

Auto industry's fastest microprocessor is 128Mhz, with 3MB of flash - zdw
http://media.gm.com/content/media/us/en/news/news_detail.brand_gm.html/content/Pages/news/us/en/2010/Nov/1109_gm_buick

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byoung2
_Three meg of flash memory and 128 MHz clock speed doesn’t sound like a lot in
terms of computing power until you consider the environment these controllers
have to live in...Unlike most home entertainment and electronic devices, our
controllers are made to operate reliably up to 260 degrees (127C) and down to
-40 degrees (-40C) for the life of the vehicle_

On top of that, the ECU has to be completely sealed from dust and moisture, so
cooling fans are out, they can only use heat sinks. Anyone who's used a laptop
in a country like the Philippines knows that when it gets hot, you start to
see glitches and slowdown. You can't have that in a car's computer, because
lives are at stake. It's pretty impressive that they can design a piece of
electronics that can withstand that much abuse and expect it to last 10-15
years without issue.

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wickedchicken
You see this in a lot of industries for various reasons -- space hardware
especially (in part due to rad-hard requirements but also due to programmer
reluctance to move away from old architecture).

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zdw
Exactly - people already know about the bugs. Just to give an example, the
Core Duo errata list is 53 pages long and still growing:

<http://www.intel.com/design/mobile/specupdt/309222.htm>

