what is "old archaic" to you? by the time a satellite is operating in space, it has been years in the r&d phase, build stage, launch queue stage, then finally in orbit. by that time, software onboard is definitely archaic in modern terms. if you consider hardware like mobile devices with yearly advances, it's also pretty old.
it would also seem pretty odd to me to put anything onboard to do any kind of processing other than what's necessary to gather the data. just bring that raw data back down to terra firma where the latest/greatest processing tricks/hardware can be utilized.
I think a lot of people associate "old technology" as inferior and ineffective and that flashy GUI stuff is the only effective way of doing things. Truth is a lot of older technology is brutally simple and efficient and meets the 90% cut off in usefulness vs newer more complex for the sake of complexity tech.
it would also seem pretty odd to me to put anything onboard to do any kind of processing other than what's necessary to gather the data. just bring that raw data back down to terra firma where the latest/greatest processing tricks/hardware can be utilized.