ENG: NASA’s High Performance Spaceflight Computing processor is a next-generation space chip designed to give spacecraft much stronger onboard computing abilities. Unlike ordinary processors, it is radiation-hardened, meaning it is built to resist damage from high-energy particles coming from the Sun and from deep space. It is also designed to tolerate extreme temperature changes, shocks, and other difficult spaceflight conditions. NASA expects it to provide up to 100 times the computational capacity of current spaceflight computers, while early testing indicates performance as high as 500 times faster than radiation-hardened chips now in use.
