On the Perseverance rover is a 23-year-old Apple chip

In the heart of Perseverance, the NASA rover that reached Martian soil on February 18, beats an old chip that Apple used 23 years ago for its iconic computer.

According to the New Scientist website, in fact, Perseverance is powered by a PowerPC 750 processor, used in Apple's original 1998 iMac G3, the colorful and transparent computer that marked the rebirth of the bitten Apple.

In the vehicle that landed on Mars, however, there is a variant of this chip, redesigned to withstand higher temperatures, between -55 and 125 degrees Celsius (-67 and 257 degrees Fahrenheit), to extreme shocks and stresses.

Changes that result in an increase in production costs of more than $ 200,000 on the price of the single processor.

"Compared to the Intel Core i5 of the Apple computer, it is much slower. But we are not talking about speed here, but rather about robustness and reliability. We have to make sure it works forever," explained deputy manager Nasa Matt Lemke.

The PowerPC 750 processor today is old and less powerful than any smartphone processor, but more than 20 years ago it was a true concentrate of technology, well ahead of the competition.

It was the architecture that Macs relied on before the advent of Intel processors.

Now, however, the Cupertino company is in its third transition as it is abandoning Intel to embrace Arm.

According to recent rumors, among other things, the iMac generation could represent a return to the past: Apple would in fact be thinking of colored shells for the next Mac Pro.