For a brief period, the Windows kernel tried to deal with gamma rays
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For a brief period, the Windows kernel tried to deal with gamma rays
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Re: For a brief period, the Windows kernel tried to deal with gamma rays
#2If you have a large enough fleet, and log your ECC errors, you have actually built a not-very-sensitive and very expensive scientific instrument- a cosmic ray detector. Physics is awesome.
Re: For a brief period, the Windows kernel tried to deal with gamma rays
#3If you have a large enough fleet, and log your ECC errors, you have actually built a not-very-sensitive and very expensive scientific instrument- a cosmic ray detector. Physics is awesome.
An app was created to use smartphones for this very purpose!
https://news.wisc.edu/physicist-turns-smartphones-into-pocke...
Re: For a brief period, the Windows kernel tried to deal with gamma rays
#4To answer the question in the OP: yes, the processor cache might be more susceptible than RAM, if the RAM is ECC.
I've heard many stories about bit-flips causing serious problems at higher-elevation sites. Apparently a major installation at either NCAR or UCAR was delayed by a month fighting such problems. While I haven't actually confirmed any of these stories first hand, I've heard enough to believe that a little paranoia is justified.
Re: For a brief period, the Windows kernel tried to deal with gamma rays
#5If you have a large enough fleet, and log your ECC errors, you have actually built a not-very-sensitive and very expensive scientific instrument- a cosmic ray detector. Physics is awesome.
An app was created to use smartphones for this very purpose! https://news.wisc.edu/physicist-turns-smartphones-into-pocke...
Duct tape the smartphone camera lens and keep observing the camera feed, hoping the cosmic ray hit the camera.
Doesn't need ECC memory for that.
Re: For a brief period, the Windows kernel tried to deal with gamma rays
#6If you have a large enough fleet, and log your ECC errors, you have actually built a not-very-sensitive and very expensive scientific instrument- a cosmic ray detector. Physics is awesome.
An app was created to use smartphones for this very purpose! https://news.wisc.edu/physicist-turns-smartphones-into-pocke...
Also this:
Not sure if it remains in active development though.
Re: For a brief period, the Windows kernel tried to deal with gamma rays
#7If you have a large enough fleet, and log your ECC errors, you have actually built a not-very-sensitive and very expensive scientific instrument- a cosmic ray detector. Physics is awesome.
There used to be a distributed earthquake-detector app too, which correlated HDD seek error statistics from a large number of users.
Re: For a brief period, the Windows kernel tried to deal with gamma rays
#8Way back in the late 90s IBM had a problem with alpha-source-contaminated plastics in their SRAM chips. Those chips were used as caches in Sun SPARC processor modules. IBM told some customers, but not Sun. This caused random bitflips in the processor cache, leading to assorted failures and crashes in what was supposed to be reliable UNIX servers.
Re: For a brief period, the Windows kernel tried to deal with gamma rays
#9It did not
Re: For a brief period, the Windows kernel tried to deal with gamma rays
#10To answer the question in the OP: yes, the processor cache might be more susceptible than RAM, if the RAM is ECC. I've heard many stories about bit-flips causing serious problems at higher-elevation sites. Apparently a major installation at either NCAR or UCAR was delayed by a month fighting such problems. While I haven't actually confirmed any of these stories first hand, I've heard enough to believe that a little p…
Internal data buses and caches are typically ECC'd. In fact, DRAM and the memory bus are most likely the only non-ECC parts in desktop computers.