Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are all very fair statements but there’s no guarantee that ECC memory was even used. Computers typically fail open when ECC is potentially present but not available. People also cite early stage google and intentionally do not buy ECC components, running more consumer hardware for production workloads. Even if google later recanted that theology.
It’s always humorous to me when people use the term theology in situations such as this; it makes me wonder, as human mental bandwidth becomes more strained and we increase our specializations to the n-th degree, what will constitute theology in the future? Food for thought.
Single random bit flip causes error in certificate transparency log
31–40 of 258 posts
Re: Single random bit flip causes error in certificate transparency log
#32Re: Single random bit flip causes error in certificate transparency log
#33Layman question: Is it possible to shield electronics against cosmic rays? Or is it like a neutrino thing, where they just go through everything? (But neutrinos barely interact, correct?)
Re: Single random bit flip causes error in certificate transparency log
#34Layman question: Is it possible to shield electronics against cosmic rays? Or is it like a neutrino thing, where they just go through everything? (But neutrinos barely interact, correct?)
The cosmic ray induced radiation at sea level is a mix of neutrons, gamma rays, electrons, and highly penetrating high energy muons (heavier cousins of electrons). They are caused by the cascade of reactions when the CRs collide with nuclei in the atmosphere. You're right, neutrinos barely interact (hence the name "little neutral ones") so they're no problem. You could put infrastructure underground to escape muons,…
Re: Single random bit flip causes error in certificate transparency log
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cosmic ray induced radiation at sea level is a mix of neutrons, gamma rays, electrons, and highly penetrating high energy muons (heavier cousins of electrons). They are caused by the cascade of reactions when the CRs collide with nuclei in the atmosphere. You're right, neutrinos barely interact (hence the name "little neutral ones") so they're no problem. You could put infrastructure underground to escape muons,…
My favourite story is this one https://www.thegamer.com/how-ionizing-particle-outer-space-h...
Re: Single random bit flip causes error in certificate transparency log
#36could also be an excuse to cover the real circumstances
Bare conspiratorial assertions don’t advance the conversation in any meaningful way. If you have something constructive to add to the discussion, by all means do so. Otherwise, please refrain from this sort of comment
Re: Single random bit flip causes error in certificate transparency log
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cosmic ray induced radiation at sea level is a mix of neutrons, gamma rays, electrons, and highly penetrating high energy muons (heavier cousins of electrons). They are caused by the cascade of reactions when the CRs collide with nuclei in the atmosphere. You're right, neutrinos barely interact (hence the name "little neutral ones") so they're no problem. You could put infrastructure underground to escape muons,…
My favourite story is this one https://www.thegamer.com/how-ionizing-particle-outer-space-h...
Re: Single random bit flip causes error in certificate transparency log
#38Layman question: Is it possible to shield electronics against cosmic rays? Or is it like a neutrino thing, where they just go through everything? (But neutrinos barely interact, correct?)
That's not what actually happened here (probably), but think of relatively heavy atoms like iron, ejected from a supernova at close to the speed of light. They're not really "rays". They're solid particles that punch holes in everything. The good news is, mostly they're ionized and they get repelled away from hitting the planet's surface by our magnetic field (generated by the big hot iron magnet that's churning unde…
Wow, I have to admit I always assumed cosmic rays to be gamma radiation but alpha particle radiation sounds a lot more scary.
Does anyone happen to know if computers engineered for the space station or shuttles have already some built-in (memory)redundancy or magnetic shielding to account for damage by cosmic rays? I imagine a system crash of the life support systems in space would be devastating.
Re: Single random bit flip causes error in certificate transparency log
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
"cosmic rays" are more of a well-known term of art for "single bit flipped with unknown hardware cause" than a reference to literal cosmic rays
It is not a "well-known term", it is a cliché.
Re: Single random bit flip causes error in certificate transparency log
#40Isn't ECC memory supposed to mitigate these kind of bit-flips, specifically it should correct all single bit flips? As this is a single bit-flip, why wasn't it corrected? Did ECC memory fail? Or was this bit-flip induced in the CPU pipeline, registers, or cache? Do we need "RAID for ECC memory", where we halve user-accessible RAM and store each memory segment twice and check for parity?