Engineering:Advanced Technology Airborne Computer
The Advanced Technology Airborne Computer (ATAC) was a product of Itek (a division of Litton Industries), used on US naval aircraft, and the NASA Galileo (spacecraft).[1]:198–201
The ATAC was built using AMD 2901 4-bit processors and had a basic cycle time of 250 ns.[1]:198 It could be programmed in HAL/S, and could be microprogrammed to add new instructions. The Galileo project added four instructions.
Use by Galileo project
The Galileo Attitude and Articulation Control System (AACSE) was controlled by two Itek Advanced Technology Airborne Computers (ATAC), built using radiation-hardened 2901s.[1]:201,207 The project wrote their own GRACOS (Galileo realtime Attitude Control Operating System).
The Galileo project had radiation-hardened 2901 processors made (by Sandia National Lab) for the spacecraft.[1]:202
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Tomayko, James E. (March 1988). Computers in Spaceflight: The NASA Experience (Report). NASA History Office. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19880069935/downloads/19880069935.pdf. Retrieved 29 October 2020.
Further reading
- "Computers in Spaceflight: The NASA Experience". Distributed Computing On Board Voyager and Galileo. NASA. https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch6-3.html. Retrieved August 26, 2014.
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