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| Curiosity runs on VxWorks |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-08-06 14:42:22 |
| As the first images of the Mars Curiosity lander start pouring in, let's talk about what operating system it runs. As I found out via Hacker News, the project runs on VxWorks, a very popular embedded operating system used for truly mission critical tasks. I'd love to know just how much work has gone into making it bug-free - this isn't the kind of environment where you want code to fail. |
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| Not new |
| By zima on 2012-08-06 14:56:53 |
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Previous Mars rovers also used it, and quite a few other space missions in general: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VxW... (since Intel owns them now - is there some internal movement to make x86 the "premier" architecture, towards some radiation-hardened x86 chips? I imagine Intel could see this as worthy even just for PR) Other space-used OS that I stumbled on once: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTE... - and this one's OSS. I would be curious to know what other OS are up there (apart from... well, just look what's on the screen ;p http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fil... ) About the first images - FINALLY, the promise fulfilled!!111 (I was watching live NASA TV coverage) See, as a kid, I was kinda promised a "live pictures" from the coverage of Pathfinder landing - the announcements of the upcoming coverage, on my national TV network, presented it like that ...so the actual coverage felt a bit underwhelming back then. But not any more - first picture in the first few minutes after touchdown! Edited 2012-08-06 15:03 UTC |
 - Score: 4 |
| Historically they *haven't* been bug free |
| By tggzzz on 2012-08-06 14:59:43 |
|
A famous example is the Mars Pathfinder had a priority inversion bug that caused the computer to repeatedly reset itself. From http://research.microsoft.com/en... "No, we did not use the vxWorks shell to change the software (although the shell is usable on the spacecraft). The process of "patching" the software on the spacecraft is a specialized process. It involves sending the differences between what you have onboard and what you want (and have on Earth) to the spacecraft. Custom software on the spacecraft (with a whole bunch of validation) modifies the onboard copy." |
| - Score: 2 |
| VxWorks at JPL |
| By mkowalik on 2012-08-06 15:15:34 |
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Hi, related topic, although from a bit different angle. vxWorks mentioned couple of times: http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-l... |
| - Score: 2 |
| IBM product saved the day last mission |
| By jefro on 2012-08-06 15:36:22 |
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VXworks and an ibm system was on one of the last missions. When the system failed NASA thought the deal was lost. The system finally lost enough power and automatically rebooted and worked. I have to say. We use VXworks for some automation. I can't ever remember an issue with it. We pxe load it from a windows so it goes down well before the vxworks dies. |
| - Score: 2 |
| Micro-kernel and security conscious. |
| By moondevil on 2012-08-06 15:42:13 |
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From what I can see from the VxWorks documentation, it also belongs to the successful micro-kernel family of operating systems like QNX. It is also one of the embedded operating systems that has Ada as part of the standard set of native supported languages. As for the Pathfinder, even if it was written in C, most likely JPL guys were following their security guidelines to write safe C code. http://lars-lab.jpl.nasa.gov/JPL... |
| - Score: 8 |
| Cisco CSS/Arrowpoint |
| By tony on 2012-08-06 16:38:31 |
| The only device I've come across that ran VxWorks was the load balancer from Cisco, the Cisco's CSS (previously Arrowpoint). It was a great load balancer at the time, but Cisco let it atrophy and F5 and other vendors surpassed the CSS. Not VxWorks fault, though. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Micro-kernel and security conscious. |
| By kjmph on 2012-08-06 17:00:35 |
| Whoa, awesome read. I like the explicit cast to (void) for return code checking. |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE: Not new |
| By Treza on 2012-08-06 18:34:05 |
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> is there some internal movement to make x86 the "premier" architecture, towards some radiation-hardened x86 chips? Intel does not manufacture anymore simple CPUs (Pentium class) nor it sells IPs to third parties (unlike ARM). All current Intel designs are extremely unsuited for really critical applications, as they are far too complex and non deterministic (impossible to prove the temporal behaviour). In addition, space applications often use special semiconductor processes (>100nm for radiation hard) and modifications of the sources, like, for example, using triple redundancy for registers. Curiosity is based on a IBM-derived PowerPC RAD750 (G3) running at 200 MHz. |
| - Score: 8 |
| RE[2]: Not new |
| By zima on 2012-08-06 19:26:55 |
|
Oh I realize what MSL uses (and others http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat... ), the constraints and goals, and that Intel doesn't pursuit them with present designs - thing is, they probably could fairly easily considering their resources, and be quite successful at it (even if only in a decade or two, considering the typical inertia of avionics systems) Intel does maintain simpler, in-order, sort of Pentium-derived cores - with Atom and Larrabee/MIC architecture. Anyway, glancing more thoroughly at VxWorks Wiki article in the meantime, I noticed "Native 64-bit operating system[7] (only one 64-bit architecture supported: X86-64)" - so maybe, over time, Intel does plan to make its chips the premium choice for users of that OS (and Intel would probably like the publicity from usage in space missions). Why would Intel buy them out otherwise, anyway? |
| - Score: 2 |
| Bugs in space |
| By ShadesFox on 2012-08-06 20:30:05 |
| I know that the Spirit rover had a software bug. Specifically a reboot doom loop. I think it was caused by an excessive number of open files at boot. Though those two rovers also had a setup where the radio had a separate minimal OS that could control the rover OS and was used to supply fixes. |
| - Score: 2 |
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