111–120 of 495 posts
> In other words up to 10% of all the crashes Firefox users see are not software bugs, they're caused by hardware defects! Bold claim. From my gut feeling this must be incorrect; I don't seem to get the same amount of crashes using chromium-based browsers such as thorium.
I agree. Good thing he doesn't back up his claim with any sort of evidence or reasoned argument, or you'd look like a huge moron!
ECC should have become standard around the time memories passed 1GB. It's seriously annoying that ECC memory is hard to get and expensive, but memory with useless LEDs attached is cheap.
ECC are traditionally slower, quite more complex, and they dont completely eliminate the problem (most memories correct 1 bit per word and detect 2 bits per word). They make sense when environmental factors such as flaky power, temperature or RF interference can be easily discarded - such as a server room. But yeah, I agree with you, as ECC solves like 99% of the cases.
> In other words up to 10% of all the crashes Firefox users see are not software bugs, they're caused by hardware defects! Bold claim. From my gut feeling this must be incorrect; I don't seem to get the same amount of crashes using chromium-based browsers such as thorium.
> In other words up to 10% of all the crashes Firefox users see are not software bugs, they're caused by hardware defects! Bold claim. From my gut feeling this must be incorrect; I don't seem to get the same amount of crashes using chromium-based browsers such as thorium.
Are people getting so many FF crashes? Mine rarely does. I leave it running, opening and closing tabs, for weeks on end.
ECC should have become standard around the time memories passed 1GB. It's seriously annoying that ECC memory is hard to get and expensive, but memory with useless LEDs attached is cheap.
It's not even ECC price/availability that bothers me so much, it's that getting CPUs and motherboards that support ECC is non-trivial outside of the server space. The whole consumer class ecosystem is kind of shitty. At least AMD allows consumer class CPUs to kinda sorta use ECC, unlike Intel's approach where only the prosumer/workstation stuff gets ECC.
is there a way to get the memory tester he mentioned? Is it open source? Once Ram goes bad is there a way or recovering it or is it toasted forever?
https://github.com/prsyahmi/BadMemory
I've used it for many years. It only fixes physical hardware faults, not timing errors. For example if a RAM cell is damaged by radiation, not if you're overclocking your RAM.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you/he ever consider redundant allocation for high value content and hash checks for low value assets that are still important? I imagine the largest volume of game memory consumption is media assets which if corrupted would really matter, and the storage requirement for important content would be reasonably negligible?
That's an interesting idea. How might you implement that? Like RAID but on the level of variables? Maybe the one valid use case for getters/setters? :)
I would love to see DDR4 vs DDR5 bitflips. As I understand it DDR5 must come with some level of ECC [1]. [1] https://www.corsair.com/us/en/explorer/diy-builder/memory/is...
>> DDR5 technology comes with an exclusive data-checking feature that serves to improve memory cell reliability and increase memory yield for memory manufacturers. This inclusion doesn't make it full ECC memory though.
"Proper" ECC has a wider memory buss, so the CPU emits checksum bits that are saved alongside every word of memory, and checked again by the CPU when memory is read. Eg. a 64 bit machine would actually have 72 bit memory.
DDR5 "ECC" uses error correction only within the memory stick. It's there to reduce the error rate, so otherwise unacceptable memory is usable - individual cells have become so small that they are not longer acceptably reliable by themselves!
I've told this story before on HN, but my biz partner at ArenaNet, Mike O'Brien (creator of battle.net) wrote a system in Guild Wars circa 2004 that detected bitflips as part of our bug triage process, because we'd regularly get bug reports from game clients that made no sense. Every frame (i.e. ~60FPS) Guild Wars would allocate random memory, run math-heavy computations, and compare the results with a table of known…
GW1 was my childhood. The MMO with no monthly fees appealed to my Mom and I met friends for years. The 8 skill build system was genius, as was the cut scenes featuring your player character. If there's ever a 3rd game I would love to see something allowing for more expression through build creation though I could see how that's hard to balance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not even ECC price/availability that bothers me so much, it's that getting CPUs and motherboards that support ECC is non-trivial outside of the server space. The whole consumer class ecosystem is kind of shitty. At least AMD allows consumer class CPUs to kinda sorta use ECC, unlike Intel's approach where only the prosumer/workstation stuff gets ECC.
I've been honestly amazed people actually buy stuff that's not "workstation" gear given IME how much more reliably and consistently it works, but I guess even a generation or two used can be expensive.