFive over anything else is to
| encourage competition.
|
| SpaceX is similar while they are very successful it also
| encourages competition in a space that really needed it and now
| there are so many other companies doing smaller launches that
| don't make business sense to SpaceX.
| UltraViolence wrote:
| I agree. NASA has hit the jackpot by using fixed-price
| contracts from vendors which don't have a legacy track record
| from the Apollo days.
|
| The Cost-plus contracts have made them fat and lazy and
| somewhat remind me of that Bugs Bunny cartoon where the cats
| don't mind the mice emptying the fridge.
|
| NASA is taking a small risk, but the rewards can, as SpaceX
| has demonstrated, be HUGE.
| omegalulw wrote:
| I absolutely love that NASA is doing this AND encouraging the
| RISC-V ecosystem. Maybe it's impossible, I don't know, but if
| we have an open soruce alternative for hardware with the kind
| of reach that Linux has in software i think that's the best
| way forward.
| mlindner wrote:
| The alternative is the ancient PowerPC-based RAD series of
| which the most recent incarnation is now almost 2 decades old.
| [deleted]
| pinewurst wrote:
| NASA is partitioned between the (IMHO limited) parts that
| actually do stuff and the golly-geewhiz-PR stuff. People who
| are planning next gen planetary missions are considering
| trusted, proven rad hard platforms. This is just PR to distract
| in its own small way from the SLS debacle.
| permalac wrote:
| What debacle? Is it dead?
| pinewurst wrote:
| Money spent vs results over time. Results excluding Boeing
| & subcontractor revenue. SLS was originally sold as cost
| effective reuse of existing SSMEs combined with relatively
| simple tankage to get a cheap large booster. Against those
| metrics it's a debacle, unclear if it ever will fly,
| especially more than once.
| mjevans wrote:
| While I agree about SLS, and I'm also hopeful about
| SpaceX's Starship stack, I'd really like to see a
| successful test. They're working on it, but just imagine
| how much closer they could have been with even a fraction
| of this SLS boondoggle contributed.
|
| If NASA is supposed to be a multi-state grant to the
| sciences, I'd much rather they focus the funding where it
| will deliver results that benefit the public commons. The
| jobs program for obsolete and finicky space tech is a
| dis-service to the public and even the workers who's
| skills are in questionably useful specialties.
| adolph wrote:
| Compared to Starliner and its move from Atlas V to Vulcan
| [0], SLS is a paragon of incremental success.
| Additionally, to be fair to SLS, many of the problems
| associated with the program have to do with the mobile
| launch platform, which was built for the previous
| Constellation program and required considerable refit for
| SLS. [1]
|
| 0. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/nasa-will-pay-
| boeing...
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_Ground_Syste
| ms#Lau...
| ramesh31 wrote:
| > Against those metrics it's a debacle, unclear if it
| ever will fly, especially more than once.
|
| Not to mention a national security nightmare. Imagine a
| world without the COTS program, where we would most
| likely still be waiting for whatever version of Starliner
| that we finally got. We would right now be reliant on
| Russia to return our astronauts to earth from the ISS.
| Can you even imagine what we'd have to give up for their
| safety?
| crote wrote:
| The SLS was pretty much designed by Congress. Design
| choices were made primarily to keep jobs in plants which
| were previously used for Space Shuttle parts.
|
| With its impending first launch, a lot of discussion is
| popping up again about it arguably being way too slow to
| develop, overly expensive, and not fit for the intended
| mission profile.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > This is just PR to distract in its own small way from the
| SLS debacle.
|
| You're implying a degree of coordination which organizations
| the size of NASA just don't have. Artemis has had two
| scrubbed launches, they didn't put out this announcement to
| distract from it. I doubt someone went over to SiFive and
| said, "Hey, help us distract from the Artemis I launch
| problems and we'll give you a nice contract."
| ibrault wrote:
| Yes, it's a ridiculous claim. HSPC has been in the works
| for several years now, and is ran thru JPL which is
| completely unaffiliated with Artemis.
| pinewurst wrote:
| I don't think coordination has to be explicit. Seeing meh
| PR and thinking, "hey maybe we should step up the advanced
| technology press releases" is enough. As for NASA
| contracts, it's almost harder to name someone who doesn't
| have even a tiny one, even cranks. Also it's not like 2
| Artemis failures are in a vacuum - it's the culmination of
| a decade of failure and misspent funds.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >>> This is just PR to distract in its own small way from
| the SLS debacle.
|
| > Seeing meh PR and thinking, "hey maybe we should step
| up the advanced technology press releases" is enough. As
| for NASA contracts, it's almost harder to name someone
| who doesn't have even a tiny one, even cranks.
|
| Except _no one_ cares about the instruction set of space
| computers, except a small cadre of computer geeks.
|
| A story no one cares about is a bad thing to use as a
| distraction.
| pinewurst wrote:
| I agree with you. I meant it as part of the flux of NASA
| tech press releases. It could be some CPU thing, it could
| be a magic space drive, it could be the official kitty
| litter of the moon base. ;)
| IgorPartola wrote:
| You are overthinking it.
| hajile wrote:
| SiFive is a new company (with backing from large companies like
| Qualcomm), but the people working there are industry experts
| with decades of experience who know the value of verification
| to both designers and customers.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Interestingly SiFive RISC V core was licensed by Tenstorrent (Jim
| Keller AI startup) for their designs.
| FullyFunctional wrote:
| True but know also that Tenstorrent is working on their own
| superscalar OoO chip as well.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| They probably need a "director" CPU with a familiar
| programming interface to orchestrate their AI engines ???.
| morcheeba wrote:
| Interesting! ESA has been using a custom SPARC V8 rad hard
| architecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEON
|
| I'm currently using a dual-core 90 MHz processor that is
| relatively advanced and has good performance for many
| applications. It has error-correcting memories (SDRAM, cache,
| registers) and a lot of integrated peripherals (spacewire,
| serial, ethernet, 1553, CCSDS) that help reduce board complexity.
|
| Next up in the pipeline is an 8-core 1 GHz monster:
| https://www.gaisler.com/index.php/products/components/gr765
| pkaye wrote:
| NASA has mostly been using a PowerPC.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750
| [deleted]
| shrubble wrote:
| Are any of these boards available for regular people at a
| regular person kind of price? Or is it 1000s of USD for an
| evaluation board?
| UltraViolence wrote:
| I wonder if NASA has a clue that RISC-V's ISA is open-source but
| SiFive's designs certainly aren't.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| You can't launch an ISA into space and expect it to do
| anything. At some point, hardware has to be designed and built
| based on that ISA.
| UltraViolence wrote:
| Then what advantage does it have over ARM or x64? The ISA
| being open doesn't seem to make any difference at all.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Nonsense; I printed out a copy of the AGC instruction set
| reference, stuffed it in one of my model rockets, and it
| turned into a Saturn V mid-flight.
| [deleted]
| neilv wrote:
| It's great to see parts of the US government embracing RISC-V and
| SiFive.
|
| I hope NASA and others using RISC-V also take the opportunity, of
| a bit of a fresh start, to push for more of an _open hardware_
| platform around the CPUs (chipsets, devices, etc.).
| 1-6 wrote:
| I hope that's the intention. Silicon Valley pretty much
| sprouted with military funding. Unfortunately, long lead times
| are impossible in this new economy and research scientists will
| get scouted before NASA gets to increase their pay.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-09-06 23:00 UTC)