NASA internship prototyping radiation-tolerant Framework Laptop 16 mainboard

Posted by Lammy 14 hours ago

Comments

Comment by rurban 6 hours ago

The HPSC Risc-v CPU is described in the white paper pdf at https://www.nasa.gov/game-changing-development-projects/high...

I don't get how they want to solve high performance with radiation hardening, which requires slow performance. They'll use 12nm Global Foundries CPU dies and DDR4 RAM, which is far from radiation hardened. So it looks like it's enjoying fault tolerance. Which started with the shuttle program, using many off the shelf fast CPU's and RAM, observing each other, instead of slow hardened CPU's and RAM.

Comment by yndoendo 12 hours ago

I recently picked up a Framework 13 AMD and it is one of the best laptops I have ever bought.

The power via USB-C ports are properly balanced with having a top left or top right port. That simple design makes it more user friendly when you are in dynamic environments; lying on a couch vs at a desktop vs some where random.

Most other OEMs place it on one or the other side.

No Microsoft Tax for a OS I will never personal run!

Comment by wtallis 11 hours ago

It's really common for laptops to only support charging, display output and Thunderbolt on the USB-C ports on one side of the laptop while the other side gets just a 5 or 10Gbps USB port (and probably the headphone jack). This asymmetry usually comes from a design where the high-speed/high-power ports are on the motherboard and the lower-speed ports are on a separate board connected by a ribbon cable. That enables the OEM to use the same boards for multiple laptop sizes (eg 13" and 15", or 15" and 17") just by swapping in a longer ribbon cable. Using a cable capable of carrying Thunderbolt signals and charger input would negate a lot of those cost savings.

Comment by Stevvo 9 hours ago

The high-level tasks are beyond what any single intern could reasonably hope to complete over a summer. Obviously a space agency has to set ambitious goals, but this is just unreasonable.

Comment by damnitbuilds 13 hours ago

Yay Framework !

More projects should be done on their fantastic open hardware.