NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars recently, is powered by an old chipset that gives it the same processing power as a 1998 iMac.
If you thought a NASA rover that cost $2.4 billion to build and launch would be more powerful your old smartphone, you have another thing coming. NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed successfully on Mars Thursday, is powered by an old chipset that gives it about the same processing power as an iMac from 1998, according to PCMag‘s breakdown. More specifically, it’s packing 256MB of RAM and 2GB of storage, with a 200MHz processor. For comparison’s sake, that’s substantially less computing power than the original Apple Watch, which packs 512MB of RAM and 8GB of storage, with a 520MHz processor.
