Cosmic rays causing 30k network malfunctions in Japan each year
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Re: Cosmic rays causing 30k network malfunctions in Japan each year
#2https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/bit-f...
A more comprehensive an interesting take on the cosmic ray phenomenon. It’s actually a global issue that is accounted for in certain electronics.
Re: Cosmic rays causing 30k network malfunctions in Japan each year
#3> Soft errors occur when the data in an electronic device is corrupted after neutrons, produced when cosmic rays hit oxygen and nitrogen in the earth's atmosphere, collide with the semiconductors within the equipment.
Uhhhhhhh. Neutrons? Doubt goes here. I was pretty sure charged particles and ionizing radiation are to blame for messing up your electronics.
Re: Cosmic rays causing 30k network malfunctions in Japan each year
#4I have always wondered whether new ideas are seeded by cosmic rays disturbing neurons in the brain..
Re: Cosmic rays causing 30k network malfunctions in Japan each year
#5I have always wondered whether new ideas are seeded by cosmic rays disturbing neurons in the brain..
That's actually mind blowing to think about. Thanks for sharing this.
Re: Cosmic rays causing 30k network malfunctions in Japan each year
#6I have always wondered whether new ideas are seeded by cosmic rays disturbing neurons in the brain..
That's actually mind blowing to think about. Thanks for sharing this.
> That's actually mind blowing to think about.
That would be too many cosmic rays.
And the "flipped the wrong neuron" possibility is much scarier in my mind. And probably in everyone else's brain as well.
Re: Cosmic rays causing 30k network malfunctions in Japan each year
#7> Soft errors occur when the data in an electronic device is corrupted after neutrons, produced when cosmic rays hit oxygen and nitrogen in the earth's atmosphere, collide with the semiconductors within the equipment. Uhhhhhhh. Neutrons? Doubt goes here. I was pretty sure charged particles and ionizing radiation are to blame for messing up your electronics.
Supposedly yes neutrons [0 they give a link under causes]. I guess neutrons are more penetrating than protons, can pass through chips/buildings etc more easily, and even though weak interaction, it ends up more significant contribution than protons etc that interact more easily.
Re: Cosmic rays causing 30k network malfunctions in Japan each year
#8Kind of a fun ancedote: In "the old days" when you'd run a server room in your office we had a very large HPC cluster + a significant amount of storage and other one off servers on the top floor of a mid rise office building. I eventually moved it all to a former nuclear fallout facility where our systems were three floors down and under a gigantic pool of water. Error rates and random crashes fell off IMMEDIATELY.
I believe Microsoft reported similar findings with their submerged data center.
Re: Cosmic rays causing 30k network malfunctions in Japan each year
#9> Soft errors occur when the data in an electronic device is corrupted after neutrons, produced when cosmic rays hit oxygen and nitrogen in the earth's atmosphere, collide with the semiconductors within the equipment. Uhhhhhhh. Neutrons? Doubt goes here. I was pretty sure charged particles and ionizing radiation are to blame for messing up your electronics.
Neutron radiation is in fact ionizing radiation.
It is much more dangerous than other types, as it readily passes most materials, yet dosage is absorbed. Absorbed neutrons cause particles to (almost always) become radioactive, which causes havoc as those new radioactive particles decay.
The other common types of radiation (alpha, beta and gamma) do not cause things to become radioactive (usually), instead they are a threat if the actually radioactive material accumulates as dust on your skin (for example).
Neutron radiation is much more dangerous because it seeds radioactivity deep in the body, so you can't clean it off by washing or waiting for the absorbed particles to be flushed back out of the body naturally within a few days.
Re: Cosmic rays causing 30k network malfunctions in Japan each year
#10They have to do two things :-)
1) Use ECC memory
2) Go underground
"One experiment measured the soft error rate at the sea level to be 5,950 failures in time (FIT = failures per billion hours) per DRAM chip. When the same test setup was moved to an underground vault, shielded by over 50 feet (15 m) of rock that effectively eliminated all cosmic rays, zero soft errors were recorded.[6] In this test, all other causes of soft errors are too small to be measured, compared to the error rate caused by cosmic rays."
"Soft Errors" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_error#Cosmic_rays_creatin...