Tech YouTuber ThioJoe made a video about ECC memory, in which he explained how bits in memory can randomly change and can lead to data corruption if you don't have ECC memory.
Here's what an article says about random bit errors:
"So the probability of having at least one bit error in 4 gigabytes of memory at sea level on planet Earth in 72 hours is over 95%."
Quoted from http://lambda-diode.com/opinion/ecc-memory
One bit changed can make a boolean value switch from true to false or vice-versa, so it seems like it's a big deal?
My computer doesn't have ECC memory, and I use it for a few hours every day without having any problems.
If "bit flipping" due to cosmic rays is a frequent occurrence, why doesn't my computer get messed up after being powered on for a long time?
The odds of CR-caused bit flips are discussed in the above SE thread, and as mentioned in this YCombinator thread linked in the comments above, the largest volume of data sensitive to bit flip (in memory) is media which won't have problems with this
In worst cases for the average person, the bit flip will result in an error which the system will catch and attempt to recover from. Now you have something else to blame BSODs on.
Besides hardening (like the hardware designs in spacefaring systems) and error correction (like the resilient architectures of SPARC CPUs or ECC memory), most current improvements appear to make consumer hardware MORE vulnerable to cosmic-ray-caused bit flip.
Because of this I think we can surmise that the primary reason your personal computer isn't riddled with errors is improved software design which is more resilient to small issues in the data.
That said, the primary lesson to take from this is that you have one more reason you should be backing your data up.
Collected from the Internet
Please contact [email protected] to delete if infringement.
Comments